Kirk Franklin

Kirk Franklin (born January 26, 1970, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.) is an American gospel singer, musician, and choir leader who became a huge commercial and critical success in contemporary Christian music in the 1990s and had tremendous crossover appeal in secular music. As a solo artist and as the leader of the choir groups the Family and the One Nation Crew, Franklin has recorded platinum-selling albums and broken records on Billboard charts.

Early life

He was born Kirk Mathis to teenage parents. At an early age, he was left in the care of his grandaunt, Gertrude Franklin, who legally adopted him. Kirk Franklin became involved in music when he was young. He played piano, and at age seven he was offered a recording contract, which his grandaunt turned down. When he was 11, Franklin was appointed to lead the music program of his family’s local Baptist church in Dallas. In his early teen years Franklin distanced himself from the church, but he returned at age 15 after witnessing a friend die in an accidental shooting.

Gospel star

Franklin gained industry attention at the 1990 Gospel Music Workshop of America Convention, when he was invited to lead a recorded session of the Dallas-Fort Worth Mass Choir. In 1992 Franklin and his 17-voice choir, the Family (whose members included Franklin’s friends and associates), signed a contract with Gospo Centric Records. Their first album, Kirk Franklin and the Family (1993), was a commercial success, spending more than 100 weeks on Billboard’s gospel chart, as well as crossing over into the top 10 on the R&B/hip-hop albums chart. The Family also appeared on Franklin’s next two albums, Christmas (1993) and Whatcha Lookin’ 4 (1995), the latter of which earned Franklin his first Grammy Award for best contemporary soul gospel album.

Franklin’s momentum and faith were challenged in 1996 when he spent 10 days in intensive care after falling into an orchestra pit and landing on his head during a concert in Memphis, Tennessee. After his recovery, however, he told the media that the accident “was meant for a purpose; this had to happen to get me ready for the next level. It’s made me grow up and fall so in love with God.”

In 1997 Franklin released his fourth album, God’s Property from Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation, a collaboration with the Dallas-based choir of the same name, followed by The Nu Nation Project in 1998, which features the Family, God’s Property, and One Nation Crew, a new choir formed by Franklin. Both albums reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart and topped the gospel album chart for more than 40 weeks.

Franklin gained significant crossover appeal by working with secular music artists. On the single “Lean on Me,” from The Nu Nation Project, he was joined by Mary J. Blige, Bono (of U2), Crystal Lewis, and R. Kelly. His music blends elements of hip-hop, pop, rhythm and blues, and soul, and his performance style has been described as “charismatic” and high-energy, sometimes incorporating hip-hop dance moves along with preaching and other traditional gospel elements.

Franklin’s first solo venture, The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin, was released in 2002; it soon went platinum. In 2004 he founded Fo Yo Soul Entertainment, which encompassed a record label that later became an imprint of RCA. He continued his solo career with Hero (2005), Songs for the Storm Volume 1 (2006), The Fight of My Life (2007), Hello Fear (2011), Losing My Religion (2015), and Long Live Love (2019), collecting many more Grammys and Gospel Music Association (GMA) Dove Awards.

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In 2022 Franklin released the album Kingdom (Book One), a collaboration with the gospel collective Maverick City Music. In 2023 his solo album Father’s Day accompanied a YouTube documentary of the same name that follows Franklin’s journey as he reconnects with his oldest son and learns the identity of his biological father.

Film and television work

From 2007 to 2015 Franklin served as the host of Sunday Best, a gospel competition show on Black Entertainment Television (BET). He returned as host in 2019 after the show came back from a four-year hiatus. Franklin also acted in television and film, such as the TV movie Something to Sing About (2000) and the film Joyful Noise (2012). He was executive producer of the TV movies Kirk Franklin’s A Gospel Christmas (2021) and The Night Before Christmas (2022) and the series Kingdom Business (2022).

Personal life and views

Franklin married Tammy Collins in 1996. He legally adopted Collins’s daughter, Carrington, and the couple had two more children, Kennedy and Caziah. In 2023 Franklin and Collins served as hosts of the dating show The One, which they also produced. Franklin also has a son, Kerrion, from a previous relationship.

In 2016 Franklin collaborated with Kanye West on “Ultralight Beam,” a track on West’s album The Life of Pablo. Franklin provided the choir arrangement for the track’s chorus, and he delivers a spoken-word prayer at the end of the song. He also performed with West during the rapper’s appearance that year on Saturday Night Live.

Franklin’s fans expressed disappointment that he was working with a secular musician like West. In response, Franklin wrote in an Instagram post, “To a lot of my Christian family, I’m sorry he’s not good enough, Christian enough, or running at your pace…and as I read some of your comments, neither am I. That won’t stop me from running. Pray we win.”

Later that year Franklin criticized the culture of Christianity in the United States in a HuffPost op-ed published shortly after Donald Trump’s election as president. Franklin wrote, “[T]hese last few days revealed the worst in a lot of us as Americans, but my shock is in the worst I’ve seen in those that claim to believe like I do. While we fight and argue about abortion and sexual orientation, we apparently forgot one of the greatest sins that God continuously acknowledges He hates: PRIDE.” He also wrote, “President-elect Donald Trump, God bless him, is not our source. GOD IS. Dear Christian, when you see something, yet say nothing, you’ve said something.”

In 2019 Franklin called for a boycott of the GMA Dove Awards and the Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network after his comments on police violence were cut from his acceptance speeches during that year’s award ceremony, as well as in 2016.

Other achievements and awards

Franklin has racked up significant achievements on the Billboard charts. In 2023 he became the first artist to spend 100 weeks at number one on a songwriters chart (Gospel Songwriters). He also holds the record for the most number-one singles on the Hot Gospel Songs chart, garnering his ninth single to top that list in 2024 with “Rain Down on Me,” a collaboration with GloRilla and Maverick City Music.

Franklin won his 20th Grammy Award in 2024 for the song “All Things.” That same year he performed in Washington, D.C., at the White House’s Juneteenth concert. He has also received many awards from such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and he was given a BET Ultimate Icon Award in 2025.