CLOVIS, Calif. — There was not any divine intervention in 5-star Kendall Milton choosing to commit to Georgia on Monday. But there was a “King James” version to the story.
Milton’s commitment video was aired live on CBS and multiple streaming platforms with a story arc that was paced by a music track from a family friend. It was one of Milton’s cousins from Alabama.
The artist who produced the music bed and the auto-tune samples on the video is a gospel rapper by the name “King James.”
“He originally reached out,” Kendall Milton said. “We consider family the biggest thing around here. He reached out and let us know he wanted to be a part of this and make the song and everything. So we agreed to it.”
“I told him my thoughts about the school. My thoughts about the coaches and what I valued most and he put together a great project.”
He made his business into a matter of family business to add a lot more fun to Milton’s decision day.
“It was deep,” Milton said of what he felt when he first heard it. “The idea of family that I don’t see a lot. I’m not even sure if I have met him but family takes the time out for [some of our] other family. So that’s very deep for me.”
“King James” has some of his work across iTunes and he reached out to the family. He wanted to do something, but with some real meaning.
They gave him names. Little factoids like his first offer coming when he was in the eighth grade. Those noteworthy stats from his breakout year of high school were in there, too.
“Then he did everything else,” Chris Milton said. “So the hook about ‘I’m a Bulldog because Georgia is who I’m picking’ that is him. He wrote that. We get fired up every time we hear it.”
The video has a few wrinkles in it. There’s the surprise ending with former Georgia great Todd Gurley playing a small cameo.
“I’m honored to join the ‘RBU’ fraternity and run between the hedges,” Milton said in the video. “Go ‘Dawgs.”
When his great-grandmother flipped him that Georgia cap (one of 11 in the house that day) it was for a reason.
“Kendall its time,” she said in a tone that great-grandmothers have mastered. “Kendall it is time.”
His mother, father, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles and extended family is in that video. But it wouldn’t have been the same without that long-distance family connection from Alabama.
The best part of that story? It wasn’t exactly the exact relation. But something that everyone from the South can really relate to.
“Just a first cousin,” Chris Milton told DawgNation. “But [he] was a ‘Bama fan. Until now.”
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