Lathun

The best musicians transport listeners into their world. Lathun Grady is one of those supremely talented artists who has the rare ability to make listeners feel their emotions, whether it is joy or pain, love or hate. With the release of "Fortunate", the elegant soul singer takes the first step toward legendary status. His Motown Records debut takes listeners on an emotionally charged ride through the life of this Detroit native, full of grand peaks and low valleys.

After just one listen, it's as if Lathun is a long-time friend, someone whose stories you identify with and whose challenges are very similar to your own. "The songs lyrically and musically are very personal and most of them are true stories," explains Lathun, who wrote and produced the majority of "Fortunate." "Being that the eyes are like the windows to the soul, to me the album is like looking into a part of me."

Although he's considered a new artist by music industry standards, Lathun has been putting in work for more than a decade. At the tender age of eight, Lathun was a member of the family group, The Dynamite Explosion. His mother managed the group, which evolved into the Valley Boys. As Lathun grew older, he realized that the group needed its own songs, rather than continuing to cover music written and composed by others. Since no one would write songs for free, Lathun started writing his own cuts at age 15. Soon thereafter, he was also making homemade recordings.

"I used to take two old raggedy tape recorders at the crib and overdub back and forth to make the songs," he laughingly reminisces. A few short years later, Lathun entered the music industry as a producer, working with the male trio, Immature, Jermaine Dupri, Xscape and the Raphael Saadiq-backed Willie Max. While in the studio with these acts, many of them urged Lathun to pursue a singing career.

The album, "Fortunate" (Motown), marks the emergence of an amazingly self-contained, talented artist whose relationship with the legendary Motown label has been developing since the time he was an infant. "I'm from Detroit, where the foundation for a lot of our music today was built by Motown Records," Lathun says with pride. My mom auditioned for Motown and decided not to go with it because she wanted to raise a family. When she found out that we had talent, it started again and she sort of wanted to live her dream through us." With "Fortunate," Lathun lets you in.