Photo: Julian Essink Fotografie
In this new series of posts, we are featuring the people we are going to try and work with in the next year. We made a 'hit list' list last year, but kept it secret inside Hebe. We managed to tick off a lot of people on the 'Year 1 List' such as Hyper Island, Heineken, LeLook and IED Barcelona. Now we focus on the 'Year 2 List' and first up is one of our favourite RnB artists: Corey Latif Williams.
I first started checking out 'Latif's' stuff in 2006, most noteably the tracks Who's Lovin Her Now and the brilliant U Think U Know. I could tell immediately Latif was something special and after further digging I discovered he had non-other then the absolute legend that is Teddy Pendergrass as a mentor. Around this time (2006-2007) I was really into Latif, Johnta Austin (thanks to Turn It Up) and Ryan Leslie (thanks to Used 2 Be) . These guys were bringing something fresh at that time and regular collaborations between them usually resulted in some quality stuff. (I will try to dig out some of my live mixes from this time and post)
Since then the Grammy Award Nominated Latif has been in the studio working on new material and also getting his writing on for a number of other artists such as Chris Brown, The Roots and Musiq Soulchild. He has also put out a number of tracks online such as I Love U, Promise Me and No Mystery.
U Think U Know feat. Ryan Leslie by Corey Latif
Hebe x Latif
In our past few music events we have featured stuff from house music legends like the Back to Basics gang and up and coming Punk / Dub band ICS. We definitely want to do something with RnB in the coming months and Latif fits the bill perfectly: He is young, mega-talented and we can see some amazing potential for collaboration with some of our peeps here in the UK. Remixes, live-performances, creative collaborations with fashion designers and artists, the possabilities are endless.
We are planning Creative Encounters with cities in America next year and we will definitely be exploring the possibility of hooking up with Latif and getting him involved. After all he did provide the soundtrack for some of the music and fashion projects that eventually led to the creation of Hebe Media so it would be amazing for us to make that contact five years after we were introduced to Latif and get him involved with some of our projects.
Watch this space over the coming months and hopefully we will report back good news! In the meantime check out his new track below :)