December 04, 2007 @ 4:24 pm

The Passion of Kirk Franklin

Linda Hobbs

He’s rich, loves God, and doesn’t care what people think. Kirk Franklin, VIBE’s favorite gospel star, opens up about hating his parents, the trials of Prophet Juanita Bynum, and his choice to no longer work with secular artists.

I grew up with Kirk Franklin. Known him for a long time. Anyone who came up in the church pre-"Stomp" knows the S-curl homie with the tuxedo, remembers him flailing his arms in the air, performing painfully pretty gospel classics - "Why We Sing," "Silver & Gold," "Melodies from Heaven." He was Richard Smallwood meets R. Kelly. "Devil music" meets Jehovah Tsidkenu. A proficient composer who was going to do something, eventually, to piss off our parents.

In 1997, he did. A song called "Stomp" dropped. It was the "Hit 'Em Up" of gospel. But instead of Kirk boasting, "That's why I fucked yo' bitch!" he announced something even more shocking: "For those of you that think gospel music has gone too far. You think we got too radical for Christ. Well I got news for you: You ain't heard nothin yet! And if you don't know now you know! Glory, Glory!"

Sanctified, gritty, revolutionary, violent, euphoric, ridiculous, ballsy, comical, appalling. Hardcore bible-waving believers like some folk in my Pentecostal and non-denominational world saw it early: "See," they'd say squinty-eyed, like some neoteric prophecy just hit their spirit, "Satan's trying to have his seat in the chuuuch!!!"

Meanwhile, my sister and I were hiding Nas tapes in our basement. Our single Christ-crazed mom wasn't having it. And every chance we got, we made it our mission to convince the world that Kirk Franklin wasn't a sinner - he was cool.

Growing up though, Kirk didn't feel cool. Like any other kid, he smoked weed, got drunk, went to clubs, got into fights, even boned girls (resulting in him getting one chick pregnant when he was 17). He was also teased a lot. "When I was in high school," he revealed in a 1997 VIBE cover story, "I was called gay so much that I used to wake up in the morning crying and begging my mother not to send me to school . . . I wanted to be down. I wanted to show I wasn't no punk."

Ten years later, Kirk—who's dropping a new album, The Fight of My Life, Dec. 18— still has a chokehold on the industry. He's slid across stages praising Jesus with everyone from Bono to Mary J. Blige. VIBE sat with the 37-year-old performer, who can't be no more than about 5'5, high in the sky in the Sony Building on Madison Avenue. He wore throwback Doc Martens-style boots and a fur-collared black hoodie, ate a salad, and spilled his guts on hating his parents, the trials of televangelist Juanita Bynum, and his choice to no longer work with secular artists.


VIBE: The title of your new album is The Fight of My Life. Sounds so heavy.

KIRK FRANKLIN: These are heavy times, man. People are really struggling just to survive, to keep their sanity. I wanted people to know that they aren't in that fight by themselves. I'm trying to hold onto faith, you know. Dealing with fear, like, "Is God going to work this out in enough time?" As church cats we hurt, and are tempted, and afraid, and get scared and get angry just like the world does, just like anybody else.

You're like the Jay-Z of gospel.

[Laughs hysterically] I'm the gospel Jigga! Isn't that funny?! All I'm trying to do is what God called me to do and leave that place kind of up to ya'll, the genius journalists that ya'll are, who document this stuff. I do what I do because, real talk, I understand that I'm not going to always be accepted and liked because of the fact that I'm that Jesus dude. And I had to make a decision a long time ago that I can't be in this for no hype, for no love, for no paper, for no [magazine] cover.

How do you feel about the church being seemingly under attack right now, particularly following the whole Juanita Bynum situation? Does that affect you?

Yeah it does. It makes me want to be on my game. And when I talk about game, I'm not just talking about my music stuff; I'm talking about my walk [with God]. Music, entertainment, that's fruit. The root of a tree, that's what a person is in private. I'm only as strong publicly as I'm going to be privately. And I don't think that we as Christians have done as good enough job as we needed to make sure we are strong privately; so now you see us crumbling publicly. We've been trying to tell ya'll, "Well, God is doing this," and privately we weren't doing the work.

So you feel that a lot is being exposed with people?

That word is a little too… boastful. It's almost like it separates me from them, when I am them and it's only by God's grace that I didn't end up like them. It ain't because I didn't have my junk. That's why I think it was wrong for people to bash [Bill] Clinton, because he ain't the first one [to cheat on his wife]. He just happened to get caught. Everybody else needs to shut up and thank God for grace that he didn't pull out they stank drawers.

But when the public crumbling starts happening, that's your greatest hour—

It's only your greatest hour if you are prepared for what you've done privately. Private work will allow a person to be strong when they stand up. But if I'm trying to teach you prosperity and Bentleys and success and all that . . . That ain't no substance. That's like a husband and wife smiling for the camera while they going down the red carpet, but they get back home, and they sleeping in two different bedrooms.



Okay, but you seemed like you had it all together. Then there was the 2005 Oprah appearance [where you revealed you were once addicted to pornography]. How did people react to you after that?

I think the Oprah [appearance] was very interesting. For five years, I've been telling my testimony in church; I've been on covers of Christian publications, I've been on Christian television telling my testimony about a lot of unhealthy sexual activity that I got introduced to as a kid.

That's what made the Oprah people even call me; they had heard my story from TBN and other [shows]. For people who hadn't been in church, it was news for them. As a culture, we're not used to people telling on themselves. How many people come out and just tell on themselves? You knew that Lindsay [Lohan] had a drinking or a drug problem because she was arrested. You know that Britney [Spears] is having some emotional problems because she's arrested. We're used to people getting caught. We're not used to people exposing themselves.

Do you feel the Oprah interview went fairly?

Well . . . I think that whenever you set yourself up to be a martyr, you can't always determine how it's gonna look in everyone else's eyes. I've had a lot of men come to me and just cry on my shoulder thanking me [for the Oprah appearance]. I've had a lot of women that have stopped me in airports. I'm not saying that to big myself up, because I've also had a lot of people that got mad at me.

Mad at you?

Yeah. Think about it: Before Oprah, the only negative thing that people could ever say about me is that they didn't like my style of music. You ain't heard about me being in no scandals. You ain't heard about me being with no chick. You ain't gonna hear about me stealing no church money. You ain't heard about me tipping on [my wife] Tammy with a chick or a dude. I ain't been a down-low dude, I ain't been nothing. Only thing you can be like is, "Oh I don't like his music."

So, here I am sharing something that is ugly. People are feeling like " Why you want to tell that?" That made a lot of people uncomfortable. [But] it was my wife who thought it was a great idea for me to [appear on Oprah].

So going back to other people, like Juanita Bynum, who’s been criticized for going on television talking about her situation with [her ex-husband] Bishop Weeks. You’re saying you don’t see anything wrong with any of that. You feel like it's a Christian's responsibility to come out and speak about that?

I think there's a difference between testimonies and  . . . trying to use the media for your own benefit, or pimp media opportunities. There are some people who will call media outlets to tell those stories. [Oprah] was an outlet that called me.

So our motives are different because the genesis of it is different. I'm not calling people and asking to give interviews about how I was a little dirty boy doing these little nasty things as a young man. I ain't called nobody.

So if somebody calls me and wants me to share something that I hope can help other people, why wouldn't I? But if I’m trying to do something to say there's one person at fault, or try to make myself seem great, and I'm looking for these new opportunities, and I'm endorsing myself as the "New Messiah of Pornography," then, God can't get the glory and can't nobody get blessed cause I'm doing it for the wrong reasons.

It's almost like me boxing with my shirt off saying, "I'ma do this cause I want to be the sexy Christian!" I try to do what I do for the right motives.

My real momma lived 15 minutes from me and I ain't got no good relationship with her, she can't stand me, I can't stand her. I got a crackhead sister. That's what people need to know. They need to stop seeing all these suits and ties and all this Hollywood stuff. They need to see I'm hurting just like you.

None of this is hypothetical?

All that's true! Everything I just said is true. My momma lived 15 minutes away from me and I ain't never had a relationship with her. My real dad lives in Houston. The first time I saw him, he showed up to one of my concerts. I didn't let him backstage, cause how dare you not invest in my life but you want to be backstage?! And you want to introduce me to all these kids that are your kids, like, "Hug your brother"? "Fool, please! I don't know you."

And I got to deal with that, cause that anger can turn into sin. I've struggled and been angry with these people. Borderline hating these people.

Musically, there's no one left you haven't worked with. Any guest appearances on this new album?

No big time guest appearances. I work with cats from my church community. People you might never heard of like The Williams Brothers. Rance Allen, he's a beast. This white Christian rock artist name TobyMac. He's a beast. I didn't work with nobody mainstream.

Was that a conscious decision?

Yeah.

Why?

Here's what's going on man. I think there are some incredibly talented people that are mainstream, but right now, everybody's message is getting so sexual. And I don't want to confuse what I'm trying to do right now. There was a time when you could work with a Stevie Wonder, or a Marvin Gaye or a Donnie Hathaway because we were all talking about the same thing. James Brown and James Cleveland could've done, "Say It Loud: I'm Black and I'm Proud," and it could've been accepted because it's true.

But now, its kind of hard to team up with people because they may have one positive song on their album but when you listen to their body of work, they be like, "We're at the club," "We're popping bottles," "We're on the pole," "We're making it rain," "We're at the after party." It's hard to team up with a person that has that body of work because when I work with you, I'm endorsing you. I'm putting my seal on you in my community and saying, "He's good. Receive him."

But in the past you've worked with a lot of secular artists who've had their issues. Could it be now, because you've come out with the whole pornography thing, that you're saying, "Okay, I'm about to pause on that"?

Oh, no! See, what you got to understand is that the pornography story is not new. It's seven years old. It's new to ya'll but it ain't been new to my community. This decision not to work with secular artists has to do with just spiritual growth. The last time I worked with these artists, I was like 27 years old. That was 10 years ago.

Can you see yourself working with secular artists again at all?

Yeah, if we have the same vision. Like the Lauryn Hill we loved, that Miseducation Lauryn Hill? I could work with her in the drop of a dime. Oh God yeah. Faith Hill, Garth Brooks . . . I'm just concerned that I don't send mixed messages to people.

Was there some sort of epiphany where you came to this conclusion?

Yeah . . . just spiritual growth. Have you noticed that within the last few years hip hop is now going back to the brown paper bag? Talking about the dope boy, [and] slanging that was hot in the late '80s, [like with] 2 Live Crew down in Miami and Dre and NWA, where you had a lot of drug songs? And then it seemed like we moved away from it and the stuff was more about the party. But now it seems like the drug boy anthems are coming back now?

So what I'm saying is, I believe that black music is going in the direction that's tying my hands. I got to make sure that I keep my integrity.

And how old are you now? [Laughs]

How old do I look?

You still look like you're about to perform "Stomp."

And I'm about to hug you right now. Because you just made my day.

Article tags: Kirk Franklin, Jay-Z, 2 Live Crew, Lauryn Hill, Garth Brooks, Bono, Mary J. Blige, Rance Allen, The Williams Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway, TobyMac, Oprah Winfrey, Juanita Bynum 

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