PHILADELPHIA — John Legend’s Philadelphia story began at 16, when the precocious student came to the big city for his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania.

“There were all kinds of reasons why I felt like I didn’t belong,” Legend said this week, remembering those days. He called in from Wilmington, N.C., where he was on a stop on the “Get Lifted — 20th Anniversary Tour," which comes to the Ocean Resort in Atlantic City on Saturday and the Met Philly on Wednesday.

The son of a factory worker and drummer father and seamstress and choir director mother, who are the subject of his 2005 hit “Ordinary People,” Legend — then known as John Stephens — had skipped two grades growing up in Springfield, Ill.

“I was shy, and it was different coming from a small town from the Midwest, being 16,” he said. “But music was my gateway into connecting with everyone. Joining the a cappella group, singing in the church choir.”

While at Penn and majoring in English, Legend received national attention for his lead vocals on “Counterparts,” an a cappella take on Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” written by the Hooters’ Eric Bazilian. He also commuted to Scranton to serve as choir director at the Bethel-AME Church.

“I was 16, teaching 60 year olds,” Legend told The Inquirer in 2004, when Get Lifted, his debut album, was released. “It was crazy. I slept in class.”

While directing the Scranton choir, a friend introduced him to Lauryn Hill, who was working on her 1999 classic The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Legend played piano on Miseducation’s “Everything Is Everything” while still an undergrad, and Hill sang on Get Lifted’s “So High.”

After graduating in 1999, Legend took a job with Boston Consulting. He lived in Boston for a year, then New York for two. But his Philadelphia story continued.

He frequently returned to play venues like The Fire, Tin Angel, and the Five Spot in Old City, where he took part in the Black Lily sessions at the heart of the burgeoning neo-soul movement while working toward a record deal.

“It was legendary,” Legend says of the scene that revolved around The Roots and included rising stars like Jill Scott and Jaguar Wright.

“It was just a great time because so much creativity was happening. You would go to open mic nights and hear the beginnings of these songs that ended up on the radio. You would hear these improvised early versions, and it was inspiring.”

He started writing Get Lifted’s “Stay with You,” while riding on the subway in New York, then finished it in Philly with songwriting partner Dave Tozer. He finally got the break that led to Get Lifted — which won best new artist and R&B album Grammys, the first two of his 13 — when he met Kanye West.

Legend’s voice and piano are all over West’s 2004 The College Dropout debut, including “Jesus Walks,” which is in the “Get Lifted” show. West cowrote and coproduced much of Legend’s debut, including the breakout single “Used to Love U.”

“I would write with Kanye, just in my apartment or his apartment,” Legend recalls of working with his former friend, from whom he is now estranged.

Get Lifted — which also included contributions to the Black Eyed Peas’ Will. I. Am, who co-wrote “She Don’t Have to Know” — was the first release on West’s Getting Out Our Dreams label.

Legend kicked off the Get Lifted anniversary tour in Europe earlier this year, but just started barnstorming the U.S. in a tour bus in October, taking breaks when he can, to fly back to Los Angeles and see his wife, Chrissy Teigen, and their four children.

He has an album of new music coming in 2026. The EGOT winner’s next theater venture is Imitation of Life, an adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s 1933 Atlantic City-set novel, for which he’s collaborating with playwright Lynn Nottage and director Liesl Tommy. The plan is to premier in regional theater next year, then head to Broadway in 2027.

In his currently touring two-hour-plus show, , Legend performs all of Get Lifted with his band, leaving him plenty of time to revisit the Philly-connected era in which the album was born.

“I talk about Philly,” says Legend, 46, “because it was an important time for me as a young artist, and Philly was so important to it. We do a medley of moments from that period in my life.”

That might mean covers of Bilal’s “Soul Sista,” Musiq Soulchild’s “Just Friends,” or “You Got Me” by The Roots, with whom Legend teamed up on 2010’s Wake Up!

Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter guests on a “Used to Love U” remix on the 20th anniversary edition of Get Lifted. On many tour stops, Legend has been bringing surprise guests on stage. Who might join him in Philadelphia?

“I never like to say ahead of time, because sometimes people say yes and back out, or confirm at the last minute. So we’ll see.”

Legend spent lots of time in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in 2024, campaigning for Kamala Harris and Sen. Bob Casey in failed election bids, including joining Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama at a rally in North Philadelphia where the Boss said he preferred Legend’s “Dancing in the Dark” to his own.

A year into the second Trump administration, “it’s hard to know what to do,” he said. “I think we still have to participate in the electoral process, and these protests are important in people speaking out and letting the president and every other politicians know they don’t support this agenda.”

“I have been shocked sometimes,” he added. “It’s not the main point, but watching the East Wing get destroyed was such a visual shock and such a visual representation of the havoc that Trump is wreaking throughout the country.

“He seems to be just waging war on his own country. He has contempt for anyone who didn’t vote for him. Contempt for huge swaths of people who live in cities, people of color. He just doesn’t think of himself as president for the whole country. He thinks of himself as president for those who support him and love him.”

Meanwhile, the “Get Lifted” tour, which runs through December, “feels like an escape.”

“The show is really nostalgic and celebratory and doesn’t really address what’s happening right now. It revisits not only that album, but that era. And I think a lot of us are nostalgic for that era.

“A lot of my fans are my age, and the music is connected to a time in their lives and to past relationships and transitions in their lives.

“I’ve always been political, and I’ve always felt there were times when it was important to speak out when it felt like something was useful. But not in this show.”

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.