When John Legend arrived at Penn, he earned a degree in English, focusing on African-American literature. He also couldn't tuck the music side of him safely away and eventually became president and musical director of the school's jazz a capella group, Counterparts, noted Marie Claire. Even after graduating, Legend pursued a career that was decidedly unmusical and got a job working at Boston Consulting Group in Massachusetts, according to Biography. But that draw to music was still there, which led him to playing in nightclubs on the side — and also led him to a new name.
That's when Legend met another musician who would go on to become a modern music icon — Kanye West. As the artist formerly known as John Stephens told Jimmy Fallon: "Well, it was a nickname that some friends started calling me in the studio, just guys that I was collaborating with" Legend said. "The first guy to call me that was J. Ivy. He's a spoken word artist from Chicago. I met him through Kanye [West]. We were all in the studio together. He just started calling me 'The Legend' because he thought I sounded like one of our old school soul legends. And it just caught on with our little group of friends, and then they were like, 'We should call you John Legend.' And it just really was in our little circle," until, that is, West referred to him as "John Legend" on a mixtape — and the rest is history.
