God & Music
Giving Jesus The Business 2006
Hear No Evil
I don’t listen to a lot of Gospel music. Neil does, and perhaps,
sometime well into the year 2009 he'll turn in his notes about the best
albums of 2006. So you’re stuck with me stumbling around for a few
paragraphs, largely repeating myself from earlier essays.
I'd never heard of rapper Flame before, so it surprised me that so many
young people here know him and love his work. I don't love Rewind, his
latest release, though I like it quite a bit. It sounds like he's going
for a little retro here, which suits me well because, well, I'm old.
But, the result is beats that sound a little too familiar to me. And,
though his doctrine is spot-on and he does a massive amount of teaching,
here (which is terrific), stylistically, I'm much more into the
Notorious B.I.G.-sounding BB Jay if I listen to rap at all.
Still, if Flame is not in your youth ministry's catalog, it absolutely
must be. The teaching is solid, and the young people seem to feel him
just fine. I'm excited that rap has finally made a credible dent in
Christian music. And not fake rap, but the real thing, as credibly done
and well crafted as the commercial potty-mouth stuff.
I really don't get excited about new CD releases, but I eagerly
anticipated Kierra KiKi Sheard’s It’s Me, hoping KiKi learned the Smokie
Norful lesson without abandoning us a la Tribbett. I was a little
worried about “Uncle” Jerkins’ producing instead of Rodney himself, but
Mary Mary's Warryn Campbell and KiKi's brother J Drew have both
impressed me enough to give this a go (though the absence of J. Moss,
KiKi cousin and Urban Gospel 800-pound gorilla gave me great pause).
This was an important release for KiKi who, at only eighteen, is poised
to catapult ahead of her mother Karen Clark-Sheard, who stumbled badly
with the Israel Haughton-produced It's Not Over; Clark-Sheard was poised
to join Kirk Franklin and Yolanda Adams in the very small pantheon of
gospel artists who are accepted in all racks of the record store as
Adams' funkier, edgier alternative. Israel's praise-a-thon, while a
great record, was inconsistent with Clark-Sheard's previous string of
releases, losing enough momentum that she now has to regain ground won
by The Heavens Are Telling but lost here. KiKi has the potential to
become a Kirk Franklin-type crossover phenomena: an urban music artist
who is accepted on both sides of the aisle. If the album is simply that
good, nobody will care that she's singing about Jesus— except us, of
course.
So, I was excited about KiKi's new project. Hopeful it breaks new
ground, destroys some barriers, but mostly that it wins souls to Christ
and helps destroy the stigma of being saved in today's world. Above all,
I hope fame doesn't go to her head, making her the same kind of
arrogant, self-centered man Franklin comes across as. KiKi has, to date,
an inherent sweetness I pray is not lost. I pray her testimony will keep
pace with her fame.
I Owe You, KiKi's first solo album, was absolutely phenomenal. It's Me
can't help but disappoint; I couldn’t imagine how it could be better
than I Owe You, but it was and it wasn’t—we’ll get to that in a minute.
But the CD is certainly good enough to produce a new superstar. With all
the good and bad such a happening portends.
Kirk Franklin’s Hero, which was momentarily dislodged from Billboard’s
#1 slot by both Tribbett and Kierra KiKi Sheard, has, at this writing,
regained that top slot, where it has resided for the better part of 43
weeks. I’ll further anger some readers by suggesting this phenomena is a
testament to the ideological and perhaps spiritual bankruptcy of the
black church in America, which continues to enable this man’s serious
dysfunction while help to promote a wide range of sneering,
self-absorbed Kirk Wannabes striving ruthlessly to make a name for
themselves in Gospel music while shaming the Gospel itself.
Mary Mary’s self-titled album curiously bubbles up to second place, even
though they’ve been on the charts far longer than Franklin’s Hero. I
liked this album a great deal. Warryn Campbell’s writing and production
skills have matured along with the vision and message of the sisters
themselves. This was some of the most innovative music of last year,
which is both good and bad news in that the fact the two top spots are
dominated by albums from last year suggests not a whole lot of exciting
Gospel music has been released lately.
I haven’t heard Juanita Bynum’s A Piece of My Passion, for largely the
same reason I eschew Franklin. I find Bynum fairly off-putting, abrasive
and ego-driven, as I said here. Yolanda Adams’ Day By Day, another
holdover from last year, is probably a very good album, but, honestly,
I’m just not a Yolanda Adams fan. She remind me of Meryl Streep: you
just know the work is picture-perfect, so you’re not in such a rush to
get to the theater. I will say I liked Adams’ “Victory” far more than I
liked Tribbett’s, but the syrupy “This Too Shall Pass,” just put me to
sleep. As does Israel And New Breed, which, like Kurt Carr, sounds like
black folks trying to sing like white folks; a reverse Pat Boone if you
will. Oh, I’m sure it’s great and don’t start emailing me telling me
what a moron I am—it’s just not for me.
Which leaves me with the few CD’s I’ve been ranting about this year,
music you absolutely must own, no questions asked.
On Her Shoulders: The legacy of Mattie Moss Clark.
This Is Her
Vibrant with very fresh ideas and smartly devised echoes of things past,
This Is Me would likely have been the best album I heard all year if I
had not heard Oak Park 92150. With This Is Me, KiKi is trying to open up
while realizing she can only be but so frank. She hints around about
things she shouldn’t do or shouldn’t have done, while Tonéx draws us a
far more detailed and (at times overly) graphic picture of his successes
and failures.
KiKi relegates PaJam (runaway train J. Moss and PDA Allen) to a single
track while leaning heavily on “Uncle Freddie” Jerkins, whom I assume is
somehow related to Rodney Jerkins, perhaps the most popular and powerful
producer in urban music today. Uncle Freddie doesn’t disappoint, but the
overall feeling is vaguely off, like watching Charlie Murphy on
Chapelle’s Show: he reminds us of the real thing, but something’s just a
bit off, and there’s the stink of coattail-riding.
Which isn’t to say the CD is bad—by no means. Debuting at #1 on
Billboard’s Gospel chart (#5 at this writing), This Is Me is certainly
the hit we expected it to be. With her mother’s Israel Houghton stumble,
KiKi now stands poised to overtake her mom by putting out a CD that is
simply good music, and better than most music out there—Gospel or
secular.
Her infatuation with the neo-soul of Jill Scott and India.Arie fuels
this offering. I found Uncle Freddie’s work to be interesting enough,
but I found KiKi’s 16 year-old brother, J Drew’s, tracks to be much
fresher and more urgent. His circular calamity, “Have What You Want,”
breaks out as something of the future rather than the neo-soul echoes of
the past or Uncle Freddie’s “Rodney Lite” productions. PaJam stops by
for “The Wrong Things,” a song every pastor should be blaring during
Sunday School, teasing us with a re-working of J Moss’s own “Livin’ 4”
(which is, itself, heavily borrowed from Janet Jackson’s “I Get So
Lonely,” which is a reworked lift from… well, you get the point). It’s
not new, but it’s J Moss and PDA Allen, so I’ll take it.
The ballads, “This Is Me” and “Hear This” are both sweet, but neither
moved me to worship the way the tortured and riveting Prince wailing of
Tonéx’s “When My Words Are Few” from Oak Park did. Her speaking voice,
heard on the introduction to the lushly poignant “Hear This,” is a bit
jolting as she sounds even younger when she’s just talking. Warryn
Campbell (husband/producer of one of the Marys in Mary Mary)’s “You” is
the most fun we have here, reminding me of the joyous “Church Nite” from
KiKi’s debut. In many places she reaches beyond her gifts, which is
actually the bravest moments of the CD—where KiKi just lays it all out
there, and opts to leave some imperfection in the final mix rather than
homogenize everything to plastic. If I hadn't heard Tonéx's eviscerating
confessional Oak Park 92150, “This Is Me” might have sounded a lot more
compelling. As is, it's a great CD to listen to, but it's not clearing
the bar Tonéx raised months before.
India.Arie, on the other hand, not only clears that bar but raises it
again with a CD that nearly nudges Tonéx out of my number one slot.
Arie's Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship is not, of course, a
Christian work per se—though she indeed invokes the name of Christ in
several places—but this is absolutely a spiritual and holistic work
about a painful breakup she recently experienced.
Arie's freshness and seeming willingness to expose painful areas of her
life makes KiKi's album that much fluffier by comparison. It is,
literally, the album KiKi should have made, perhaps the album she'll
actually make one day when her depth of character catches up to her
ambition (or, alternatively, when she's less concerned about
embarrassing her famous parents and less concerned about the legacy of
her legendary grandmother, the late Dr. Mattie Moss Clark). In order for
KiKi to get where she's going, in order for her to be truly used of God,
she's got to forget all of that. Throughout This Is Me, I can actually
feel her holding back, pulling her punches, protecting everybody.
Which means the work ministers quite a bit less than Arie's Testimony,
which never purports to be a ministerial tool in the first place. This
Is Me suggests that KiKi lacks depth, which I hardly think could be
true. I think she, for the moment, lacks courage. And she's worried
about mother and father and legacy when a minister's call is to leave
those things behind, pick up our cross and follow Christ.
Songs In The (Minor) Key of Life: A masterpiece, the double-disc iTunes-only 92105. Brace yourself.
The Finest Urban Gospel Album Ever Recorded
I want some church to give me ten thousand dollars. I want to buy 500
copies of Oak Park: 92150 and pass them out to every kid in church. This
is, undoubtedly, the best Prince album Prince never made. This album is
so Prince it out-Princes Prince. At least in terms of general creativity
it’s hands-down a better album than 5157, the latest Prince release (or
The Rainbow Children, Prince’s allegedly “Gospel” album from 2001 which
is sampled in this year’s Summer Jam). In fact, Oak Park is the album
you wished Prince would make if Prince still made albums that sounded
like Prince. It is, hands down, one of the best albums I have ever heard
in my life. A seminal work and, yes, I’ll go ahead and use the
word—masterpiece. Oak Park: 92150 has, in one or two listening, earned a
place among hallowed works like Earth, Wind & Fire’s I Am, Luther
Vandross' Never Too Much, Chicago 17, Anita Baker's Rapture, Michael
Jackson's Off The Wall, Quincy Jones’ The Dude, and, yes, Prince’s
potty-mouthed and shocking Dirty Mind as a preeminent and profound
artistic statement. An album you never need to hit the track-skip
button. You just put it on, kick back and let the man work. It's a
throwback to the days when artists created art: when an album was more
than just a collection of songs thrown at a wall in an attempt to land a
hit. These days of multiple-producer patchwork yield usually a grab-bag
of songs but make no coherent or cohesive statement. Oak Park is a
canvas that Tonéx paints on from track one to track twenty-four, telling
tales of joy, sadness, pain, shame, redemption and most of all, hope.
As I said in a
recent
essay, I think Tonéx is, likely, one of the most
brilliant innovators in Christian music today. In fact, I'd be willing
to take out the word “Christian” and suggest Tonéx is, simply, The Man—a
brilliant musical innovator for our time. I really hope he hasn't
actually quit the business, I'm sure a guy like Tonéx has a closet full
of unreleased stuff so it's conceivable his CD's could continue to come
out (meeting his remaining 2-album commitment to Verity) for some time
to come.
Even though Oak Park was recorded before 2004’s phenomenal Out The Box,
Park sounds like a logical extension of that latter work. Except,
perhaps, that Out The Box speaks mainly to Christians, while Oak Park
speaks mainly to the unchurched, the lost, the backslidden. It is an
album Church Folk will absolutely hate and ban, if they knew about it at
all. Due to contractual problems with his record label, Park is, at this
writing, available only on iTunes. Thus, most black Christians aren’t
even aware of the CD, and it hasn’t charted at all.
But it is, hands-down, the best urban Gospel album of the year, and one
of the most profound musical statements of our time. Arie’s Testimony
comes in a close second by providing the depth and the risk missing from
KiKi’s technically brilliant but artistically lean This Is Me.
Everything else is way back in the pack somewhere, stumbling around with
re-hashed clichéd lyrics and re-worked, overcooked leftover ideas, last
year’s beats, and the same old chords recycled from the same old songs.
Donald Lawrence is certainly very popular these days, and I’m sure he’s
a nice enough guy, but the music is boring an unoriginal, as is
Hezekiah’s 20/85 Anniversary project (and, what does that mean,
anyway?!?). Kirk Franklin’s Hero and Mary Mary’s Mary Mary continue to
bob at the top because, frankly, there’s just not much out there. And
what is out there is, in large measure, dull, recycled cliché.
All of which explains why the best urban Gospel albums of the year are a
spiritual album by a secular artist (Arie), and a secular album by a
Christian artist (Tonéx ) you can’t buy anywhere (Oak Park). My, how I
long for the old days when God actually inspired art.
My, how I hope the next twelve months are more inspiring than the past.
Christopher J. Priest
30 July 2006
editor@praisenet.org
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