This week is not the first time Weekly Music Commentary featured a gospel music artist. Certainly will not be the last. However, Kirk Franklin is the most decorated of the genre that we have featured. He has won numerous awards, including 16 Grammy Awards. Variety dubbed Franklin as a “Reigning King of Urban Gospel”. Franklin also faces his share of criticism because his music almost always crosses over to secular radio stations. Most contemporary gospel artists like Deitrick Haddon and Mary Mary face the same skeptics from the ranks of gospel music fans. There are other interesting questions that surround Kirk Franklin music.
Franklin is the most successful contemporary gospel artist of his generation, but he isn’t a singer. He plays the piano, but infrequently onstage. Above all, he is a songwriter, but in performance and on his albums his role more closely resembles that of a stock character in hip-hop: the hype man. Well known hype men in hip-hop are Flava Flav, or Sean (P Diddy) Combs. The hype man is normally a side-kick, addressing the microphone in order to ad-lib or to reinforce punch lines as they rumble by. Franklin is not a side-kick. He is the unquestionable focus as the music comes from the band and ensemble of singers. In order to define him well, it might be good to take a look at his background and see how he became who he is today.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Franklin was raised by his aunt, Gertrude, having been abandoned as a baby by his mother. Gertrude recycled aluminum cans to raise money for Kirk to take piano lessons from the age of four. Kirk excelled and was able to read and write music while also playing by ear. At the age of seven, Franklin received his first contract which his aunt turned down. He did join the church choir and became music director of the Mt. Rose Baptist Church adult choir at eleven years of age.
Despite his strict religious upbringing, Franklin rebelled in his teenage years, and in an attempt to keep him out of trouble, his grandmother arranged an audition for him at a professional youth conservatory associated with a local university. He was accepted, but later he had to deal with a girlfriend’s pregnancy and his eventual expulsion from school for bad behavior. Kirk Franklin studied music with Jewell Kelly and the Singing Chaparrals at Oscar Dean Wyatt High School. He continued under her tutelage and ultimately became the pianist for the choir.
Franklin returned to the church, where he again directed the choir. He also co-founded a gospel group, The Humble Hearts, which recorded one of Franklin’s compositions and got the attention of gospel music legend Milton Biggham, musical director of the Georgia Mass Choir. Impressed, Biggham enlisted him to lead the DFW Mass Choir in a recording of Franklin’s song “Every Day with Jesus”. This led to Biggham hiring Franklin, just 20 years old at the time, to lead the choir at the 1990 Gospel Music Workshop of America Convention, an industry gathering.
In 1992, Franklin organized “The Family”, which was a seventeen-voice choir, formed from neighborhood friends and associates. In 1992, Vicki Mack-Lataillade, the co-founder of fledgling record label GospoCentric, heard one of their demo tapes and was so impressed she immediately signed up Kirk & The Family to a recording contract. In 1993, the group, now known as “Kirk Franklin & The Family,” released their debut album, Kirk Franklin & The Family. It spent almost two years on the gospel music charts and charted on the R&B charts, eventually earning platinum sales status. It remained at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart for 42 weeks. It was the first gospel music album to sell over a million units.
At this point twenty-three year old Kirk Franklin was making his way into the music charts and the radio airwaves. Two years later the group released Whatcha Lookin’ 4. The album was certified 2x platinum and earned Franklin his first Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album. 1997 brought another album, a collaboration with the vocal ensemble God’s Property, aptly named God’s Property from Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation. The lead single, “Stomp”, featuring Cheryl “Salt” James (of Salt-N-Pepa), was a big hit, enjoying heavy rotation on MTV and other music channels and charting at No. 1 on the R&B Singles Airplay chart for two weeks, even making it into the Top 40. God’s Property from Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation was No. 1 on the R&B Albums chart for five weeks, No. 3 on the Pop charts, and would go on to be certified 3x platinum. It also brought Franklin another Grammy for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album, as well as three Grammy nominations.
Well over twenty years later, it’s apparent Kirk Franklin has the formula for making hit music. He knew how to connect with his audience with his first hit song, and still knows how to reach them today. On January 25, 2019, Franklin released his new single “Love Theory” and official music video for the song. “Love Theory” is the first single from his thirteenth studio album, Long Live Love. That’s why I thought the title for this post should speak about Franklin’s theory. Not just for music, but for life. “We’re living in an era where so many things compete for the attention of our hearts,” says Franklin. “They don’t all have to be bad, but these things can become what matters to us more than they’re supposed to. “Idols” and every song on the album just bubbled up and out—a tapestry of what I believe, how I feel, what I want, and my struggles. It’s the good, the bad and the ugly.”
I have seen and heard Kirk Franklin’s professional career from start until today, and in my opinion Love Theory is his best song. I’m sure there are fans out there who like other songs, but that tells me Franklin still has a lot of music left in his tank. “The process for this album was unique,” says Franklin, “because I literally had all the songs written before I started to record. That’s never happened before. That allowed me to see lyrically and melodically if the music could stand on its own without production. A lot of times I think that popular music can depend too much on production.”
Franklin is still working even as I am writing this post. Why has he enjoyed such longevity in the music industry? “It’s because of somebody bigger than me and you. I’m the most non-perfect person in the world. But having an opportunity to be here still and communicate this faith that I believe in … I don’t know what else I could ask for.”