The Jesus Crew

Kirk Franklin's album "1NC" (One Nation Crew), on Gospocentric, starts with a resurrection. Over a prolonged machine beep that no one will miss as a flatlining medical monitor comes a shouted barrage of societal ills until a series of shocks revives the patient. The heartbeat, revived, slides into a compellingly funky rhythm, the foundation for the album to come. For this crew, assembled under the world's original gospel rapper, there is no mistaking that the reviving force is Jesus.

Not long ago, the Rev. Franklin could have been the dying patient in question. Abandoned by his mother as a baby in 1971, he never knew his father and spent his teen years running the inner city's mean streets with gangs and drugs. Looking for an outlet for his instinctive and extraordinary musical gifts, however, Franklin found the church, turned his life around, and burst out of nowhere in the early '90s to create a musical sensation.

Franklin's innovations transcend the gospel's usual restrictions to the church and the back racks at WalMart. “Stomp,” the hit from his album "God's Property," featured a rap by Salt, of the mainstream hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa. Played in dance halls across the country, it raised controversy for bringing gospel music into the realm of "worldly things." In 1998, he broke new ground with the remake of Bill Withers’ 1972 hit “Lean on Me,” with vocal contributions from Mary J. Blige and Bono from U2. “I’ve always considered gospel music to be a representation of our faith,” says Franklin, “not a definition of any one particular musical sound or style.”

But neither does Franklin let style overshadow the message. The gospel/R&B duo Mary Mary had a huge hit this year with the moving single “Shackles (Praise You),” a song one could dance to without ever really hearing the gospel. One Nation Crew never lets you forget why they are singing, and who they are singing about--even if you are dancing.

Continued on page 2: The downside is that the gospel preached on '1NC' is exclusively personal... »