This Friday, John Legend is releasing his 6th proper album Bigger Love and also doing a Verzuz song battle on Instagram with Alicia Keys. I'm sure he'll be leaning on his hits for that, but he's got a pretty nice catalog of albums at this point that I wanted to dig into a little bit. 

John Legend deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Live It Up featuring Miri Ben-Ari

2. Alright

3. Prelude

4. Let's Get Lifted

5. I Can Change featuring Snoop Dogg

6. Show Me

7. Again

8. Slow Dance

9. I Love, You Love

10. Quickly featuring Brandy

11. Take Me Away

12. Wholy Holy with The Roots

13. I Can't Write Left Handed with The Roots

14. Tomorrow

15. The Beginning...

16. Overload featuring Miguel

17. Right By You (For Luna)

18. No Place Like Home

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from Get Lifted (2004)

Tracks 6, 7 and 8 from Once Again (2006)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Evolver (2008)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Wake Up! with The Roots (2010)
Tracks 14 and 15 from Love In The Future (2013)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Darkness And Light (2016)
Track 18 from A Legendary Christmas (2018)

I remember hearing John Legend's voice for the first time on Kanye West's Get Well Soon mixtape, and Kanye's next mixtape I'm Good featured what would become Legend's first solo hit, "Used To Love U," and it was cool to see how fast his career took off with Get Lifted. But Once Again was the album that really showed me John Legend's range, it really felt to me like where a lot of neo-soul artists kind of stick to a narrow canon of classic R&B, Legend makes music more in the spirit of '70s R&B where there was a lot of nods to rock and singer-songwriter pop in the writing and song selection and instrumentation. 

On "Show Me," co-written by Raphael Saadiq, which got a video but wasn't really a hit single or anything, Legend does an incredible job of paying homage to Jeff Buckley with his vocal performance, and "Slow Dance" has a gorgeous Jimi Hendrix guitar sample. The next album, Evolver, had a more modern sound, but even that album made great use of a Dire Straits sample on "I Love, You Love." I saw him live in Baltimore when he toured for Evolver with Saadiq and he did a cool medley of that song with a couple Prince songs. 

I didn't check out Wake Up! back when it was released almost a decade ago, but that album holds up pretty well, as a collection of protest songs and socially conscious soul from the '60s and '70s that continues to feel relevant in our lifetime. The epic 11-minute update of "I Can't Write Left Handed," a song Bill Withers wrote at the end of the Vietnam War, is especially impressive. 

On his last couple albums, Legend continued to broaden the range of musicians that guest on or co-write songs with him in some interesting directions. Love In The Future features collaborations with Joe Jonas, Dan Wilson of Semisonic, and Kimbra. Hit-Boy and Kanye chop a sample of "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson on "The Beginning..." and Q-Tip chops a sample of Dr. John on "Tomorrow." And Darkness And Light features collaborations with Will Oldham, Matt Sweeney of Chavez, and Mike Hadreas a.k.a. Perfume Genius. 

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