Wake Up!

John Legend is a six-time Grammy winner whose three albums have all hit Number One on the Billboard R&B charts, and who has collaborated with such artists as Kanye West, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and the Black Eyed Peas. He is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter known for his incredibly smooth & soulful R&B sound. The Roots – currently visible nightly as the stupendously versatile house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon – have released nine acclaimed studio albums (including the recent How I Got Over) and redefined the relationship between live instruments and hip-hop.

Wake Up! features soulful music from the ‘60s and ‘70s all with an underlying theme of awareness, engagement and consciousness – effectively telling listeners to Wake Up! The resulting album features eleven profoundly evocative songs infused with sounds of gospel, rock and reggae inflections with hip-hop influences. The album is highlighted by familiar tracks like “Wholly Holy” by Marvin Gaye and “Little Ghetto Boy” by Donny Hathaway mixed with the more obscure selections of Baby Huey and the Babysitters’ “Hard Times,” and “Hang on in There” by Mike James Kirkland.