Kirk Franklin
I'm very committed to a diet and very committed to exercise.Collection: Diet
Gospel music is not a sound; gospel music is a message. Gospel music means good news. It's good-news music.Collection: Music
If we were not sinners, Jesus would not have had to come. If he didn't see us as sinners, he could have loved us without dying for us. He died for our sins. So if we're all sinners, that means everybody's in the pot together needing the same love, the same grace and the same forgiveness.Collection: Forgiveness
The core of what we do is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and my music is a reflection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not as much inspirational as it is spreading the Gospel.Collection: Inspirational
It's very hard to grow up in the African American church and for music to not be in your veins. It's just part of the fabric of who we are as people, especially black musicians.Collection: Music
There's nothing as a Christian black man that I fear that the average white male wouldn't.
The Bible is not a book that's an attack on gay people. It's not a book written to attack gay people.
More than anything, I'm trying to peel back those layers that keep people away from God and keep people away from experiencing the love of God and knowing God's love as a father.
It is horrible that we have made it where the Bible is a homophobic manual. That's not what the Bible is.
If I'm writing and doing music celebrating the Creator, who is the most creative being in the world - I mean, when you look at nature and when you look at all of the beautiful created things - why should I be limited in expressing myself? He's creative, so why shouldn't my music be creative, too?
It makes you feel good when you do a song that, sonically, can fit right next to Drake. But our audience, they don't care. And it hurts that they don't care!
I'm always trying to find innovative ways to be able to keep God famous. For all the properties I'm involved in, that's been my agenda.
I think that sometimes we have compromised quality content for the fear of Christianity, and I think that they both can co-exist.
We're trying to create content that is very culturally forward without compromising the push of the gospel.
I trust that if God gives me music for someone else, that's what He wants that person to have. I have to trust that that's what they're supposed to do and that's the music that should specifically be released for them and their ministry, for their career and for their audience.
Every human being was wired with the desire for happiness. And we will try different things all in the pursuit of that feeling.
My goal is to try to lead people to the manufacturer of their souls.
Music for me should be more like a mission.
I don't work with an artist to try to blow up, but to see if the music can be medicine, if it can be therapeutic and serve a bigger purpose.
Christian music, gospel music, sometimes you'll fall asleep at church but music wakes you up, the song can speak to you in a way that's puts a fire in you. So if I'm working with a mainstream artist I'm trying to find a bigger purpose.
Whether it's Kendrick Lamar or J. Cole or Common there are a lot of artists, especially rappers, who come from a background with a faith-based substance, and it's time for that substance to be celebrated and appreciated.
I'm an advocate for therapy.
We've gotta be able to change that climate so that people feel more comfortable to be honest about their wounds.
A lot of times we make God to be this protagonist to our hope and our joy, and to be this old, grumpy man with this long beard and white robe. That is so counterintuitive to the heart of God.
You know, when you read stories in the Bible - you know, Samson, the story of David or the story of Moses - you know, there's conflict on the way to the victory.
Real people live with, you know, being Christians with cancer, Christians with AIDS, and Christians coming back home with limbs missing from war, and Christians being evicted, and Christians losing their homes. And if you don't paint that picture, too, then I think that you are misrepresenting what the faith really can look like.
I celebrate my weaknesses.
Well, I feel that the pursuit of trying to know who God is, and trying to be known by God, can be lost in religion. Because religion, all that it is, is man's attempt to try to put a definition on something that is very hard to define.
I've seen people fall in love with God, or come to see God loving them, through a relationship.
My job on Earth, the reason why Kirk is created, is to make God famous. I just want God to be well-known. And I think it's created a dialogue - I think it's opened up conversation, and people have started to talk about what religion is to them.
Most gospel music is very vertical. And there's nothing wrong with that - there's nothing wrong with, you know, 'God, we praise you,' and 'hallelujah.' Those songs are very important. But I also like to do songs that are very horizontal, that kind of fit within the fabric of people's everyday life.
Some of our strongest critics, especially inside the church, said we had turned our backs on traditional gospel music and were just contemporary R&B artists exploiting Christian lyrics for the money. But that's not true.
Wanting to be happy is something that every human being aspires to have.
I wasn't trying to be no national name or nothing. I didn't have that idea to even think that was possible.
When we go through being rejected and abandoned like I did as a kid, you have a lot of fear and anxiety issues that you didn't even know that's what it was defined as. You live your life a lot of times living with the ghost of fear.
Well, one thing that I've learned is that love and fear cannot occupy the same space. So, one of the weapons to defeat fear is love. Learning the power of love and being loved by the creator of love. Being loved by God himself.
Anyone that has a microphone, that temptation for the voice to be bigger than the message is always there.
When you look at the decline of church attendance in America, or when you look at the decline of millennials that are not going to church in America, you want to have the conversation that a lot of times people are hit more with religion and rules and the systems than they are with the love of God and having a personal relationship with Christ.
Religion, throughout the years, has become a very oppressive thing that doesn't allow people to get to know the God it was created to try to lead them to.
I would never say that claiming you're a Christian is wrong. I understand that there is a human aspect of being able to identify people whether it's African American, Hispanic or Asian. But the definition doesn't define the relationship, meaning you can be married and still not know intimacy.
I'm borderline vegan.
I really love New York. I just love the aesthetics and the spirit of New York. I've just always loved the energy of it. When you're flying into New York and you look out of the window, it's like you're flying into another planet. I've never stopped being amazed at it.
I can go to a movie theater and sit there all day. I love movies. They intrigue my brain and they relax me. I am a movie buff.
I preach Christ, whether people want to hear that or not. I preach it in the spirit of love, you know, not in a spirit of hate, for whoever wants to listen - black, white, Jew or Gentile. They are all my brothers, you know? They are all my sisters.
A lot of times the thoughts of religion are not all bibliocentric, sometimes they're cultural. Then it becomes cultural to say, 'it's wrong to do this and it's wrong to do that.' It becomes a misinterpretation of scripture.
Some people's healing and transformation may take years, and that does not mean that they're not in deep pursuit, you know?
I've never wanted to be a liar because truth heals me.
My first triumph was turning Elton John's 'Benny and the Jets' into a gospel tune.
I prefer being flawed and I prefer being seen flawed.
I was adopted when I was 4. The woman who adopted me, she was 64 years old.