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Kenny Lattimore VibeZ

Twenty tracks from a singer whose records are almost defiantly grown-up — and who has spent thirty years refusing to chase a trend.

 

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Kenny Lattimore

Kenny Lattimore arrived in 1996 with a self-titled album and a single, "For You", that became a wedding standard and has stayed one. He came from Washington DC, trained in church and in a group before going solo, and he has one of the cleanest technical instruments in contemporary soul — a light tenor with an unusually pure tone and no affectation at all.

What has defined the career is the refusal to adapt. While his contemporaries moved toward hip-hop production, Lattimore kept making records built on live instruments, actual chord changes and adult subject matter.

A substantial part of the catalogue is duets with Chanté Moore, to whom he was married, and those records are among the best of their kind.

What to listen for

"For You" is the one everyone knows and one of the most-performed wedding songs in Black American music.

"Never Too Busy" opens the set and is the best-constructed single here — a mid-tempo record with a genuinely sophisticated chorus.

"No Ordinary Love" with Chanté Moore is the Sade cover, and the most successful of the duets — two voices that sit comfortably apart rather than competing.

"With You I'm Born Again" is the Billy Preston and Syreeta reading, and "Things That Lovers Do" is the title track of the duets album.

"And I Love Her" appears twice and is the Beatles song, done as a straight soul ballad, which works better than it should.

"Forgiveness" and "Climb The Mountain" are the later, more explicitly spiritual records, and "Back 2 Cool" is the funkiest.

"I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" is the Donny Hathaway reading and the bravest thing on the list.

Go deeper

Kenny Lattimore (1996) and From the Soul of Man (1998) are the essential albums, and Things That Lovers Do (2003) is the duets record.

For singers working the same adult-contemporary soul territory: Will Downing, Peabo Bryson and Eric Benét, and for the vocal lineage, Donny Hathaway above all.

Why the refusal matters: he kept making records built on live instruments and real chord changes while his entire peer group moved to hip-hop production, and it cost him commercially. It is also why the catalogue has aged so much better than the chart positions suggest — there is no production fashion on these records to date them.

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