It started as a throwaway line at the end of a post yesterday, but you, the reader, said you wanted us to follow through. So we fired an e-mail to Freedom Williams — majority owner and VP of the CBA’s Atlanta Krunk and formerly a vocalist with chart-topping C+C Music Factory. He responded just a few hours later and said to give him a call. We did today, and even though we caught him in the middle of lunch, he was gracious enough to answer our questions about the Krunk, new head coach Kenny Anderson and a bunch of other nonsense that he probably shouldn’t have had to put up with but did. Ladies and gentlemen, Freedom Williams:

RB: Kenny Anderson – how excited are you to have him as a coach?
FW: I’m extremely excited about Kenny. … I call him the crossover king. I grew up with him, and I’ve known him for years. It was the perfect opportunity. He was a wonderful guard. He traveled in the NBA, he’s a stickler for the game and he’s a student. The CBA needs that type of boost right now. It needs Kenny to really galvanize things.

RB: How much cred does he still have in Atlanta from his Georgia Tech days?
FW: I think he has a tremendous amount of credibility. He took them to the Final Four. He got Steph [Marbury] to go to Georgia Tech. Atlanta is really excited about having him.

RB: How much flat-out fun is it to own a basketball team?
FW: For me … it’s extremely exciting. Now, I also do entertainment for the NBA — New Jersey, Cleveland, Houston, Phoenix, a lot of halftime shows. Being involved in the CBA, being a majority owner, is just another step.

RB: A player comes late to practice and he’s smellin’ like perfume. Is that something that makes you go, “Hmmmmmm?”
FW: (Laughs) Absolutely. You have to wonder about that. But that’s Kenny’s job now.

RB: “Gonna Make You Sweat” and “Here We Go.” Both awesome songs in their own ways. Compare and contrast.
FW: They’re different songs but they have the same rhythm. … We wanted a similar song and we didn’t want to move the bar too far. [He said something in here about Babyface that we didn’t quite catch]. It’s a technique that a lot of artists use.

RB: What are you working on right now outside of this hoops project and the other things we’ve talked about?
FW: I have a wonderful artist Alkebulan, an incredible singer. She does most of the anthems when I do halftime shows. She’s just an incredible artist. … We just shot a video, and BET picked it up. She’ll also be the voice of the Krunk.

RB: I went to your myspace page. Is that the real Al B. Sure among your friends?
FW: Yeah, he’s my buddy. He’s a good guy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Main, Q&A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.