Kirk Franklin: new gospel sensation

Ebony, Oct, 1995 by Lisa C. Jones

Someone asked the question: Why do we sing? When we lift our hands to Jesus What do we really mean .... I sing because I'm happy I sing because I'm free. His eye is on the sparrow And that's the reason why I sing ...

--Kirk Franklin

It has become the inspirational hit of the year, and arguably of the decade. It touched a common chord so deep in the American conscience that music lovers-black and White-temporarily abandoned their fascination with automatic weapons, illicit drugs and sex to sing about it, think about it, embrace and embody it.

Today, this sonorous call-and-response Sunday morning spiritual sits atop both gospel and contemporary Christian music charts and swirls above the bump-and-grind favorites of the R&B music scene. What's more, just two years after an uneventful release, the single "Why We Sing," and the Kirk Franklin and The Family debut album as a whole, have turned its 25-year-old creator, Kirk, Franklin, into an overnight sensation.

There have been other artists who sing good gospel music, others who have successfully meshed the traditional hymnals of yesteryear with the electronically tinged sound of the '90s. But when Kirk Franklin hit the national gospel scene in 1993, he brought a certain energy emotionalism and dramatic hip-hop appeal to the religious forefront that has rarely been explored before.

Insiders say the difference lies in Franklin's youthful and energetic style. The Fort Worth, Texas, singer, they say, has updated Christian music without compromising its message. Whether Franklin is wearing designer suits and silk ties or jeans and multicolored vests draped with gold chains, his message of Jesus Christ Crucified remains clear. Even after putting in 12-hour days in the recording studio, the young gospel singer pulls up enough stamina from his 5-foot-4 inch frame to rouse concert audiences to their feet.

"Many times, when people see the clothes, the jewelry--they see a drug dealer. Or if I tell them I do music, it's gotta be rap when in feet I'm a 25-year-old minister who loves God," says the seminary-trained, raspy-voiced vocalist. "I'm dedicated to God and I'm working like sweat to make sure that every word that I sing I can effectively put into practice."

Already, Franklin has reaped the rewards, of his labor. He has taken home two Dove Awards, two Stellar Awards and the Gospel Music Workshop of America's 1994 Excellence Award. His 1993 debut album, for which he wrote all the lyrics, has topped Billboards Top Gospel chart for more than 100 weeks. And, he holds the distinction of being the first religious artist in 20 years to produce a major crossover hit. By midsummer, Franklin's debut CD was just 150,000 units short of going platinum. Aretha Franklin's 1970s Amazing Grace album and Edwin Hawkins' "Oh Happy Day" cut were the last traditional gospel releases to reach such proportions.

Franklin represents a new day in gospel music, and perhaps an emerging sub-genre of hip-hop gospel, critics suggest. He is as much an entertainer, some say, as he is a minister. A gospel-pop sex symbol, Franklin has on occasion been pulled off stage, kissed and had his clothes ripped by adorin, fans, anxious to meet the man behind the sacred music.

He's just gorgeous, and his voice is so beautiful," one 16-year-old female Dallas admirer says.

The funky hard-core edge this gospel dynamo brings to his music stems from a rough past. His mother abandoned him as a toddler, he says. He has only met his father twice, and his half sister is behind bars. At four years old, a distant aunt took Franklin in and legally adopted him as her own.

Wanting to rear her "son" with a reverence for Christianity, Gertrude Franklin brought him up in the Baptist tradition. She enrolled him in piano lessons when he was 4, using money collected from recycled cans. It became apparent almost immediately that the precocious child, who could read sheet music and play by ear, had a special talent. He was offered a gospel record deal at age 7, but his aunt, who feared it would interrupt his life, refused the deal. By the time Franklin was age 11, he was minister of music for the adult church choir.

But the man and his music haven't always been a perfect pair. With the onset of puberty, a rambunctious Franklin began to rebel, drinking beer, shooting pool, running the streets and eventually ending up in juvenile detention.

His rebellion was stirred, Franklin says, by the stigma of being labeled "a church boy" among his peers. "I resented it because [being a church boy] was taken for weakness," says Franklin, who grew up in the rough Riverside area of Fort Worth. "It was like you can jump on the church boy because he's not going to fight back. He's going to turn the other cheek."

Since Franklin had no intentions of turning the other cheek, he did everything in his power to be a "roughneck." But when a high school buddy was gunned down in a freak accident, the 15-year-old troublemaker began his journey back toward his religious roots.

At 17, he directed the choir at Greater Strangers Rest Baptist Church, which up to that point had followed a relatively conservative program. Pastor R. E. West still remembers his congregation's reaction when the charismatic teenager took charge. "We've always been somewhat of a traditional Baptist church. When my father died, they called me. I brought in the drums, the microphone and then here comes this little kid who gets up and dances and bounces," he says of Franklin. "The older people couldn't stand it. But I could see that God had His hand on him. Eventually, he won them over."