Rock Daily recently caught up with John Legend, who had just returned from the Tanzanian island Zanzibar, where he shot the video for “Show Me,” the latest single from last year’s Once Again. The Grammy winner is in the very early stages of plotting his next LP, but he’s already done a track with — you guessed it — Will.i.am. Legend says he’s demoed five songs so far, and plans to finish the album in early ‘08 for a potential summer ‘08 release. “It sounds different than anything else I’ve done before,” he says. “There’s some piano, there’s some guitar. It’s more guitar-driven than piano-driven so far, but that’s because I’m writing with a couple guitarists.”

“The only song that’s kind of similar to a past song on this new project so far is a song that’s kind of in the same vein as ‘Show Me,’ vocally, and I love that song, so I was definitely not avoiding going back to
that spot again,” he reveals, expanding on his creative process. “When I write, I don’t really have a goal that day, I always just go in and say, ‘We’ll see what comes.’ I don’t have any rules about it other than that I have to love it. We’ll see.” In addition to the ever-present Will.i.am, Legend has worked with a new British songwriter named Think, and some lesser-known writers, but noted that some big-name collaborationsn are not out of the question: “I’ll bring in some of the big guns later.”