Prof. SP8

Michael Jordan was dancing on the team bus to an album that wouldn't come out for another four months, and the guy who sang it had no idea that footage existed until 22 years later. It's June 3, 1998, six hours before Game 1 of the Finals in Salt Lake City. Somebody on the bus asks MJ what he's listening to, and he says Kenny Lattimore, brand new, not even out yet, he's a friend of mine. He wasn't making that up. The album was From the Soul of Man and it didn't drop until that October. Columbia was only sending early copies to a handful of music people who were helping pick the singles, and Lattimore went to his label and told them Michael Jordan had to be on that list too. The two of them go back to 1996. MJ was launching a cologne and wanted Lattimore's song "Never Too Busy" in the commercial. The publishers got into a fight over money, the deal fell through, and Kenny said he was devastated. MJ basically just kept promoting him anyway. Charles Barkley told Lattimore years later that Mike was going around the league telling guys they needed his CD. When Nike launched the Jordan Brand in New York in September '97, MJ had Lattimore perform, and before the guests came in he had security hold the door so Kenny could sing him and Ahmad Rashad an album cut, track 5 off his first record. And funny enough, the Bulls lost that night. 88-85 in overtime, MJ had 33. They won four of the next five and he closed the whole thing out in that same arena with the last shot of his Bulls career. Kenny didn't see any of this until 2020, when ESPN called asking to clear his song "Days Like This" for The Last Dance. He sat at home and watched the episode live like the rest of us, and he says his phone started blowing up within seconds of MJ saying his name. His sales took off from a clip that was older than some of the people sharing it. His guess on why MJ was warming up to R&B before a Finals game is that Mike was already so wired going into games that he needed something smooth to settle him down. One CD he mailed in 1998 ended up being the best marketing of his career.