I

just want to hear a little bit about kind of your lived experience as a kid who clearly came with gifts. Because I think that gifted kids get this. And I know that we don't use gifted kids anymore as the way we say it because it's in and of itself could put a lot of like the pressure that it should just appear. But tell me what that was like. Well,

I was homeschooled a lot of my youth. So prior to eighth grade, I only spent two years in any organized school. And other than that, I was taught at home by my mother. And I was really precocious. I loved to read. I loved math. I was very independent. I would just read anything I wanted and, and practice math with work, workbooks and flashcards. I was the spelling bee champion in my city when I was in third grade and, or fourth grade. And I was, you know, my nickname was Doogie Houser when I got to high school, because by the time I got to high school, my mother had them test me each time I went back to organized school and they would advance me a grade beyond my peers twice. So when I first went to organized school, it was a little Christian school in my hometown and I was supposed to go to first grade, but I got advanced to second grade. And then the next time I went back to organized school, I was going to be heading into seventh grade and they decided to test me again and put me in eighth grade. So by eighth grade, only 11 years old, two years younger than all of my peers and, you know, not going through puberty when they were already there and all those things. So I was really like socially pretty awkward and behind. And, you know, during those years, two years is a lot of time in a child's development. And, you know, I'm 45 now. So the difference between me and a 47 year old is not significant, but the difference between an 11 year old and a 13 year old is quite significant. So yeah, it was quite a thing for me to integrate into any school environment because I was such a precocious kind of nerdy kid, but also pretty shy and socially awkward. And I had spent a lot of time away from other kids and only around my siblings. I had three siblings and still do. So it was really interesting. But music was always my way of like feeling more connected to people and introducing myself to people because I knew that I had that and I could sing and play. And if people saw me on stage, it kind of broke the ice with anything else and brought me out of my shell.

So were you like when you had kids, do you think about that with them? Like, how do I, obviously that was the experience that you had. You can't even know what it would have been if you had, you know, not been 11 and hanging out with eighth graders and all that stuff. But do you think about like the balance between the precocious, the precociousness and making sure that you get all of the intellectual and artistic advancement that you're capable of and also like the social connection? Yeah,

I honestly, I would side with not wanting to skip my kids ahead. And, you know, it worked out just fine for me. But I think there's enough social reasons not to do it that I don't see the point. There's no rush, you know, in getting them through high school. Like there's no rush to get them to college at 16.

So you went to college at 16?

Yeah, I did. I

could dig in for so long. Wow, that's incredible. Just like what that must have been like.

It was so different. And you know, I'm going to Penn. So I'm at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. From Ohio. Yeah. I'm from a city of 70,000 and pretty sheltered. I'd never even flown prior to visiting Penn. So the first time I ever got on a plane, Penn paid for me to come to a minority scholars weekend that they had in Philadelphia in my senior year in high school. And that was my first time ever getting on an airplane. So I was a pretty sheltered, shy, small town kid from a blue collar family. And then you get the pen and everyone's usually from a big city or a suburb. A lot of the kids are from the Northeast, you know, from areas around New York and around Philadelphia. And a lot of them went to expensive private schools and have a lot of money. And, and I was just not any of those things.

then did you dive right into music like were you did people know like oh this guy is so like you

want to get the pen or at least at the time when I got there you know 29 years ago they had a performing arts showcase kind of thing where for

freshmen yeah

for freshmen it was basically a recruiting device for all the groups because they, they wanted you to see what they did and then people would audition to become a part of it. And so I decided to audition for some acapella groups. I got into a few and joined a group called counterparts. It was a co-ed. We did like jazz and pop and soul. And my

college boyfriend was a Dartmouth heir. Okay.

Yeah. So we would go to all those different kind of Ivy league cross pollinating acapella concerts. And that really became like a core part of my friend group throughout college. So music really like was a way of like creating friendships for me and a lot of my experiences at Penn revolved around that. my roommates ended up being just other guys that lived around me in the quad. And we were kind of like a diverse, interesting group. A lot of us were into the arts and music. A lot of us were into hip hop. And, and so I ended up collaborating musically with a bunch of my roommates. One of them was a DJ who became a producer and who happened to be cousins with Kanye West. And so I met Kanye when we all moved to New York through his cousin, who was my roommate, when we were both unknown young artists. And so that all happened through my pin connection and just having a tribe of friends around me who were creative and into music. Wow.

I like can't even... that's amazing. And they didn't feel like, oh, he's 16. They were like, Oh, I

lied. I lied when I got the pen. You know how you can kind of reinvent yourself when you go to college because no one knows you. So I only lied by one year, but I felt like if I was only one year younger than everyone, it just wouldn't feel like I was a freak as opposed to two. So I just told everyone I was 17 instead of 16 when I got there. So no one thought of me as like super weird. It was enough for me to be from a small town and not have money. And so I figured like being 16 was just too many things. I just said 17. When

you turned 21, but you were really only 20, were people like, how'd you have ID?

My same roommate who introduced me to Kanye had a friend whose ID he had a hold of. It was a real ID. And he didn't look that much like me, but he looked enough like me that if the bartender, I mean, if the bouncer is like being generous, he would let me in. And it was a real ID. So it wasn't fake. It was just not me. So I just started using that around like 19 years old. And then I didn't become 21 until I was like a working management consultant in Boston. Oh

my God. Where were you consulting in Boston?

I was at BCG, Boston Consulting Group. I did one year in Boston and two years in New York.

That is so bananas. You just would never think that somebody who went into consulting was like going to become John Legend. You

never know. You never know.