The gospel according to Kirk Franklin: lively and lucrative
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Ding dong, bling bling.
With Kirk Franklin, the line between show business and church is more than blurred; it's obliterated. The lively entertainer uses R&B, rap and hip-hop in his contemporary gospel music, and it's made him the most successful figure in the genre.
His 1997 album, "God's Property From Kirk Franklin's Nu Nation," is the best-selling gospel album ever, surpassing 2.5 million copies sold. It was No. 3 on the Billboard 200 album chart. A single from it, "Stomp," featuring Salt-N-Pepa's Cheryl "Salt" James rapping over a groove sampled from George Clinton's Funkadelic, broke into the mainstream Top 40 and was the first song by a gospel artist to go into heavy rotation on MTV.
Franklin's 1993 debut album, "Kirk Franklin and The Family," was the first gospel album to go platinum (1 million in sales). It was No. 1 on the Billboard gospel chart for an astonishing 100 weeks. It has now sold more than 2 million copies.
In concert, Kirkland and his group, The Family, put on a show to rival any act touring today. The lights, the sound, the multilevel staging are all first-class. And like most top pop-music acts, Franklin is not shy about signing up lucrative corporate sponsorships. At his last show here two years ago in KeyArena, ads for Cheerios and Church's Chicken played on two jumbo TV screens before and after the show and during intermission. Banners for other products, from insurance to soft drinks, were plastered throughout the hall.
The Christmas show features songs from "Kirk Franklin and the Family Christmas," an album released five years ago that returns to the charts every Christmas season. The CD includes traditional carols, Franklin-style, as well as original Christmas songs such as "Jesus Is The Reason For the Season," "Thank You For Your Child" and "There's No Christmas Without You."
Franklin's rise from Fort Worth orphan to street thug to gospel mogul is told in his 1998 autobiography, "Church Boy," and was reiterated earlier this week on cable network BET's monthly documentary series, "Journeys in Black." Although a musical child prodigy, who took over his church's choir at age 11 and started recording as a teenager, he also smoked marijuana, had a son out of wedlock and frequented nightclubs as a young man. Now 30, he is the picture of the successful pop star, with a wife and family and all the trappings of success. Praise God!
Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312 and pmacdonald@seattletimes.com.
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