John Legend inspired by Obama

Kanye West's discovery John Legend is back with a new offering in the form of Wake up! an album collaboration with The Roots.

The singer has told Newsbeat how he was inspired by the recent historical Presidential election campaign in the US in 2008.

"I wanted to do something different to capture the moment"

He says working with The Roots was an obvious choice.

Kanye and Estelle

"Why not The Roots, they are a great band one of the best in the business as far as I'm concerned.

''It was an idea that me and my manager came up with to try and capture the moment in America in 2008 with what was happening with Obama, that's when we started working on it.

We had a massive historical election that year everyone was engaged in what was going on politically and we thought it would be interesting to do something musically to capture that moment."

John will be taking to the stage with The Roots to perform tracks from the new album. He's sampled singles from music greats such as Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway plus others.

He's back in London on the 27th of November with The Roots at the Hammersmith Apollo and has hinted that his label mates Kanye West and Estelle might even show up.

"We'll see, who's in town and who's able to come. It's hard to fly people out to England unless there already going to be here for some other reason. But The Roots and I will be putting on a great show.

John Legend also has his eyes on Hollywood and told Newsbeat he'd like to perfect the art of acting after appearing in a number of show's including the smash hit US sit-com Curb Your Enthusiasm.

"It's been fun so far, and I'd like to really work on it and try to get better at it and spend some more time on acting and maybe do some more films. But at the moment I'm focused on music''.

And Wake Up! Is released on October the 18th.