[Update: The R&B singer R. Kelly was charged on Friday in Chicago with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, according to news reports citing court records.]

In January, John Legend drew widespread praise as the most prominent musician to speak out against R. Kelly’s decades of sexual-assault allegations in Lifetime’s much discussed “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary. The reaction was further proof that even aside from his own music, the 40-year-old has a knack for getting people to look squarely at what matters. It’s an odd gift, given Legend’s air of imperturbability, and one often expressed in more playful ways, as anyone who follows his wife Chrissy Teigen’s frequently viral social media accounts knows. But now Legend’s calm-in-the-storm charisma can be both seen and heard in the video for his new single, “Preach,” a gospel-influenced cry against political inaction. In it the singer appears as a pastor at a protest rally. Amid the smoke and riot gear, it’s Legend’s righteous quietude that lingers in the mind. Which is not an accident. “Part of what I’ve been able to do,” Legend says, “is put a sympathetic face on some radical actions.”

You’ve said, in previous interviews, that people in the arts are probably more inclined toward empathy than others. How do you square that belief with how so many in the entertainment world, for so long, implicitly condoned the behavior that people like R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein have been accused of?1 Even though I think artists are more geared to be empathetic, people ignore evil behavior when it comes with success and power and quality art — R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein are responsible for some exceptional art. People were willing to look the other way until it really smacked them in the face.

Have you ever made a moral decision to not work with someone? I was offered songs by R. Kelly! Within the last 18 months, someone said R. Kelly had a good song for me. I said no.

Why do you think the music industry hasn’t had the same degree of #MeToo reckoning that the film business has? It’s not less misogynistic. Clearly not. But if you look at who’s gotten in trouble in the movie business, it’s been Harvey, and his victims were famous; they’re the perfect victims as far as publicity goes. Whereas in the music business, a lot of this might have happened on the road with fairly anonymous people as victims. A girl on tour in Oklahoma City is not the same as Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s an imbalance.

In the case of R. Kelly, did his targeting of young black women complicate things? Jim DeRogatis2 said, years ago, that reporting on R. Kelly showed him that nobody matters less in society than young black women. When victims don’t have status, their victimhood often isn’t as valuable as other people’s. And in R. Kelly’s situation, that was combined with a reflex in the black community to rally around our men, who are often the subject of unfair prosecution. But we’ve got to reconsider that dynamic when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse, because some of the perpetrators are going to look like us.

I was just looking at your Twitter mentions, and people were calling you hypocritical for speaking out against R. Kelly while also having participated in a tribute to Elvis Presley, who had a relationship with a 14-year-old. Is there any validity to that line of argument? There’s people saying, “Here’s a white guy who did this, and you weren’t as hard on him as you were on R. Kelly.” People think they’re being pro-black by saying that, but they’re not. What they’re really saying is that they want their guy to be free at the expense of these black girls they don’t care about. I’m not the morality police, and I’ve had my own failings, but at some point you’ve got to draw a line. I feel like a reasonable line would be not working with R. Kelly.

What’s a personal failing of yours? We’ve all been dishonest. We’ve all been unfair. We’ve all taken advantage of the fact that we’re powerful.

Last year you exchanged some texts with Kanye West, which he then posted online, criticizing his support of President Trump.3 You told him that he had the power to change people’s minds in favor of the president, which is a position you’re obviously against. But whose mind do you think is being changed about Donald Trump by Kanye West? Who is that person? Honestly, after I said it, I was like, “I’m not sure Kanye’s going to change many minds.” I think it’s more that he might make a certain person feel prouder about having the pro-Trump opinion.

Do you and Kanye often have discussions about these things? We’ve had them. I’ve given my analysis of why Kanye thinks the way he does about Trump: He sees himself in him.

Has that analysis been confirmed by Kanye? Yes, through the conversations we’ve had. He sees that underdog attitude; he sees the simple marketing message, and he’s excited by it. There’s a lot they have in common, attitude-wise. Kanye has openly said he wants to run for president.

Do you ever think it’s provocation for its own sake with him? Kanye’s thinking about everything he does, but I don’t think he’s secretly like, “I’m just doing this so people will talk about me.” I think he’s being honest.

“Preach” is a protest song. What’s the political function of a song like that in 2019? It’s supposed to do what art does: make people think and feel. I don’t look at it like, “I want this to lead specifically to that.” There’s got to be a lot more than a song to lead to someone’s doing something.

So what compelled “Preach”? It was brought to me by some other writers, Greg Kurstin and Sarah Aarons, and I ended up kind of rewriting it from my own perspective. I was thinking of people like Emma González and the kids down in Parkland. We go through this ritual where politicians act like all they can do is hope and pray that a school shooting won’t happen again. I wanted to make a statement against that kind of passivity.

It’s one thing for someone like Emma González, who has experienced a traumatic event, to be moved to political activism, but what gives you hope that enough people who haven’t had firsthand experience won’t stay complacent? I think back to what all of us supporters did last year with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.4 For decades, people with felonies on their records were not able to vote, and the threshold for passing that bill was, like, 60 percent. And it happened! So what gives me hope is that I’ve been involved in campaigns that worked. I’ve seen it.

To what extent can art make people more empathetic? Is there an album you can point to and say it changed your thinking about a specific subject? I can’t say that about an album. I have seen the power of film to inspire action. And news coverage — the fact that cameras show up. Black Lives Matter would not have happened without cellphone footage. That’s not the same as creating a film, but visual media have spurred people to action.

What’s an example of a film that spurred you to action? That’s a good question. Books definitely have done that. “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander got me excited about mass incarceration. I wouldn’t have started FreeAmerica5 unless I’d read that book.

Legend performing in front of a migrant detention center in Arizona in 2016. Ricardo Arduengo/Associated Press

Have you gotten any pushback about your move, over the last few years, away from strictly personal songwriting and toward more politically informed music? Well, my biggest hit was “All of Me” in 2014, and I haven’t had as big a hit since. But I probably never was going to. So it’s hard for me to say that being more open in public about my politics and what I feel needs to change has had a financial effect, because we — everyone — sell fewer units now. Clearly people know that I’m on the left: Breitbart and some of these conservative outlets like to talk about me. I’m sure there are Americans that think, John Legend is a political enemy. But those people probably weren’t buying my music anyway.

Aside from declining sales, what changes have you seen in the music business? I’m still old school in the sense that I think about an album as a body of work that is supposed to endure as a body of work. So maybe I’m out of pace with where the fans are, but it’s hard for me to deprogram and put out a random song here and there.

What about as a listener? What changes have you heard? I’ll listen to successful albums that have great beats but very little when it comes to hooks. I don’t understand what would make you not want a hook. If there’s nothing to hook you — I don’t know.

What are the fundamental differences in the way musicians like yourself, working in the R & B tradition, make music versus the way it was happening in, say, 1975? Up through the ’80s, people were playing actual instruments. The musicianship wasn’t as programmed as it is now. Since the blurring of the lines between hip-hop and R & B, the arrangement and production for R & B have taken on a lot of the characteristics of hip-hop. I think we’ve lost some of the musicality that we used to have in R & B.

Are you comfortable with that shift? I’ve had fun working with hip-hop producers who use samples and drum machines. You can make great music that way, but sometimes you lose something when it’s just that. Even when I’ve worked with hip-hop producers, I would often layer live instruments on top of samples. I was uncomfortable feeling like the sound was all synthetic. I appreciate a lot of current music but some of it I’m like, “I will never understand why this is successful.” But I thought that way in the ’90s too. When I was a teenager, there was plenty on the radio where I thought, “This is crap.”

Do you ever feel a conflict between being so embraced by an industry — you’ve got the EGOT6 — that plays a part in the systems that you also criticize politically? One of my friends texted me the other day because I had retweeted someone who was talking about the problem of cash bail; that’s an issue I’ve donated a lot of money to. My friend was basically like, “This is pretty radical what you’re saying.” But I don’t believe that what I think is radical. We’re the most incarcerated country in the world. That should be considered radical. Police are allowed to shoot unarmed black men in the street. That’s radical. Obviously I’m participating in capitalism. I do sponsorship deals with major corporations. I’m not radical in some ways, but remedies for mass incarceration shouldn’t be considered crazy. It should be considered crazy that we have mass incarceration in the first place.

Common and John Legend accept the Best Original Song Award for “Glory” from “Selma” during the 87th Annual Academy Awards in 2015. Kevin Winter/Getty Images

So you don’t feel any conflict between your political beliefs and your work? There is a natural tension, and I don’t think it’s meaningless. I just try to make a case for my political beliefs in a way that should make sense. But I was thinking about the central question you asked me at the beginning, whether socially conscious music changes behavior. I don’t think it changes a person’s point of view from one thing to another, but it can galvanize people already on your side. “Glory” put me on the Oscar stage,7 where I could talk about mass incarceration with millions of people watching. It wasn’t the only thing, but I think my getting involved in that conversation helped move it a bit to the left.

How has your relationship with someone like Chrissy, who’s so popular and beloved on social media, altered the trajectory of your career? It’s changed it a lot. “All of Me” wouldn’t have existed without our relationship and that song put me on a higher career plane. Then there are people who enjoy our relationship,8 and that has a halo effect on everything we do. Brands buy into it. A lot of deals that we end up doing are done with the knowledge that our profile is raised because we’re together.

What’s your hunch about why the public is so interested in you two? Part of it’s because Chrissy is who she is. She’s authentic. No matter who she would’ve been with, she would be funny, she would be interesting and she would be compelling to follow. But her being married to someone who’s also famous and whose biggest song is about her heightened our profile. It’s like my music set a precedent for us being more known, and then once people actually paid attention to her on social media ——

Teigen and Legend on a talk show in January. Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU, via Getty Images

That was the rocket fuel. Yeah, and people get the sense she’s one of them. She gets to be at the Oscars and these rarefied spaces as their proxy. And she doesn’t take it too seriously. She shows more quirks online than most people. Through our interaction online, my fans get to see a fun side of me that may not come out in my music. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably engage more conservatively online.

You’ve been a professional musician since the early 2000s. But is it right that when you were younger, you briefly worked as a management consultant? Not briefly. It was three years. That was my first job. I went to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with good grades. A lot of my friends were applying to management-consulting firms and getting the best salaries coming out of school. So I thought maybe I should check it out.

Please tell me you used the name John Legend as a business consultant. I did not. My name is John Roger Stephens. John Legend is a stage name. I do own the trademark, though. Back then I knew I wanted to do music, but I also knew music might not pay my rent. I figured I could work during the day as a management consultant and do music at night. So I applied to both McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group, the two biggest firms, and got hired at BCG. They offered me $50,000 a year and a signing bonus. My dad never made that much in a year, ever.

Your dad was a tailor, right? His full-time job was as a factory worker. He and my mom would do alterations for our neighbors and friends to supplement their income whenever there’d be a plant shutdown or he got laid off.

Did anything you learned as a consultant apply to your music career? It can’t hurt to understand how to deal with executives. I developed that acumen for three years. After that point I had to decide whether to go to business school in order to be able to continue in consulting. I was like, Nah, I’ve got to focus on music. I haven’t looked back.