PHILADELPHIA — John Legend’s Philadelphia story began at 16, when the precocious student came to the big city for his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania.

“There were all kinds of reasons why I felt like I didn’t belong,” Legend said this week, remembering those days. He called in from Wilmington, N.C., where he was on a stop on the “Get Lifted — 20th Anniversary Tour,” which comes to the Ocean Resort in Atlantic City on Saturday and the Met Philly on Wednesday.

The son of a factory worker and drummer father and seamstress and choir director mother, who are the subject of his 2005 hit “Ordinary People,” Legend — then known as John Stephens — had skipped two grades growing up in Springfield, Ill.

“I was shy, and it was different coming from a small town from the Midwest, bein

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