Legion The Legend

LEGION THE LEGEND Biography By: Leon Bailey Coming from Kansas City, Missouri, a city that has a tendency to blend the Oakland, Midwest and Southern sound together and also has yet to break into mainstream Hip-Hop can be hard for an artist who has the dream of becoming a rap star. Legion The Legend; a 21-year-old native of the city describes the city as “very hard” to break through, but is confident that he can break that and make a dent in the Hip-Hop game. “After I get signed I plan on slowly, but surely bringing unity to the city instead of bringing everybody out. I figure if I bring more positive promotion here and more positive influence then that’s helping everyone who’s willing to do it,” says Legion with assurance. His two older brothers who played music rightfully inspired the youngest of four kids, Legion. In high school, he began battling students with every possible opportunity and gained a lot of praise from his peers. He never took rap as anything more than a hobby until after he graduated. He began to write more and work with local DJ’s which helped him get his name out more. The early hard work led to him opening up in different cities for D4L, Crime Mob, and other underground artists. A few years ago, Legion was performing at a club for a King Of The Mic (open mic) event. One of the judges for the event was D-Rocc from Trackboyz Music (Nelly’s “Air Force Ones” and J-Kwon’s “Tipsy”). Legion did not win the contest, but D-Rocc liked what he saw from him. D-Rocc felt that if Legion had won the contest that he would have an ego problem and not work hard to become a better artist. Roughly two years later, D-Rocc reached out to Legion to see if he was still rapping. Legion sent D-Rocc some records and the quality of the music blew him away. Soon after hearing those records, he became Legion’s manager. Legion incorporates many metaphors into his lyrics and uses an aggressive flow, but Legion considers himself a complete package artist and feels like he has a heavy arsenal of different styles. “I can go hard; I can go commercial, hop on an R&B track, go fast or slow. Just a variety of ways that I can put it down.” He does feel honored to receive comparisons to them because he finds Ludacris to be one of his influences along with Jay-Z, T.I., Lil Wayne, Common, Kanye West, Jada Kiss, Fabolous, and Lupe Fiasco. Knowing that Hip-Hop isn’t selling like it was five years ago Legion recognizes that reaching out to people via performance is a very important aspect for him to if he wants to be a success in the climate that many people are considering as a recession. “When they see you perform they get to see the whole package without listening to the whole album. They can tell with the passion that you put behind your performance to let you know what’s gonna be behind that CD.” Currently, Legion is working on a full-length album and has over 200 tracks recorded. Even though he is from a city that blends others styles into one, Legion feels as if he can use his city’s diversity, his blend of styles and give it to the world all in one and be the first Kansas City artist to receive major recognition.