Montell Jordan

AW: So you have very strong spiritual roots?

MJ: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, it was amazing. I was brought up Baptist, went to a Catholic high school and a Church of Christ college. So I’ve seen a whole lot (laughs).

AW: I know you have a song on your upcoming project with your pastor Bishop Eddie L. Long. How did that come to be?

MJ: Well you know, corporate anointing is something that’s pretty interesting. When we moved to Atlanta, we moved to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church under the headship of Bishop Eddie L. Long, who by the way happens to be a fraternity brother of mine; he’s a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. I was drawn to him. I like being under his covering, my family and I. He’s a prosperous man and his teaching is just so phenomenal I just wanted to be close to him, to know a man like that. It can only enhance and make you a better person. So initially, even before we tried to do a song together, he used to joke about it. [He would say,]"When are we gonna do my song? When are we going to do a song together?" I wanted to do some ventures with him, with the record label and a lot of things in the future. One day he was joking and said, "When are we going to do my song together?" I went to my manager and said, "You know, I think Bishop is serious. I think he really wants to do a song together because he keeps asking about it." So we went and put a song together. We all flew out to Los Angeles and we recorded it. And Bishop came in. He’s really funny. Before he went into the booth, he said, "Montell, come here." I walked over to him and he said "Let me see your hand." He held my hand up and put it on his head…. like I was going to lay him out or something (laughs). It was really, really funny. What Bishop does is that he speaks and reaches a certain audience of people. What I’m trying to do is to bring him a little closer to the audience that I’m reaching and I think he’s doing the same. Allowing me to touch the audience he reaches.