You say, 'Well, I love secular music.' Let me just share something with you: I don't care. I'm not going to go there; this is what I'm going to tell you: It doesn't matter to me whether it's secular or Christian. My question is, what's being said in those words? Because if what's being said in those words contradicts the will of God, you're violating His will, and you're loving it.
My faith plays a big part in who I am: a Christian guy playing pop-rock music. I'm in a pop-rock band, not a Christian band.
I can just be a Christian who sings mainstream music instead of having to be a Christian who has to somehow just sing Christian music.
My musical influences growing up were limited to Korean folk songs and hymns as I went to a Christian boarding school where I was not allowed to listen to secular music.
I don't make music for Christians. I make music for everyone. I make music for the masses.
I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that's when I got to open up my musical horizons.
Gesualdo was very important to me, I wanted to do something which corresponded to him.
Well, I never made a record to be in the Christian market. So when I made my record it was to exist in all of the markets. I grew up not really listening to tons of Christian music and if I did it was in the context of all the other music I listened to. So when I made the record I definitely had plans and visions and dreams.
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.
I'm not a Christian. My participation in music is so full blast, 24 hours a day. And that's my religion. I think I'm as spiritual as the pope, because I spend as much time in my spirituality as he does.
There are people hell-bent on the idea that we're a Christian band in disguise, and that we have some secret message. We have no spiritual affiliation with this music. It's simply about life experience.
I never grew up on Jodeci. I never grew up on things like that 'cause my dad was a preacher, and he kind of kept us away from music like that.
I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.
With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.
Most of the music I grew up listening to was not Christian music, although I definitely had a lot of that at home, too.
Outside of Christ, my songs have no value
Sam Cooke had a huge influence on me. He left the gospel field at one point and went into the secular, and he had this huge hit, 'You Send Me.' Irma, my older sister, and I heard 'You Send Me' on the radio while we were driving through the South one night. We had to stop the car. We got out and danced around the car out on the highway.
The church didn't know what to do with Ray Charles or Al Green. And so they were kind of ostracized.
I went back and researched the history of gospel; where it came from, slavery times, communicating with each other without their master knowing what they are saying, and that gospel artists view themselves differently.
When I was a kid, we weren't really supposed to listen to secular music. But one day, I found a 'Led Zeppelin IV' cassette tape in the garage, and it was just amazing-sounding music, not like anything I'd heard before. I remember thinking: 'Well, if God created music, why is his music in church not as good as this?'
Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven. Every note, and every strain, and every harmony is divine, and belongs to us.
I never wanted to be on an exclusively Christian label.
I grew up in a very strict household, where secular music was forbidden.
I grew up in eastern Kentucky, and we would sing in the churches, and there's lots of good mountain church singers out there. Like a lot of folks who turn out to be secular music artists, that's a lot of the training you put in, whether you know it or not.
The tunes, rhythms, and messages are drawn mainly from secular culture.
