A starlit rise that’s the stuff of Legend

R&B-soul; singer John Legend is the epitome of cool backstage at NBC Studios in Burbank, waiting for his slot to roll around on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Rather than bouncing around the room as a bundle of nervous energy, the suddenly hot 26-year-old musician slumps on a small sofa, mentions what a long day it’s been and, with barely an hour to go before he’s due on camera, flips off the light and flops down for a catnap.

Legend, a cocky nickname adopted by the man born John Stephens, has had plenty of time to get comfortable with the music industry’s hurry-up-and-wait ethic.

It’s been seven years since he fortuitously found his way onto Lauryn Hill’s breakthrough “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” album as a pianist, and nearly four years since a college roommate gave him the introduction that’s made all the difference in his fledgling career as a singer-songwriter-producer: to rapper Kanye West.

Despite Legend’s singing and playing on tracks from the likes of Hill, Dilated Peoples, Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, no one was much interested in his music -- until West’s debut album, “The College Dropout,” took off last year.

On that CD, which has sold 2.5 million copies and been nominated for album of the year in the Grammys, Legend plays piano, sings backup and has a prominent vocal part in “Jesus Walks,” the single that’s up for the record of the year Grammy.

It makes him the latest example of a pop musician who discovered that it isn’t just how you make music, it’s who you know. And the “who” needs to be someone with enough clout to open the doors of opportunity for someone else.

Not only is Legend the first artist signed to West’s new production company, Konman Entertainment, his album, “Get Lifted,” is also the first release on West’s Sony-affiliated label, Getting Out Our Dreams (GOOD).

Now Legend is hot stuff. The album entered the national sales chart at No. 7 two weeks ago and moved up three spots this week. Its two-week sales total: 192,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The CD is also receiving glowing reviews for Legend’s old-school R&B-soul; singing, which has elicited comparisons to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and even Bob Marley, and for a hip-hop sensibility that grows out of Legend’s own musical foundation and his collaborations with West and other hip-hop acts.

England’s New Musical Express, giving it an 8 on its scale of 10, commented: “What John Legend brings is an organic musicality that other R&B; artists have cast aside in favor of electronic photocopies of soul. What might seem conservative to ears de-tuned by hip-hop and rock ‘n’ roll proves instead to be complex and elaborate.”

The hard part for Legend is that, even though he recorded “Get Lifted” after Columbia signed him, it’s basically the same set of songs and arrangements he was shopping around long before West turned into one of 2004’s big successes.

“I accept it now, but I was frustrated then,” Legend says. “But I also felt I knew that we had something special and that it was going to work out eventually.”

Legend’s music loosely places him under the neo-soul umbrella that’s yielded such acts as D’Angelo, Musiq Soulchild and India.Arie, but even that didn’t get him anywhere.

“When I was shopping last year, neo-soul was already considered played out,” says Legend, dressed utterly bling-free in a lightweight crew-neck black sweater, jeans and sneakers.

“Def Jam had Musiq Soulchild, Interscope had Bilal -- everybody had one of those artists,” he continues. “I come in, I have natural hair and I’m not doing obvious contemporary glossy R&B;, so I’m automatically in the D’Angelo category. Which is fine, but it’s only fine if you only sell music as a category.

“I think what’s more important is the artist and the song,” he adds. “My song ‘Ordinary People’ is not supposed to be on the radio. It doesn’t even have drums. But hip-hop stations are playing it.... A lot. If people like it and relate to it, it doesn’t matter what category it is. It sounds like it could be a Burt Bacharach or an Elton John song. If some white guy is singing it, it’s not a soul song anymore. So what category is it?”

For his “Tonight Show” appearance, he revamps “Ordinary People,” the album’s second single, starting it as a ballad with just his own piano backing, as it is on the record, but adding subtle guitar, bass and drum accents to bring out more of the song’s rhythmic pulse.

Leno, actress Scarlett Johansson and “Phantom of the Opera” film star Gerard Butler look on from the side, bobbing and weaving as Legend sings the tale of a real-world relationship in which two people try to reconcile the fact that even though they truly love one another, they can still hurt each other.

It’s Legend’s favorite song on “Get Lifted” and embodies the complexity of human interactions he hopes to mine more in the future. That complexity is rare in youth-oriented pop music interested primarily in the path to hooking up.

The album itself feels almost like a song cycle, opening with several upbeat numbers, which West helped write, about the beginning stages of romance, moving into songs examining the tangled webs woven by someone flirting with infidelity.

From there it proceeds into a plea for forgiveness (“I Can Change,” featuring a rap from Snoop Dogg), “Ordinary People” and on through the gospel celebration “It Don’t Have to Change,” featuring several members of the Stephens family.

Legend grew up in Springfield, Ohio, where he started directing the church choir at age 10 and was gifted enough academically to graduate from high school at 16. He was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, where he befriended songwriter and producer DeVon “Devo” Harris, who happened to be West’s cousin.

Harris urged West to check out one of Legend’s shows, and the rapper-songwriter-producer liked what he heard. He invited Legend to play and sing at some of the sessions he was working on.

They quickly established a musical kinship, and West would often feed him beats as a basis for songs Legend was working on. He had recorded and released a couple of albums on his own, which gave him valuable experience in the studio, and played clubs in Philadelphia and later in New York, where he moved after graduating.

His first job out of college, however, was as a corporate consultant, part of a team that did problem-solving for pharmaceutical firms, media companies and consumer goods manufacturers -- experience that Legend says has paid off in his budding music career.

And what about that nickname, one that would seem to invite ridicule from skeptics?

Sitting on the couch backstage shortly before taking that nap, he notes that it was first used on him by a friend because his music often makes people think of R&B; and soul greats of the past. Others began referring to him as “Legend,” but he still had to wrestle with whether to use it for “Get Lifted.” His independent albums had been released under the name John Stephens.

“I decided that if my only reason for not doing it was because I was worried about failing to live up to it, that would not be enough reason,” he says. “I didn’t want to go into this at all thinking I possibly would fail. I was going to do the best I could do. So I’ve invited the pressure on myself.”