Secular artists are making music with religious overtones. Christian artists are making frothy pop. Christian music struggles to redefine the genre.
By SHARON TUBBS
Published October 3, 2004
[AP photos]
R&B artist R. Kelly accepts the Quincy Jones Award for Outstanding Career Achievements at the Soul Train Music Awards in March. Despite facing child pornography charges, Kelly has garnered praise for his inspirational CD Happy People/U Saved Me.
[Getty Images]
Jesus Walks by Kanye West, shown performing at the World Music Awards in September, was nominated for a Stellar Award for gospel music, but the nomination was withdrawn after the rest of West’s profanity-laden album was scrutinized.
”Really, what qualifies one to sing the good news of Jesus Christ is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” says Gerard Bonner, senior writer for GospelFlava.com. “When you hear what R. Kelly is saying in the U Saved Me album, there’s no way he can say this without having a relationship with Christ.” Here Kelly performs the song at the Soul Train Music Awards in March.
R. Kelly - the R&B singer charged with child pornography - released an inspirational CD that debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts last month.
Happy People/U Saved Me is a two-disc project with mellow dance tunes on one and on the other, gospel songs complete with spiritual testimonies and "Thank you, Jesuses."
No, Kelly is not the first secular artist to go spiritual. Think Al Green, M.C. Hammer and Smokey Robinson. Nor is he the first to face serious criminal charges. Think . . . well, we don't have that much room.
But the real issue is bigger than Kelly or his mound of legal troubles. Kelly and his peers are essentially erasing the line between Christian and secular artists and spurring interesting debate in religiondom.
On one side, we have people such as Kelly, new age rapper Kanye West, gothic rock band Evanescence and rock band U2 making hit records with spiritual undertones. Some use profanity or explicit language in other songs on the same album.
Then there's Mase, a former secular rapper turned church pastor. Last month he released his first album since turning his bling-bling into tithes. A Christian CD beckoning people to do the same? No. In Welcome Back, released by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records, Mase only hints at his spirituality. The rest is clean, feel-good rhymes and funky beats. You'll find it in the hip-hop music section.
So if the Christian artists are making secular music and the secular artists are making Christian music . . .
This has caused some confusion. For instance, a committee of the Stellar Awards for gospel music recently nominated West's The College Dropout for gospel album of the year because of his hit single Jesus Walks. But members had not scrutinized the rest of the profanity-laden album. After they did, they withdrew his name and issued a statement last month:
"The Stellar Awards nominating committee felt the CD lyrical selections were not in the best interest and spirit of gospel music," it read. Organizers, it went on to say, "certainly did not intend to offend the Gospel Music Community with this glaring oversight."
* * *
A year ago, Russ Breimeier, online associate editor for ChristianityToday.com, sat down with the magazine's senior editors to re-evaluate their music coverage. Increasingly, popular spiritual music was coming from secular artists whose work wasn't produced by Christian labels or sold in Christian stores.
How could reviewers ignore the Dave Matthews Band's Grace is Gone, Evanescence's Bring Me to Life, Train's Calling All Angels or Ben Harper's Picture of Jesus, songs that seemed either to question a higher calling or directly point to one?
Editors created "Glimpses of God," a series about mainstream artists who seem to explore faith. Breimeier decides whether an artist is fit for a full Christian music review or a "glimpse" by looking at lyrics, whether the music was produced by a Christian label and whether the artist seems to be using the music for evangelism.
"There are Christian artists, and there are artists who happen to be Christian," Breimeier said. The latter may be candidates for glimpses.
One writer offered a glimpse about West. "You have to marvel at the fact that there's a Christian song out there by a hip-hop artist," Breimeier said.
There was talk of including Kelly in the series, but editors decided against it because of his criminal case.
"We thought he was too much of a hot potato at the time," Breimeier said. "Right now, with so many questions unanswered, it's like how do you do it right without offending somebody? It's just too soon to embrace that."
Too soon for ChristianityToday.com, but not for WMBM-AM 1490, a gospel radio station in the Miami area. Station manager E. Claudette Freeman said she listened to Kelly's song U Saved Me and knew the station had to play it.
"I think the ministry component in the song is so strong," Freeman said.
In the single, Kelly croons testimonies from an alcoholic, a job seeker, a drug dealer and a cancer victim.
Listeners now request the single, Freeman said. They aren't concerned with Kelly's personal problems. "It's not for us to judge," she said.
Gerard Bonner, senior writer for GospelFlava.com, recently wrote an editorial praising Kelly's CD. Christians shouldn't try to determine if Kelly's lifestyle qualifies him to sing about God, he said.
"Really, what qualifies one to sing the good news of Jesus Christ is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," Bonner said. "When you hear what R. Kelly is saying in the U Saved Me album, there's no way he can say this without having a relationship with Christ."
* * *
Plenty of secular artists throughout the years have made Christian music, but this recent wave stands out.
"What makes what's happening right now so profound is that these people are at the height of their careers," Bonner said. They are popular, so people who usually wouldn't buy Christian music listen to their spiritual lyrics. Singers who tried gospel later in their careers, such as Al Green and Smokey Robinson, haven't had the same effect, he said.
Ron "Jomama" Shepard, program director and disc jockey for Tampa Bay's WBTP-FM 95.7 (The Beat), said market research shows that listeners love just about anything Kelly makes. When DJs plan music rotations, "R. Kelly is a no-brainer."
The latest CD is just gaining popularity in the Tampa Bay area. Jockeys are including U Saved Me in mix shows with secular beats, Shepard said.
In Chicago, hip-hop radio station WGCI-FM 107.5 has worn out Kelly's first single and is playing another song on the album, Prayer Changes. "They've had huge record sales," music director Tiffany Green said.
Also setting this music apart is that some people think it's evangelically more powerful than work by contemporary Christian artists.
Christian artists who wanted to cross over, such as BeBe and CeCe Winans and Kirk Franklin, have done so with comparatively toned-down lyrics that have appealed to the masses. They've used pumped-up dance beats or spoken of God in ambiguous pronouns, he and him. Interestingly, pop listeners are accepting bolder lyrics from the secular artists who freely use Jesus' name and talk about the devil and sins.
From West's Jesus Walks:
So here go my single, dog, radio needs this.
They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus.
That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes.
But if I talk about God, my record won't get played, Huh?
For weeks, the song lingered in the Top 10 on Billboard's R&B/hip-hop and rap singles charts. "There are going to be a lot of people touched by U Saved Me, touched by Prayer Changes, touched by 3-Way Phone Call," Bonner said, listing songs on Kelly's album. "We don't know what these people look like. We don't know what the gospel artists' lives look like. All we have on record is their music."
* * *
From Kelly's U Saved Me single:
And though you saw my faults, you forgave me all my sins, said if I would call on you, then you would let me in. I had nothing to lose, and so I tried you. And now I'm glad I did 'cause you are the truth. You saved me. You saved me. . . .
From Kelly's Ignition, a song on his 2003 Chocolate Factory album, which has sold 2.5-million copies:
Girl, please let me stick my key in your ignition, babe.
So I can get this thing started and get rollin', babe.
See, I'll be doin' about 80 on your freeway.
Girl, I won't stop until I drive you crazy.
* * *
"His music obviously over the years has two very different aspects to it," said Kelly's spokesman Allan Mayer. "People find it odd that both these components run so strongly in the composer."
But Kelly is no different from the average person, Mayer said. "If you have a spectrum with saints on one end of it and devils on one end of it . . . most of us are probably in the middle."
Is that where Kelly is?
"I think he'd leave that to God."
Robert Kelly is 35 and married with kids. He's a Christian who prays regularly and attends a church in Chicago, Mayer said. As a boy, he sang in the church choir. He draws on that heritage for inspirational hits, including I Believe I Can Fly and You Are Not Alone, which he wrote for Michael Jackson.
The latest CD, Mayer said, reflects Kelly's spiritual experiences and those of people around him.
Is he trying to make a statement?
"Certainly, to the extent to which the gospel songs on this album ask for redemption . . . these are things Rob asks for in his life," Mayer says. "He views the sensuous side and the spiritual life as a struggle."
Kelly's legal problems continue to dog him. He made news last month after agreeing to perform for the Congressional Black Caucus' scholarship benefit in Washington. A committee of caucus leaders' wives booked Kelly, who performed for free. But some caucus members believed it was inappropriate, given Kelly's legal situation.
In 2002, Kelly was charged with child pornography after police said he was the man in an underground video having sex with an underage girl. Prosecutors initially filed 21 charges; they dropped seven this year. Kelly has pleaded innocent. Later in 2002, Polk County detectives seized pictures that they said showed Kelly having sex with an underage girl. Prosecutors dropped all charges this year after a judge ruled that detectives obtained the pictures illegally.
Lately, critics have accused Kelly of releasing the gospel album to make himself look good for potential jurors in Chicago. Mayer said that's not true. Kelly has been making inspirational hits for years, he said.
As Kelly gets older, Mayer said, gospel grows more important to him. He probably will record more spiritual songs in the future. He wrote and produced I Need An Angel, the lead single on Ruben Studdard's inspirational album, scheduled for release in November. Studdard was American Idol's 2003 winner.
Kelly has no plans to give up secular music. Last week, Kelly launched "The Best of Both Worlds" tour with rapper Jay-Z. The two will release a joint album on Oct. 26 with previously unreleased songs to complement the tour. As of press time, no tour dates were scheduled in Florida.
It doesn't seem that Kelly and other artists are seeking acceptance from Christian traditionalists.
U2's Bono made headlines after using the F-word last year at the Golden Globe Awards. A member of Evanescence reportedly said a similar bad word last year during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, conveying that the group was not necessarily a Christian band. Christian bookstores and radio stations quickly pulled the group's material.
Buyers need only look at Kelly's CD jacket to see he's not striving to be the next Pat Boone. There are no doves, no soft colors or kind smiles typical of Christian CD decor. Kelly is pictured in dark shades, jeans and a shirt opened two buttons lower than prudent, his chest shiny, toned and, yes, sexy.
”Really, what qualifies one to sing the good news of Jesus Christ is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” says Gerard Bonner, senior writer for GospelFlava.com. “When you hear what R. Kelly is saying in the U Saved Me album, there’s no way he can say this without having a relationship with Christ.” Here Kelly performs the song at the Soul Train Music Awards in March.