“An Evening of Songs & Stories” lands at NJPAC with John Legend at the center, moving between Hip-Hop/R&B performance and spoken narration. The format treats the concert hall like a listening room, where songs are framed by personal context and the mechanics of how they were made. For New York–area audiences, it reads as part of the region’s long tradition of artist-led storytelling onstage, from theaters to benefit nights. The most telling choice is the pacing: it asks for attention, not spectacle.