Because of her anxiety, Teigen
can’t remember trauma or
triumph. Her wedding is a blur.
T
he next day, Legend sits
in Raphael Saadiq’s studio in
North Hollywood. He’s here to
cut some vocals for his 2020album, but first he wants to play his visi-
tor some Christmas tracks he’s releasing
this year. “Okay, from the top,” he says,
pressing play on his laptop and dancing
around the room in his blue Varvatos
suede jacket and Off White brand sneak-
ers. Legend’s jazzy rendition of Donny
Hathaway’s “This Christmas” plays
over the speakers.
Next up is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
It seems like kind of a date-rapey choice
for the only well-known musician to say
what had to be said about R. Kelly in the
TV documentary Surviving R. Kelly. (“He
was already canceled in my mind,” Leg-
end says of his decision to speak out. “A
few years ago, we had a party at the house
and we had a DJ playing music. R. Kelly
came on and I walked up to the DJ and
said, ‘We don’t play him in this house.’ ”)
“Hold on, hold on,” he says, when this
reporter looks skeptical about “Baby, It’s
Cold Outside.” It turns out that Legend
has updated the lyrics with Natasha Roth-
well (Insecure) and recorded it with his fel-
low The Voice coach Kelly Clarkson. The
song’s every bit as fun and swinging as
the original, and its newfound sensitivity
feels genuine, not performative.
“What will my friends think...” sings
Clarkson.
“I think they should rejoice,” Legend
responds.
“...if I have one more drink?”
“It’s your body, and your choice.”Legend, born John Stephens, used to
gather with his family around his pater-
nal grandmother’s piano to sing some of
these very same Christmas standards.
His mother, Phyllis Stephens, was a
seamstress married to a factory worker in
Springfield, Ohio. She was the choir direc-
tor in their Pentecostal church, Legend’s
maternal grandfather the pastor, and his
grandmother the organist. The family
didn’t listen to secular music in the home,
and his parents decided to homeschool
their four children when prayer was pulled
out of their school.
When Phyllis Stephens was pregnant
with her Johnny, she read a book called
How to Raise a Brighter Child. She talked
to her children the way Legend talks
to his—in an even voice, with respect
and real words. Legend’s first word was
“Hallelujah.” He started taking piano les-
sons at four and before long was writing
and singing his own songs. “Typically,
you tell your son or daughter, ‘Have you
practiced your lessons?’ ” says his father,
Ron Stephens. “John was the kind of kid,
like, ‘Hey man, get off that piano, you’re
driving us crazy!”
Phyllis Stephens taught her children
about the importance of keeping to
schedules, how to do laundry, how to
iron. “Johnny, at nine years old, begged
me to teach him to cook,” she says. “And
he’s a short little guy, and I’m looking like,
‘Oh no, you’re going to burn yourself.’
Finally, he begged me one more time
and I taught him.”
It’s stunning how quickly a family can
fall apart.
Phyllis Stephens’s mother’s heart failed
and she died at 58. “I was so traumatized
by it because we were so close,” says Leg-
end. “She was my music guru.” But his
mother took it the hardest. She tumbled
into a depression that led to a divorce from
Legend’s father. Talking about this on the
phone, Phyllis Stephens begins crying and
likens what happened next to witchcraft
coming into their home. A friend turned
her on to the numbing power of drugs,
and she spent the next decade or so on
the streets and in and out of jail.
There were now four latchkey kids liv-
ing with a single father. “We all just filled
in for our mom,” says Legend. “I cooked
for everybody.” He went on to enroll at
the University of Pennsylvania at 16
where he majored in English and gradu-
ated magna cum laude. His mother, who
had missed his high school graduation,
missed this one, too. “She was a legiti-
mate drug addict,” he says. “We wentyears where we barely saw her because
we felt a sense of shame.”
After college, Legend worked for Bos-
ton Consulting Group. He tried to sell
himself to record labels, who said that his
voice and style were cool but his demo
didn’t have any hits. His college room-
mate was a cousin of Kanye West, who
signed on to produce for him and pushed
for the stage name Legend. “Kanye, if
he’s for you, he’s a very ardent marketer
and cheerleader,” says Legend.
In 2006, Legend won three Grammys
following the release of his debut album,
Get Lifted. He brought 20 of his family
members to the ceremony. “We were like
the Clampetts gone to Beverly Hills!” says
his dad. His mother, now clean and back in
church offering her testimony, sat next to
Legend at the ceremony. “You look at my
mother now, she’s so beautiful and radiant
and regal,” says Legend. “Knowing what
we went through with her as a kid, I was a
little bit resentful taking care of her later in
life. Like, where were you?” It was only in
witnessing the grief of adult friends losing
their own mothers, and seeing how it can
unmoor a person, that he could accept that
her abandonment wasn’t personal.
There’s clearly a through line from Leg-
end’s childhood to his activism. “When
John goes into a prison he’s not surround-
ed by an army of protectors,” says activist
and author of Just Mercy, Bryan Steven-
son. “He engages. He recognizes that
these are the people he grew up with, the
same people he’s known his entire life.”
During the tour of their house, Tei-
gen had pointed to an ironing board that
stood in Legend’s third-floor closet. “This
is where John irons his clothes every
morning,” she said.A
t the house the following day,
a staff member brings wine to
the blue couches in the living
room, which sit under a high,
brilliant ceiling covered with Indonesian
tiles. Luna lies on the top of the back cush-
ion telling the reporter that she’s going to
be a good fairy for Halloween. “I thought
you wanted to be Darla from The Little
Rascals,” says Teigen. Luna gives her
mother her best attempt at an eye roll.
The generational shade game is strong.
A nanny has already put Miles down for
his afternoon nap. “I hate pretending that
we do it on our own,” says Teigen. “We
have daytime help, nighttime, weekend.
I don’t know how my mom did it.”70 VANITY FAIR