Church Boy

by Kirk Franklin

  David Mann has always been like a brother to me; we go back to my early teenage years. In the Family we call him Big Daddy, and he was one of the first people I called back in 1992. He was with me in Memphis when I fell. His wife, Tam, is one truly anointed sister. I really believe the Spirit is on her when she sings.

  I met Dalon Collins in 1990 when I was working with the D/FW Mass Choir. He really blew me away because he was so gifted and so humble. He’s just a big teddy bear with a heart for God. I would put Dalon up against any other gospel singer. Somebody nicknamed him Big Love, and that’s a good choice. He’s just incredible. Dalon is going to have an album of his own very soon, and when that happens, hold on to your hat. You’re going to hear some music!

  Keisha Gandy is like my little sister. She has been through a lot, and she, more than anybody else in the Family, reminds me of myself. She wasn’t raised by her parents, and she went through a lot of trauma growing up. She has such a giving heart. She’s going to make somebody a great wife, and she’s got a real future as a singer. She’s not a straight gospel singer; in fact, I think she may wind up singing more traditional music or jazz, but she’s got real talent.

  Sheila Brice has the nickname of “Mother” in the Family. In some ways, she’s like the great old gospel singer, Mother Smith. She’s the one who keeps us all together.

  Carrie Young Collins, better known as “Mousey,” has a wonderful voice. She knows who she is, and she loves God with all her heart. She’s raising three kids on her own and sacrifices to travel with us. That’s how committed she is.

  Another singer is a young lady named Demetrice “Dee” Clinkscale. She brings so much energy. She’s not with us on every road trip, but if I could I’d take her everywhere I go.

  Theresa Rucker and Jeanette Johnson are two singers I can always depend on. They always have my back, always reliable.

  I sometimes tease Terri Pace, saying that she’s the spoiled baby of this gang. She’s terrific, and she’s a young lady who knows what she wants!

  John Grey was one of the last guys in the group and has given us some diversity, since he’s always a comedian. He’s like having a younger brother.

  Jon Drummond is as talented in track and field as he is in music—he’s an Olympic sprinter. At one time he was my roommate, and he’s one of the best friends a guy could ever have.

  Darrell Blair is as solid as a rock, and he has a tremendous solo voice. He is now pursuing his own ministry full time.

  Yolanda McDonald is Miss Sensitive. She’s got sensitivity coming out of her ears.

  Stephanie Glynn is a true lady. We call her “Chicken,” but she walks and talks like a lady.

  We knew from the first night that we had a sound of our own and that it would be good if we could do something with it. So I started working on a lot of original music, and after we had done several successful concert dates, playing and singing in churches in the area, I thought it would be a good idea to see if we couldn’t produce an album of our best songs.

  A deacon at the church approached me about doing a project because he believed in what we were doing. That was our first big step.

  After a lot of planning and organizing, we made a live recording that would become our demo tape. We put together some promotional materials about the group and our experience then sent off several copies to some of the major record labels. By December 1992, we had two or three solid offers and several expressions of interest.

  One of the companies really liked our sound and sent one of its vice presidents to sit down with us and talk about a contract. But during the negotiations process, I got a note that another company in Los Angeles, a new label called GospoCentric Records, had heard about us and was interested in our project.

  I had previously given a tape to a gospel artist by the name of Daryl Coley. In a few days we got a call back from the president of the company, Vicki Lataillade. She said she loved our music and wanted to make an offer. I don’t know why I agreed. GospoCentric was a tiny, new company with almost no track record, and the others we were talking to were huge by comparison. But I felt led to sit down with this lady and hear what she had to say. She was a spiritual sister, and I sensed that she knew just what we were talking about.

  Unlike those big labels and their impressive sales pitches, Vicki didn’t spend all her time boasting about how great her company was or how much money it could make for us the first six months. Instead, she talked about her passion to serve God, to spread the Word, and to change people’s lives through the medium of gospel music.

  Then she said something I’ll never forget.

  “Kirk,” she said, “I know you can find a lot of other labels out there with more money and more power than we’ve got, but you’ll never find one that will work harder for you. We think your music is great, and you would be a very important artist for us, not just one of a hundred newcomers on the list.”

  Vicki had started GospoCentric from scratch. She started the company with a six-thousand-dollar loan from her father’s civil service pension, trusting that God would bring talented artists to her if she dedicated everything to Him. That really hit me hard, because I’d done almost the same thing with the five thousand dollars I had borrowed to cut the demo Vicki wanted to produce.

  “If this is what God wants, Kirk,” she said, “He will confirm it in you. So I’m not asking you to sign a contract right now. All I’m asking you to do is to pray about it and see what God wants you to do. I’ll do the same thing, and then we’ll get back together and find out what you’ve decided.”

  So that’s what we did. I prayed, she prayed, everybody in the Family prayed, and three days later I called her back and said, “Vicki, if you still want us, you’ve got yourself a deal!” In my heart, I had known from the beginning we were going to sign with her. I knew it the minute she said we should go to God and pray about it. None of the other guys ever talked about God; they just talked about money. But Vicki said she wanted to tell people about Jesus, and that got me.

  The rest, as they say, is history. GospoCentric bought that original tape from me for five thousand dollars, cleaned it up, did some new voice- and sound-over dubs, then put together an incredible master and released Why We Sing in June of 1993.

  BREAKING OUT

  By that time, demand for the new group, Kirk Franklin &the Family increased, and we were spending a lot of time on the road. I’d promised God that if He allowed me to do my minstry full time I would always give Him the glory and what belonged to Him (tithes and offerings). In January 1994, I was finally able to get a new car. Up until then I had been driving that raggedy little Fiero. But the word was already getting out, and people were calling us from all over the place. I was hearing, “Go here! Do that!” and I was being stretched to the point of snapping.

  Before long, God blessed me with a new apartment. That was exciting, but with so many things happening at once, I really needed somebody to help me with the business affairs of the group.

  My old friend from Grace Temple, Gerald Wright, was a capable businessman, plus he knew and loved gospel music like I did. So I asked him if he would come on as our manager. He really liked the idea, so he set up his new business, the Wright Group, and Kirk Franklin & the Family became his first client.

  Today, of course, Gerald manages not only us but several other groups and artists we have worked with over the past five or six years—dancers, mimes, soloists, and groups.

  I was seeing a lot of different young women at that time, but I was starting to think about finding the right one. You know, I think I was always looking for the right lady, but I just didn’t know how to go about it. I kept jumping from one to the other, doing the things with women that seemed to satisfy other men but never satisfied me; I always left feeling empty. But I knew there had to be something better, and I wanted it.

  The album started to move and really bless people. Its popularity started becoming more focused in the church community. We were getting more and more boo
kings in music halls and churches and other special venues. There were endless media interviews, and I was flying from New York to Los Angeles and all points in between. Everywhere I went, people were beginning to recognize me; that was an awesome responsibility.

  As you might expect, being recognized is both good news and bad news. You’re glad that people like your music, and you’re honored and humbled that they want to see you and talk to you—but it gets to be a lot more work than anybody can really handle. And that was especially true for me—a kid who had grown up in the inner-city and hadn’t anticipated anything like the success we were experiencing. Success brought out all my insecurities.

  By December 1993, the song “Why We Sing” went to number one on the gospel music charts. At the end of the year it won two Stellar Awards, the top honor for gospel music. By March 1994 it went to number one on the Christian charts and won two Dove Awards in the contemporary Christian music market. That, I’m told, was a first for a gospel artist. We also received four GMWA (Gospel Music Workshop of America) awards in August 1994.

  In December 1994, I got a call from Neily, our A&R contact at the record company in Los Angeles. A&R stands for “artists and repertoire,” and people who work in that area have the closest contact with the musicians. She said, “Hey, Kirk, did you know that some of the R&B stations are starting to play your song?”

  “Really?” I said. “No, I didn’t know that. That’s cool!” Gospel music doesn’t usually get much air time on the R&B stations, so I was pleased but surprised. Most of all, I was just glad to know that the music was going to get some exposure in a wider audience.

  But the next week Neily called again. “Kirk,” she said, “it’s a little bigger than I told you the last time I called.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “How much bigger?”

  “‘Why We Sing’ has hit the R&B charts at number forty.”

  I nearly dropped the phone. I said, “You’re kidding! We’re on the R&B charts?”

  She said, “Kirk, it’s incredible, but you’re on the R&B charts—and climbing!”

  I couldn’t believe it. But over the next few weeks they started playing our song on R&B stations at home, and the buzz was really going by this time. Before long the phone rang again, and this time it was Vicki Lataillade. She said, “Baby, we got to talk!”

  Vicki was so excited. We had asked God to show us His will, but frankly, neither of us had anticipated this kind of success. Not on a first album! Vicki said she had been talking around and finding out what the stations all over the country were saying. She told me, “Kirk, they’re saying this album could go gold!”

  Sure enough, two weeks later, in mid-January 1994, Why We Sing went gold. But even before the album crossed over on the R&B stations, it had sold 250,000 units in the gospel market. Now, that’s considered to be a good selling record in gospel and a blessing for our ministry; up to that time the average gospel album would sell 30,000 to 50,000 copies. If we had sold 50,000 units, we would have been thrilled.

  Before we ever crossed over into the R&B charts, Why We Sing was already a big blessing with our home crowd. But something happened. Later, the writers at Black Recording and Entertainment magazine said in a cover story about us that it was “nothing short of a miracle.”

  When the urban stations started playing our song, it was a whole new thing for them. By all rights you would think that several months after an album was on the gospel music charts the album would be about ready to die. But all of a sudden it had popped up on the R&B stations, and they were pumping it like crazy.

  So the album was born again! Why We Sing literally came back to life.

  About that time we had released a Christmas album, and it was going very well too. When Vicki called we were putting the finishing touches on a major gospel release, Whatcha Lookin’ 4, which had a slightly more progressive sound. We had already been in the studio doing the overdubs and remix recordings, but she said to put everything on hold.

  “Baby,” she said (Vicki always calls me baby!), “we can’t put your new album out yet. It’s too soon.”

  Whenever you do a new project you hate to wait. But Vicki said we needed to give the first album more time. With Why We Sing coming on strong in new markets, releasing another album at that time would not have been the wisest thing to do. So Vicki decided we needed to wait.

  Not since Edwin Hawkins’s hit song “Oh, Happy Day” back in 1972 had a gospel record taken the nation by storm the way that one did. The media were really into it too, saying stuff like, “This is the first time this kind of thing has happened in twenty years.”

  Over the years, a lot of gospel songs have hit the pop charts. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was really hot in the fifties, and the Clark Sisters hit it big with songs like “You Brought the Sunshine” in the eighties. In the early nineties the Winans and M. C. Hammer had chart-topping gospel hits. Obviously, some of those were crossover numbers and almost accidental hits. But “Why We Sing” was our title cut. It was outrageously popular, and I’m sure that helped pave the way for the even greater success of the God’s Property album and the song “Stomp” in 1997.

  THE UNEXPECTED

  Looking at the exposure we were getting, I realized that even though GospoCentric Records had started out in Vicki Lataillade’s garage, she wasn’t starting empty handed. Going into it, Vicki had a ton of high-profile experience. She had spent her entire career in gospel music, and she had grown up working for some of the legends in the business.

  When I met her, Vicki was widely known as one of the best promotional people in the record industry. She had handled Edwin Hawkins, André Crouch, Al Green, the Clark Sisters, Tramaine Hawkins, Vanessa Bell, Peabo Bryson, Take 6, Daryl Coley, Deniece Williams, the Tri-City Singers, and BeBe and CeCe Winans, among many others. She certainly wasn’t a new kid on the block. Best of all, she believed in us, and just as she had promised, she was making sure the word got out about Kirk Franklin & the Family.

  Both Vicki and I had paid our dues, working in and around the music business all those years. But it was as if this was what we had been in training for. God had planned it this way; He had just been holding it all back until the right moment, and suddenly all the hard knocks we had been through were paying off.

  After fifteen years of coming up the hard way, people had the impression that we were an overnight success!

  So much was happening. As the market was demanding more, more, more, Vicki decided she needed to hire an independent promotional team to help her handle all the inquiries. She had been all around the gospel market, but this was new territory for her, and she wanted to be sure we didn’t let anything slip through the cracks. When the new team was on board, the first thing they said was, “Kirk needs to do a video.”

  So they started calling around and setting up plans to do an MTV-type video. I was just floating through all this; I couldn’t believe any of it was happening. Meanwhile, our name was getting more well-known, not only in the music scene but with people back home. People who only knew Kirk Franklin & the Family from the gospel circuit were seeing us now in a whole new light.

  We had been performing in churches for a long time, but suddenly we were being discovered by all these hip-hop kids. That was a trip.

  About that time we were booked to perform at the Martin Luther King concert back home in Fort Worth. The King Concert is an annual event to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, and most years they would have from two to three thousand people in attendance—a good-sized crowd.

  But in the meantime Why We Sing had gone gold, and the producers of the King Concert realized they were going to need more space. They were right; more than eight thousand people showed up for the concert.

  After that things started to really pick up, and the favor of God started to show. But best of all, we were giving a strong witness of our faith every time we appeared in public and also striving to live a life before God offstage. Just when I was beginning to think we had seen it all, the producer
of the Arsenio show called and wanted us to be on the show the same night that Louis Farrakhan was there. Talk about diversity!

  It was all so fascinating! I was on my way to take my son to the doctor when I got the call. Monica Bacon of GospoCentric said, “Kirk, we just got a call from Arsenio Hall’s producer, and he wants you on the show.”

  That was in February 1994, and I was surprised that anybody outside gospel music circles even knew our name. But here was the show that, at that time, was the hottest late-night talk show in Hollywood, calling to put us on nationwide television.

  So we flew out to L. A., and Arsenio sent a limo to pick us up at the airport and drive us to Paramount Studios. But the minute we got there we saw all these security guards.

  Everywhere I looked there were black men in bow ties— obviously, Louis Farrakhan’s people. And all around outside the gates, there were sign-toting people—both blacks and whites—protesting Farrakhan’s appearance on TV.

  When we got inside, Nation of Islam guards were at every door. But when our time came, we went out on stage and sang “He Can Handle It.” We did a really jazzed-up rendition of the song, and it was well received. We enjoyed doing it, but I wanted to get that message out. The words say:

  It really doesn’t matter what you’re going through.

  I know that Jesus can work it out for you.

  His yoke is easy, and His burden’s light.

  Just give it to Jesus, He’ll make it all right.

  He can handle it.

  There’s no doubt about my Savior,

  I know He will deliver.

  Whatever it is, He can handle it.

  There’s a simple but powerful message in those words, especially with Louis Farrakhan sitting there that night, pushing a very different message. We just wanted to let people know we were there to lift up the name of Jesus— because nobody can handle it like He can. Nobody!

  What surprised me was that after the show Mr. Farrakhan came up to me and shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, Kirk. Just keep on lifting up the name of Jesus.”