» www.twitter.com

» www.100blackmentriangle.org

» www.stevesimonpresents.com

» www.yoshis.com

» www.bbjazz.com

» www.947wave.com

» www.cnn.com

» newsroom.blogs.cnn.com

» www.yoshis.com

To document this journey and give the fans of Kenny Lattimore and The ASHÉ Foundation, the opportunity to experience this life changing expedition from the comfort of their own home, we will offer one U.S. fan an opportunity to chat live on the radio with Kenny Lattimore during his stay in South Africa.

If you are interested in the opportunity to chat live with Kenny Lattimore on the radio while he, along with The ASHÉ Foundation, changes the world two feet at a time in South Africa, in 100 words or less please describe “Why you deserve the chance to talk with Kenny Lattimore.”

There is a $5 donation to Shoes for Africa. The donation and story must be submitted through The ASHÉ Foundation’s website at www.theashefoundation.org by noon PST on August 9th.

Winners will be notified by the evening of August 9th. The 1st prize winner will chat live with Kenny Lattimore on the radio on or before August 11th. The winner will also receive a special autographed photo of Kenny in South Africa, an autographed copy of his latest Timeless CD and have their story posted to Kenny Lattimore’s and The ASHÉ Foundation’s website and Facebook Fan Page. The 2nd and 3rd prize winners will receive a Kenny Lattimore autographed photo, his latest Timeless CD and have their story posted to Kenny Lattimore’s and The ASHÉ Foundation’s website and Facebook Fan Page.

Thank you for entering and good luck!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO INCLUDING RULES AND DISCLAIMERS

CLICK HERE to view the TV interview!

Slightly less than one-and-a-half million people live in Philadelphia, according to estimates by the U.S. Census. Around 220,000 people call Orlando, "home." Even New Orleans, a city that lost a lot of its residents following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, now hosts 300,000 people.

It makes sense that a couple of award-winning recording artists would choose those cities as stops on their latest concert tour.

The question is why would acclaimed singers Deborah Cox and Kenny Lattimore choose Savannah, a city with approximately 130,000 people, as not only a stop on the tour, but as the kick off city for the tour?

"You can't beat the southern hospitality," said Lattimore with a smile during an interview with WJCL's Jessica Kiss.

Lattimore and multi-platinum selling recording artist Deborah Cox have been in Savannah for a few days rehearsing for their first concert under the “A Timeless Promise” tour.

"We're really excited to see the exchange with the audience of Savannah," said Cox.

Regardless of the size of the town Lattimore and Cox have chosen for their tour, each venue will be "intimate," according to the two. For instance, the Trustees Theater on Broughton Street in Savannah seats 1,100 people therefore no audience member should feel too removed from the action on stage, regardless of his or her seat.

Tomorrow's (Saturday, July 11, 2009) show begins at 8:00 p.m. The cost for most of the seating is $20/person. There are V.I.P. tickets available for $75/person which include a pre-show VIP reception at the Red Gallery at 6:00 p.m. and seating within the first six rows.

The concert event is hosted by Michael and Judy Mauldin and proceeds from the concert and VIP reception will provide scholarship money to Savannah College of Art and Design students.

First Fridays along with Power 102.9 & Old School 106.7fm presents the 3rd Annual "All White Affair" with Kenny Lattimore

CLICK HERE for more info

All White Fashion Show DJ AfroDesiac 1
AfterParty with Raj Smoove / Hosted by Hollywood & Big Herc

Friday, Jun 05, 2009 8:00 PM CDT (8:00 PM Doors) - Saturday, Jun 06, 2009 4:00 AM CDT
at The Foundry

HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. ? May 7, 2009 ? Sprint (NYSE: S) announced today Mercury recording artist Jessie James will sing “The Star Spangled Banner” for the 25th running of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race on May 16 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

James, 20, recently released her hit single “Wanted,” which she co-wrote with American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi, Mitch Allen and David Hodges. James also is known for the song "Blue Jeans," a song featured in the Touchstone film and Hollywood Records album soundtrack of the film “Confessions of a Shopaholic.” This petite powerhouse will release her debut album this summer, which she has been recording in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville.

“I am so excited to be a part of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race,” said James. “Singing the anthem is one of my favorite things to do. I have been singing the anthem for audiences since I was 9 years old, but this is definitely the biggest audience I have ever done it for! I am so flattered that Sprint and the NASCAR industry have given me this opportunity.”

Kenny Lattimore, a Verve recording artist, will sing “God Bless America” before the start of the Sprint Showdown, the last-chance qualifier for the main event.

The soulful Lattimore’s new album and Verve debut, Timeless, is a testament to the transcendent properties of classic songcraft, as well as a vehicle for the performing talents that have long made Lattimore one of the most popular vocalists in contemporary rhythm and blues. The 11 songs comprising Timeless cover a broad emotional palette, inspiring Lattimore to deliver some of the most sensitive and technically accomplished performances of his career.

Tune in at 7 p.m. (EDT) Saturday, May 16, to Speed for NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race XXV at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Sprint customers can watch the race on their Sprint phones via NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile. Tickets for the event start at $25 and are available at www.lowesmotorspeedway.com or by calling 800-455-FANS.

Sprint customers also are encouraged to tune in to NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM at 5:30 p.m. (EDT) May 16 for exclusive access to a typically private race weekend tradition, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver/crew chief meeting. This is a special one-time opportunity to listen to the full audio of the driver/crew chief meeting. The meeting audio will be available on NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile for repeat listening through the following week. Text NASCAR to 7777 to download NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM on capable Sprint phones (standard text + data rates apply).

ABOUT SPRINT NEXTEL
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving more than 49 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2009; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

While making a great song out of great song may not seem to be a difficult task, it is a daunting. After all, Lattimore’s new offering includes covers of songs of legendary artists such as Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, and Elton John just to name a few.

“When you have an original that is a classic, it becomes an arrangement project,” Lattimore said of taking on the challenge of the disc. “You go in and say, ‘What is too much? What do we change?’ In some ways, we want to do the songs the way they were and just have me sing, which is what a lot of the singers did back in the day. And then other songs you totally put a different spin on. Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what you want to do exactly that still going to give justice to the song so that you can tell the story – because it’s about their lyrics that makes these songs great.

Lattimore’s “Timeless” hit stores in September and led with his version of the Norman Connors/Michael Henderson '70s smash “You Are My Starship.” While that is a well known mega-hit across the board, the mixture of styles and artists covered on the disc purposely gives audiences the idea that perhaps it’s a disc of new material.

“We wanted to do songs that made the album feel like it was an original album,” Lattimore revealed. “When people hear the rest of the CD, depending on what genre you listen to or what your age or what you’ve been exposed to, we were hoping that you wouldn’t know all the songs. That tends to happen with most everybody. Even with some of the greatest music connoisseurs; we try to get you with at least one or two of these songs.”

One instance is the Al Green-penned “Something.”

“It’s so soulful and it’s so him, that I couldn’t do it like him,” Lattimore acknowledged. “That’s the one thing you have to know when you’re doing remakes – when you’re in over your head. If you’re going to do something different, that’s OK, too.”

Lattimore explained that the challenge of the disc lay not in simply redoing the songs, but in reinvigorating the lyrics.

“You’re interpreting,” he continued. “It was taking me outside of the normal Kenny and it stretched me – just a little bit. It’s very challenging because you don’t want to get lost in it where you’re just doing a cheap imitation of something, but you want to take from the spirit in which the original artist did it and give it back to the people with equal passion.”

In choosing the songs, Lattimore told EUR’s Lee Bailey that his initial step was to select songs that were in his vocal range. If he felt that the song flowed and was organic to his range, he moved on to the next step, choosing songs he liked, for instance the Otis Redding track “I Love You More Than Words Can Say.”

“I wanted to do songs that were in my vocal range and what I could do justice to in terms of my voice. [‘I Love You ...] happens to be one of my father’s favorite songs. I knew I was going to do Otis Redding. I was part of a celebration of his music last year in Macon, Georgia so I said I had to do an Otis Redding song because of the fact that he was so free as an artist. It was like a different experience every time he sang.”

The project originally started out as a celebration of the Memphis sound. The tribute began to grow, however, as Lattimore and the label’s Mitchell Cohen started bouncing around the names and tracks of other artists.

“We were going to do Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and kind of tribute the Memphis sound,” Lattimore said. “I don’t sound anything like them. I don’t have the edge of their raspiness and things like that, so we thought it would be interesting to hear me sing these.”

“Eventually, as we compiled the songs, -- all of a sudden there was Elton John, Jeff Buckley, and I knew I wanted to do something from Donny Hathaway, too,” he continued. “It sounded more interesting as we talked about it for us to do a selection of songs than a specific kind of tribute.”

Within a year of the concept, Lattimore was putting the finishing touches on the disc attributing the quick turnaround to the fact that he was doing songs that are already great. Such as the classic “Ain’t No Way” – a song made famous by the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin.

“Sometimes when you’re singing a woman’s song, it really creates the natural separation and difference so that you don’t feel as pressured. So I thought about that. I loved the melody, I loved the feel of the song – how ‘bout I just sing it,” he said of the challenge. “Strip it down, just play the keyboard, give me a little drum beat, give me the bass – that’s what makes these songs timeless.”

Stripping the songs down to the melody is what Lattimore said was the key to making the project sound great.

“It was about [going] in raw first and singing the song and if it sounds like it’s organic and it feels good then we’ll do the rest of the production over that.”

"In South Africa, I'm a superstar," Lattimore said proudly, as we spoke from his home in Southern California. "When I go there it's stadiums of people that want to hear me sing and they can sing any of the albums word for word. That is the greatest highlight of my career."

Lattimore wasn't being braggadocios either. He was simply talking about more than ever, it seems as though foreign countries, particularly those in Africa and Europe, have a greater appreciation for R&B singers than here in the U.S.

The 41-year-old soul crooner, who is best known for hits like 'For You,' 'Never Too Busy' and 'Weekend,' has released three albums since hitting the scene as a solo artist in 1995.

After being romantically linked to both actress Kellie S. Williams ('Family Matters') and talk show host Star Jones ('The View'), Lattimore wed R&B singer Chante Moore on New Year's Day in 2002.

As a couple they released two duets albums, 'Things That Lovers Do' (2003) and 'Covered/Uncovered' (2006).

Now the former member of the R&B group Maniquin has released a new solo offering, this time a collection of standards called 'Timeless' on the jazz label Verve Records, which is also home to Herbie Hancock, Ledisi, Diana Krall and Lizz Wright.

During our intimate conversation, Lattimore opened up about becoming an ordained minister; spoke about the balance between things secular and sacred; and shared why he and his wife have nixed the idea of doing a reality show.

What's it like when people come up to you and just start singing your songs?

It's a little nerve-racking at first because depending on the setting that you're in, it's extremely flattering and a big ego booster. But the first thing you start thinking is that you hope they sound really good. You don't want to be like 'thank you, thank you' and you really want to leave the people. Fortunately, when we were in the [recently] a couple of people sounded really good. It was the anniversary of one of the couples that we were with and we were serenaded and while we were at the table this guy just burst into song. We were sitting there like, 'whoa,' but he sounded really great.

Well you sound great singing these classic songs. How did this project come about?

It was interesting because conceptually we were going to do an album that was a tribute to Otis Redding and Sam Cooke and the music of the Memphis era. It evolved into this 'timeless' music because my A&R director, Mitchell Cohen at Verve was compiling his list of songs and then my manager Michael Mauldin and I started to compile our list of songs. My songs were like 'Giving Up' by Donny Hathaway. 'Undeniably,' by Terence Trent D'Arby, came from Chante and my father loved 'I Love You More Than Words Can Say' by Otis Redding and 'You Are My Starship' [by Norman Connors]. That stuff came from us, but Mitchell came up with the more interesting songs that took us out of the typical R&B genre. He asked me about 'Everybody Here Wants You' by Jeff Buckley and Elton John's 'Come Down in Time.' It was a lot of other songs on there by The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. We were just experimenting, so once my mind went there and I think all of us as a team went there, it made the project totally different. We said, 'lets do timeless music that is obscure and you're not expecting.' That means it will come off like a brand new CD to a lot of listeners depending on what genre they listen to or what era they lived through because I didn't know some of the songs that we did. I didn't know the Otis Redding song or The Beatles' song. I thought I had heard it before. I didn't know the Al Green song either. It almost became a fun trivia kind of thing. Conceptually, it just grew and it wasn't as clear that we were going to do an obscure remake as much as it evolved into that. We knew that if we did a remake, this is the way that we would have to do it.

The artwork on the CD cover has to be one of my all-time favorite CD covers ever.

Kwaku Alston, who is Oprah [Winfrey's] photographer, shot me and my son for 'Essence' magazine and has been a friend for years. The first time we shot together was back in 1998 when there was a men's magazine called 'Code.' He did a very interesting shoot with me at an airport out here in Los Angeles and he asked to do the shoot for my new album. I was shocked that he asked. He's friends with some folks at Verve and sent me a text message saying he heard I had a new CD coming out and that he would love to shoot the cover. I said absolutely! A lot of this is his vision with Hollis King who is one of the greatest art directors I've ever worked with and I've worked with some good ones. He is very passionate about what he does and made me feel like he was super passionate about my project across the board. He said, 'we're gonna shoot this thing.' We're actually on an old train and then we took the shots that look a little western and the ones outdoors in an area that looks like a swampland. With the CD being called 'Timeless,' we didn't want the photos to look like I was in a particular time or place to where people could say that it's modern or retro. There's this modern guy, but he's in the middle of a world that you don't know whether it's in the 40's, 60's or 2010. We definitely wanted to give some kind of ode to the past with some of the settings, particularly the ones when I'm near the swamp because I'm from the South.

You and Chante work together a lot. How do you separate the professional time from the personal time?

I think I'm just getting that together now because we've never had to be apart until now. One thing that she did early in our marriage was established that if we were on the road then we would not be apart from each other for a certain period of time. If we were gonna be away from each other for three weeks then one of us would have to fly to where the other person was or bring the children or something to that degree. That way we stay connected as real people. We talk everyday and check in. Sometimes it's not a real serious conversation, just checking in to say hey, but it's just about having that time where you stop and just communicate about what's happening and keep the other party involved about what is going on, it helps to keep the connection. It's not easy, it's very difficult. I used to laugh about it a lot because I was happy when the duet project came, but I would talk about actors and people who get married and then within a few months you're in two different countries. The next thing you know you're on a set with somebody else and you are pretending that you're in love with them and then you actually fall in love with them or start developing some kind of feeling. You go back home and you don't know the person you married and you end up filing for divorce. It's a crazy lifestyle where the duet project helped me and my wife establish a really strong foundation because we have problems just like everybody else, but we were able to at least be in the same space to work it out as opposed to being in two different worlds.

Was the touring play 'Things That Lovers Do' loosely based on your relationship?

'Things That Lovers Do' was very loosely based on us because it wasn't written by us. Initially, we thought it would have been nice if we wrote it to say the things that we wanted to say, but I'm grateful for that project. It was hard. The hardest part was singing all of those songs every night. Getting through the performances was very demanding. If you go see a Broadway play, usually the lead actors might have three big songs. They might be in the other songs, but it's just three big songs. We had 17 songs that we were singing back to back. It was a great vehicle to showcase the album. We ended up selling a lot of records as a result of that. It wasn't close enough to our real story for me to be emotionally attached to it or have any other opinion outside of that. We wanted to establish a quality in the production that was hopefully above what people were calling the chitlin' circuit at the time. What we knew was that there were tons of actors and singers who really were making a lot of money doing the plays, but if we really looked at the traveling play market as viable and not just as chitlin' circuit and we demanded it being quality, it would be a tremendous income for a lot of people. Hopefully that genre will continue to grow. We won't be doing it anytime soon with us being back to solo careers and all, but I hope that genre continues to grow because it was a lot of fun and it was a viable way for our income.

You all did a play but why haven't you and Chante done a reality show showcasing the balance between working together and family life?

My wife was like, 'no way!' Partly because when you do your household your children become celebrated and they haven't chosen to be apart of this industry. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith decided to have an entertainment family. Their children wanted to act so they put them in films. For our family, our children have not been that excited about it. Sophia has had the opportunity to do movies and different things because her father is an actor [Kadeem Haridson ('A Different Worlds')]. Her grandmother is Bethann Hardison [who discovered Tyson Beckford] so she can do fashion if she wanted to at least in terms of being introduced to it properly. She's 12 and she hasn't made any decision to say that she would love to do it. I don't think Chante or I feel like we should thrust them into the spotlight. One day we were all in the living room and my son [Kenny Jr.] said, 'ladies and gentleman Kenny Lattimore and Chante Moore.' We turned around and looked at him like, 'what are you talking about?' We really want their lives to be normal because I think they know that their parents are famous and people come up to them and say things, but we have them in a very guarded and comfortable circle of people who compliment us without it being over the top. That can be a real head trip for a kid so to then have them see themselves on TV, we just didn't want them to have that kind of pressure.

I hear you recently became an ordained minister.

I am a part of a Christian ministry called Hope's House in Southern California. What really happened was there was a time in our lives when we moved into this area of the valley that was pretty far from L.A. Chante and I were driving maybe 45 minutes to an hour to get to church on Sundays. I used to pray this prayer, 'oh God, I know you live in the valley somewhere.' God took me to a point where I got over the fact of it being a Black thing. I got so hungry for God's word that I didn't care anymore. I started to go and visit churches of different nationalities because if I could go here and get something out of the word I'll be fed and built more in my spirituality. I prayed for maybe two years and one day an email went out from this guy named Brother Steve who does this email about the things that are happening with gospel music in the valley. He was saying there was a bible study at Cal State Northridge. I was so hungry that I didn't care. I needed to sit in and find some folks that I could just bond with. I asked the person in the email if there was a church that they go to and they said they are starting the church in two weeks. This was amazing to me. I called up a few people and asked if they had ever heard of these ministers before. Incidentally, I had a mutual friend with one of the pastors who was starting the church. We went and when we got there, I really liked it. I wasn't sure that I was going to stay as long as I have, but as time went on I just continued to go. I didn't go to my pastor and tell him that I wanted to leave and become a member of this other church. My old church was so far away that I was just gonna go to the little church today because I don't have much time to get ready. I just kept going to the little church. When I would go in, I would speak of we like, 'when are we gonna do this?' I got involved in the administration of the church since it was beginning and structuring it. Then I got involved with mentoring because they were college students. I hired college students to go on the road and do things with me. I got involved in a new members class and I had to teach because there was nobody. The pastors had to figure out who they knew that understands the word and I had to go through a test and some other things before the ordinance, but it was pretty much what I was naturally doing anyway. I just didn't have a title. They blessed me with that and told me that they appreciate what I'm doing and that they know my heart is in this ministry and that I'm capable. They said, 'we would like to ordain you an elder.' With that I just went through the process with several people and eventually we had the actual ceremony last year.

Now that you're Elder Kenny Lattimore, do you find that there's a struggle between your professional work and your spiritual walk?

The music that we've always done has always had a certain amount of purity that does not lend itself to a lot of questions in terms of our character. Nowadays, the church is a little different, at least in California. The church doesn't judge people the same way out here because most of the members are in the industry and they know who the people are behind the scenes. They know that these actors are not writing raunchy roles for themselves. The pastors get a chance to see these people for who they are and they understand that it is a business and it's these folks job. What helped me was that I had songs like, 'For You' and 'Never Too Busy' that are not anything questionable against God's word. As a matter of fact, they would be songs that any married couple should be saying to each other. There are churches now that ask me and Chante to come in and sing 'It's Alright' and even 'Chante's Got A Man' to the married couples and at the same time we sing the gospel and we worship. We did something for Dave Hollister's New Direction Church in Memphis. I got to the alter and said, 'we're gonna go right on the edge with your pastor sitting right here in the front and I'm gonna ask for all of the married couples to come up to the alter to dance to this song' and it was 'Love Ballad' by LTD. I said, 'one, you probably haven't been saved all your lives so you probably remember this song even if you don't listen to R&B as much anymore. Tell me when the last time was that you danced with your wife.' We've been to seminars and people have said that they haven't danced with their wife in years because they don't really go to the club anymore or take advantage of the romantic things that they could take advantage of because everything turns into sin unless we're worshiping. When you start to buy into all of that it affects your relationship and certain aspects of what you would do. The beauty is to have a couple or a person come up and say, 'I love God.' I know they're not going home and making love to Kirk Franklin either, but wouldn't you like to know that when you put on Kenny Lattimore or Chante Moore or Kelly Price that if they did a love song it would be in its purist form. You don't have to worry about hearing something perverted or something that offends you. That became the bigger greater message in the church. We have pastors and ministers who come in quite a bit and talk to the couples and do concerts. It's wonderful because it's a whole other avenue for us to look at.

» kennylattimore.com

Timeless is a collection of new interpretations of songs by musical icons like The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Donny Hathaway, Jeff Buckley, and more!

Fans can look forward to hearing Kenny’s classic voice soar and coo over gritty, soulful grooves and bare-stripped ballads. You might have heard these songs once before, but not quite like this!

While Chante’s album Love The Woman is complete and being geared up for a summertime release this year, Kenny will be heading back into the studio next month to work on his solo album, also to be released this year. Keep checking back for more info on both!