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This Is the Sound of 1,300 People in Prison Singing Gospel Together
Listen if you like: PJ Morton, Tye Tribbett, Chance the Rapper
The most ambitious prison concert I have ever heard of took place a few years ago in Florida. Gospel megastar Kirk Franklin teamed up with Maverick City Music, a group of young chart toppers in the Christian music world, to film and record a concert for 1,300 men at Everglades Correctional Institution. Around 30 of those men served as a backing choir.
The resulting 2022 album, “Kingdom Book One,” has a fittingly gigantic sound. When I put the song “Bless Me” on in my car, I feel like I’ve gone through a portal to an old-school revival tent.
From Frank Sinatra to Kim Kardashian, celebrities have long journeyed to prisons to take their careers in new directions. The 1970s saw a run of celebrity prison concerts, by artists like Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Sonny James. Today musicians like Jelly Roll, Brandi Carlile and Los Tigres del Norte are keeping that tradition alive. But given Franklin’s fame, this album reached far more people in the free world than most music made in prisons these days. It was featured on “Fox & Friends,” “The Today Show” and “The View,” where Franklin danced onstage with Whoopi Goldberg.
Franklin often uses his access to a massive Christian audience to take bold political stands. He recently used a Grammy red carpet interview to criticize churches for not doing more to protect immigrants from ICE raids. (“Jesus’s mom and dad were immigrants,” he said.) When “Kingdom Book One” came out, he said his goal was “to make sure that nobody is forgotten” even as “some people are lost to mass incarceration,” as he put it on “The View.”
When Franklin arrived at the Everglades prison, men serenaded him from their cells with his own past hits. He told Rolling Stone, “To hear the hope and freedom in their voices even though they were in situations that are extremely challenging … that’s why we do what we do, and that’s what the music is for.”
In the spirit of inclusion, Franklin and Maverick City Music members also did interviews with the Prison Journalism Project. “This should serve as a reminder to everyone that no matter how far you’ve gone, or what you have done, that you are never alone,” co-founder Jonathan Jay told incarcerated reporter Frank Morse.
One of the members of the prison choir, Chad Robison, said, “Prison tends to dehumanize you … So it felt good to be treated like a human being for just one day.”
I picked “Bless Me” not only because you can hear the incarcerated choir most clearly, but also because it shows off the way this album moves between genres. Franklin has long blended gospel with hip-hop, working with mainstream acts like GloRilla and Chance the Rapper. Maverick City Music takes gospel in the direction of contemporary Christian worship music, popular in churches where most of the members are White — think Coldplay-style piano chords and string sections.
“Bless Me” pairs electronic beats with a drum groove that calls to mind both go-go and marching drumline, along with classic gospel organ, flashy jazz riffs, multiple key changes and a Black-church vocal performance from Franklin that shows astonishing range and control, even as he jumps up and down and nearly screams, “We blessed, we blessed, we blessed!”
LINER NOTES
Song: “Bless Me” | Album: “Kingdom Book One” | Artists: Kirk Franklin and Maverick City Music | Songwriter: Kirk Franklin | Producers: Jonathan Jay, Norman Gyamfi, Tony Brown, Kirk Franklin, Chandler Moore and Marlon Robertson | Recording Location: Everglades Correctional Institution, Miami-Dade County, Florida