Before he was the Hall of Fame-bound superstar guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, Kobe Bryant was a young high school phenom ranked the #1 basketball player in the country. That tall, cocky kid asked another talented teen, chart-topping R&B star Brandy, to his prom way back in 1996, and Brandy recently took a trip down memory lane and reminisced about her date with the future five-time champion.
"When I was 17, I didn’t get a chance to go to my own prom," Brandy said in an interview. "But that same year I was at an Essence event and this tall good looking guy comes up to me and goes 'Oh my god, I’m a big fan of yours, you should go with me to prom.'"
"‘Dude, first of all like, who are you?’" Brandy said. "We went through a whole resume: 'I’m the number one high school basketball player in the world, my name is Kobe Bryant.' I still didn’t know who he was because [back] then I didn’t know much about basketball. I knew who Michael Jordan was but that was about it."
"Next thing you know, Kobe flew my mom and I out," she continued. "Made me feel like a queen. It was like royal treatment and then we went to prom. I just felt like a normal 17-year-old, it was so much fun, although it was cameras and media there, it still felt normal to be in a school with kids my age. We were dancing; it just felt real. I needed that..I really needed to experience that and I wouldn’t if Kobe never asked me."
