John Legend?s music encapsulates a distinct yet subtle sound, while it fuses old-school soul classics and the latest Hip Hop beats.

This is what John Legend fans can expect at his Get Lifted concert at the National Stadium on July 19.

The BET Award winner is a vocalist and pianist and he has played with an array of artists including Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Britney Spears, Eve, Common, the Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West. He has frequently appeared on the same bill as artists such as Musiq, Jaheim, Amel Larrieux, Glenn Lewis and Floetry.

Last week Mr. Legend, who is on his first solo tour, won the BET Award for Best New R&B Artist.

?It was very exciting,? he said. ?I was a little surprised and I didn?t have a speech or anything prepared, but, I thought that if I had a chance of winning any thing that would be it.?

During the Awards John Legend performed with his idol, Stevie Wonder.

?It was incredible. It was incredible,? he repeated.

?He is a genius and one of the true masters of what we do and for him to want to perform with me, I thought it was a high compliment and a big honour to me and I truly appreciated the honour of singing with him. It was really great.?

Unlike many five-year-old boys who sit around watching television and wishing that they were their favourite super hero ? John Stephens ? now Legend ? watched Michael Jackson and others and figured that he could do the same.

As a little boy at maybe five or six ? a decision was made for him to be and to become a musical legend in his time and now some 20 years later, he is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, musician, arranger and producer. His juvenile dreams have come through ? they have come true.

On his success he said: ?It is just great and it is wonderful ? I don?t know what else to say.

?It is very fulfilling and rewarding and to go through all of this and having dreams and worked on them for so long and then watching them come together is beautiful.?

His album, ?Get Lifted? incorporates the sensual sounds of Marvin Gaye and the sincerity of Stevie Wonder, but it also merges with the directness of Snoop Dogg and the wit of Kanye West.

When asked about his feelings or better yet the obvious emotions in his music he said: ?I guess I am just an old soul.

?I was bought up on soul music and I am inspired and am very influenced by it.?

Mr. Legend developed his ear through playing and singing gospel music in church, at home, in private lessons and under the instruction of his grandmother.

?I started singing in the church choir when I was six,? he said, ?And I was playing for the church choir by the time I was nine. I took private lessons and I also learned in church.

?I don?t know if I ever ?decided?, it has always been a part of me since I was four years old and I have always been involved in music, so it was never a decision that I had to make ? it was more my lifestyle.

?I am always writing, always singing and always thinking about music.?

Mr. Legend, who hails from Springfield, Ohio, also lived in Philadelphia where he went to college and has lived in New York since then, said he changed his surname to Legend after he was dubbed ?a legend? by a friend from Chicago who thought he sounded so much like an old-school artist.

He said: ?A few years ago a few friends started calling me Legend as a nickname.

?It was a joke at first, but then it stuck because my friends started calling me that around other people and they started to know me as that and it really caught on so much that more people were calling me Legend than my real name.?

At that point he considered using it as his stage name for a few reasons.

?I knew it sounded a little presumptuous, but I figured it would definitely make me stand out from the pack.

?I figured it would make people pay attention to me and once I had their attention, I hoped to make them fall in love with my music.

?By being ?John Legend,? I put some pressure on myself, but I?m gonna try to live up to it and I hope my music will live up to it.?

His love for old-school and R&B came from listening to greats coming out of the Motown and the late 20th and early 21st Century musical eras.

?It was ummm... it was old gospel records and Aretha Franklin, specifically Stevie Wonder, Warren Jay and The Temptations,? he said, ?So yeah, that is the kind of stuff that I love as well as R&B and Hip Hop, but it is mostly the old school songs.?

Mr. Legend takes being called an R&B crooner as a compliment.

?Well, I think Marvin Gaye was a crooner, so I take it in that regard,? he said.

?I think of it kind of like that. I have a more subtle style than a lot of them and a lot of singers today use runs and rifts and are flashy, but my style is more subtle.?

As well as being subtle his genre of music also crosses cultures, gender and age, but when asked was that his goal, he said, ?Well, my aim was just to make good music that everyone would love listening to.

?I wasn?t specifically gearing my music toward older people, but I figured that if they liked older music then they might like what I am doing. I just make it in a way that I feel I can be proud of and go from there.?

Many of the songs on the Get Lifted album were songs that he wrote and collaborated on with producer Kanye West.

?They were songs that I had written over the years and I pulled together the best songs that I could,? said the 26-year-old performer.

?They are partly based on parts of my life and just experiences from life and the stories of life that I have learned from ? in the most witty and relate-able way that I could.?

He has collaborated with all sorts of top singers, but who was his favourite?

Thinking out loud he said: ?Ahhh.. well I would have to say Kanye West because I have worked together with him on countless records and we have been on tour together.

?I have been a huge fan of Lauryn Hill for a long, long time, not from direct personal interaction, but more so from enjoying her records. She is a great, great song writer, rapper and singer.

?Through a friend of hers I went to the studio when Lauryn was working on that record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and I sang a couple of original songs for her and ended up playing piano on Everything is Everything. I?m still very proud that that was the first major record I was on.?

At the John Legend concert the audience will hear songs like Ordinary People, which was one of the last tracks he worked on for the album last summer.

Mr. Legend justly describes the piece as ?a composite of experiences?.

?It?s about love, not as a fantasy or fairytale, but as it really goes down between two people,? he said.

Another piece is Used To Love U, which was co-written and produced with Mr. West. This one has ?a bangin? hip-hop beat with a little Latin flavour, and a soulful melody and vocal arrangement; it?s a cool mix and fusion of different musical influences?.

While Live It Up is a personal testimony about how hard work and paying dues really does pay off. Other tunes will include She Don?t Have To Know, which the artist aptly describes as a ?guy song?, Let?s Get Lifted, and So High to name a few.

?A lot of traditional R&B doesn?t have that wit and swagger that you find in hip-hop, and that?s what I wanted to include in my music,? said the artist.

Sasha Allen, one of Mr. Legend?s singers has family in Bermuda, so it makes coming here like coming home.

?Yeah, I am very much looking forward to coming to Bermuda ? it?s my first time,? he said, ?And we are going to stay an extra day and night and I am excited to come and hang out in the beautiful place and I hope hope we can fill it up.

?The tour is absolutely great, and it is going very, very well.

?From there we go to Boston and then we keep going throughout the States until the end of August and then we go to Europe for three weeks and then we chill out.

?After that we go to Australia and New Zealand at the end of September and do a couple of gigs and then we come back to the States and we will do a tour with Kanye West.?

Tickets, which are $40, are available at the Bermuda Book Store and on www.boxoffice.bm. Show time is at 8 p.m.

?The open audition will take place on July 9, in the Bermuda College, Blue Room, New Hall N113 at 9 a.m.

For more information about the audition 295-4558 or email MoongateTicketsaol.com.