Kirk Franklin Graces The New Yorker Reveals Promoter Shorted Him $3K Once

Everybody’s “big brother” in the gospel music industry, Kirk Franklin spent some time  with the New Yorker at his home in Fort Worth, Texas.  Franklin discussed everything from the business of gospel music to the constraints he feels as an artist.

Discussing the business of music, Kirk says, “They don’t come to gospel for the production or for the beats,” he said of his audience. “They come because they wanna be ministered to. So sometimes it’s, like, Well, if that’s all I’m good for, what do I do with all these ideas, and these creative dreams, and growth I want to do as an artist? I wanna give you Jesus, but I wanna give you Jesus with an 808. I wanna give you Jesus with some strings.”

Franklin spoke of the constraints he feels as a gospel artist. “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? But everyone in my community, and especially the consumers, they don’t see it that way. Which is weird for me. 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!”

Franklin also revealed the time a promoter told him he was $3,000 short of the money he owed him.

‘You wouldn’t do that to John Legend,” Franklin said, clearly still upset. “You wouldn’t do that to Jill Scott or Erykah Badu. So what do you think of me and my genre, that it’s so country and so backward that you can do that to me?” He found the whole experience discouraging. “You mean after twenty years I’m still having a promoter come up to me and tell me he doesn’t have three thousand dollars? That’ll make you want to go home. My community’s still doing that? I’m done.”