You mentioned earlier that you started singing in the church. What brought you back to the gospel genre?
Well happens a lot with the black community where you grow up in gospel music and gospel music when I was exposed to it, there weren't all the opportunities for recording and outlets for getting your music out there to the marketplace. But my experience in After 7 has afforded me the ability to understand how to record music, arrange vocals, produce vocals, and write music, and know how to make it fit and feel well. So it's really taken the experience in After 7 to bolster the ability that God has given me to now take those experiences and do the work for him.
And I kinda believe that as a child, that was what my destiny was to begin with, to do God's work and not so much Keith's work. And I think when you do gospel music and keep the gospel music true to the word of God which comes from the Bible, you get an opportunity to minister to people's hearts through music. And once you get the word, that's what changes. If people could read and understand what's in the Bible, and then believe what they read and understand, then that word once it's inside your body, you believe it with all your heart like we believe 1 and 1 is 2.
If those profound teachings from the Bible can be stored into your heart, it can get you off of drug addiction, it can get you off of alcohol addiction, it can get you off of sexual addiction. It can change you from being a murderer to being a lover. So just reading doesn't necessarily do it. Reading the Bible won't necessarily give you the ability, the strength the way allowing the word to become a part of your heart and believe in your heart.
But music, if you listen to kids today, they learn rap music faster than they learn how to spell their name. You know what I'm saying? So if you can take the word of God and put it on a track that has a hit beat, and the kid will listen to the track because of the beat, and eventually they start hearing the beat so much they start singing the song, they learn the song and then they start singing. The message from the song and they're pouring that message into their heart. Well once it gets into your heart, it changes you.
So if you get the word in your heart, I don't care if you get it from reading the Bible, studying it over and over again, that's one way. But I think music is a profound way to pour it into a mass amount of people's hearts – the messages and intentions of what God has written in the Bible. If you put it in a clever enough song it hits a mass amount of people and they can grow and they can change from it and so that's what has affected my aspirations. It's just a great way to get to kids and to get the younger generation to inform them about the presence of God that exists in all of our lives.
Do you have anything else planned in the future?
I've just kinda learned how to let go and let God. So I'll press on about recording music, expanding my development in the gospel, and putting more messages in sound and music. And I have plans and goals that I'd like to achieve with the music because I believe Christians should have the ability to be as excited about gospel music that we get about secular music. Kinda like what Kirk Franklin has done imparting great musical rhythms from R&B into the gospel, hip-hop into the gospel, to the point to where people get up out of their seats and they want to jump and they want to shout and praise God the same way they jump and shout and praise Bobby Brown, Akon, Gwen Stefani or whoever you follow me?
That's all the questions I've got for you. I do have one more question, it's like a site tradition. Since we're dedicated to 90s R&B and you guys were so involved in it, what were some of your own favorite songs from the 90s.
The 90s, I liked Hi-Five, what Gerald LeVert was doing. Keith Sweat, Regina Belle, were great during that time. Mariah Carey blew up huge during that time period, love her work. Babyface. Karyn White had a brief moment. Awesome vocalist. I know I'm missing some folks. SWV. En Vogue. Of course, Luther. I love the fact that Mariah had gotten great, fell down, and got back up with great ballads and love songs and makes it feel like the past. I look for Whitney to do the same thing.
Kind of an interesting question. When you look at Mariah's career, as you put it, you know, she fell off there for a little bit but now she's back and better than ever. What do you think caused her career to resurface so powerfully?
Well honestly, I'd look at what Tommy Mottola was in her career. And Tommy knew how to make great singers, great records. And I think when she got over to Virgin Records, she didn't have the A&R leadership that she had under Tommy. And when she got back with L.A. Reid, great songman himself, he knows how to find great music for the right artist. I think he's learned a lot from Babyface, he's learned a lot being under Clive Davis. You be around those kind of people, you learn all the great skills.
Her getting back to Def Jam with L.A. behind her record, I mean there was no way in the world he was going to let her put out another garbage record. It's just not who you are. And I think a lot of artists, like Boyz II Men for example, they had all that success at Motown. Babyface, Jimmy Jam were writing a lot of their music. And then they have the huge success with "End of the Road" and you get away from the people who made you.
Artists have a tendency to think that the success in their records is them. But it's not always you, it's the music. At the end of the day, it's the music. It's the music that soothes the savage beast. Before we had great singers, we had Beethoven and Bach, we had great symphonies and they orchestrated music. There were no vocals. So as musical vocalists start putting their stamp on music, you find you start losing your success in the fact that the vocal and performance is you. But you're nothing without the music.
So it's understanding what music is and where you fit in it, your interpretation of what you feel. And so a lot of times I think the success of vocalist get away from respecting the music and a lot of times the producers of music are in tune to the music that helps to bring your interpretation vocally out to your best.
When you look back at Whitney Houston's career, Whitney has worked with a set of producers, but those producers always seem to find that musical interpretation that forces her vocal interpretation to be stellar. And I think when vocalists get away from those producers and try to just say well it's me – well, it's not just you.
And I think what Mariah has done is found her way back to her roots through L.A.s interpretation of knowing how to make great music support around a great vocalist. I think Whitney will find her way back too if she's anywhere near Clive Davis or L.A. Reid, she'll come back and be a big success as well.
Well that's everything I've got for you, do you have any last words you wanna say to the listeners?
I just appreciate their ear and the opportunity that your format has given me to share some information perhaps that may be influential in somebody else's endeavors into the musical business and as things unfold in 2009 I'll give you a call back and try to keep you abreast and I appreciate the opportunity Matt.
Thanks a lot Keith and I wish you the best of luck man.
