In this interview, celebrity gospel musician, Kenny Saint Brown, speaks with Oseyiza Oogbodo on sundry issues about her career. Excerpts:
You just dropped a new single. Can you tell us about it?
OK, it’s a worship single entitled Majesty Ebube. It’s my second worship single in twenty years. I’ve been doing gospel music for twenty years and I started with contemporary praise worship; then I went into traditional praise and then from there, God moved me to hip-hop gospel, you know, entertaining gospel, and I later went into street hip-hop, which is more like afro hip-hop gospel music and I collaborated with some mainstream hip-hop acts and it’s contemporary, happy and entertaining gospel music, which I could perform at concerts, big concerts, outside churches, and now I’m back to praise and worship.
How is Majesty Ebube doing since its release?
Majesty Ebube is an unusual worship song. People are not believing it, you know, it sounds almost unbelievable that I could do that, because of the vocal delivery. I’m not surprised at the amazement, the amazing comments they’ve given and it’s because it’s been a journey, and a journey of different musical genres expressing the same good news of God’s goodness, and inspiring so many people. But about the vocal prowess, I wasn’t really, really into the vocal part, vocal delivery like that. I wasn’t such a vocalist. I was just a singer. I was just a nominal singer, if you get what I mean. But for Majesty Ebube, the vocal delivery is so deep and heart wrenching. It was a song from the soul, from the depths of my loss. I’m happy to recover worship again and this time I’m never going to let it go and the revelation of how majestic God is to me; I was able to use my voice to express that. You know, for some people, it’s the singing before the content. But to gospel music basically, it’s really the content before the singing. But for some, it’s about the vocal delivery. So, it looks like for the first time, vocal delivery, KSB hit it, she sang from her soul. And so the responses and the down loads are so huge. It trended for three, four days and people are already asking for the video. A lot of radio stations are already using it. It doesn’t even need people tweeting, convincing them you need to play this song. They are playing already. On Sundays.
I cried to God for it. I prayed for it. Yes, it was something from my heart. Something I knew I had. I had it before and I lost it. So, I cried to God to restore it, to give me back and how better it was to give and He’s given me back. You know, He told me He’s given me back
You spoke about the vocal prowess being extraordinary. Did you, perhaps, take some vocal lessons prior to recording it?
I would not say no, I would not say yes. Not deliberate vocal lessons, but the vocal lessons in the church every Sunday. Every Sunday, I lead a youth church and I ensure that I could sing every Sunday and engage especially in praise and worship. Not only that, I prayed for it. I cried to God for it. I prayed for it. Yes, it was something from my heart. Something I knew I had. I had it before and I lost it. So, I cried to God to restore it, to give me back and how better it was to give and He’s given me back. You know, He told me He’s given me back. On Sunday after Sunday, I knew He had given it back to me. I’ve been attending a lot of church events, which I wasn’t doing for a very long time. I’m not talking about concerts. I’m talking of worship. Some people invite you only for worship. They would say KSB, we just want you to come and minister. So, it’s been a lot of singing Sunday after Sunday and if you don’t call that preparation, I don’t know what else preparation is. Because we do live band singing every Sunday and Wednesdays, there’s no CD player, track one, track two, track three, you know, you play with live band. So, I would say yes, I got prepared for it.
Why is Majesty Ebube your second worship song in twenty years?
My brother, even me, I didn’t even realise it, too. For me, it’s been a journey of tests, trial, approval and justification. I found out that everybody can do praise but not everybody can do worship. To do praise, it’s the spirit of happiness. You just need to be happy. To do worship, you need to be broken. You need to be fruit in the mortar and it takes God to break it, put you in that mortar and pound it, pound you until worship is coming out of your breath. You open your mouth and it’s just the worship of Him that’s coming out of you. It might even be just one line that you break down and it becomes a five-minute worship that the whole world will join you to sing. So, it was God at work in me, it wasn’t me trying to force worship out. Don’t forget, I was bringing out music season after season. But even the one that looks like worship, it was still hip-hop. So, it wouldn’t be like worship singing but just a communication between God and I. But it wasn’t the one that churches would use, it wasn’t a Sunday morning worship song. But the worship that the whole world would have to sing, they take from your mouth and then sing back to God; it’s only God that can give you that. And He has to break you first, because He doesn’t want to take out of your spirit that’s not pure and spread over the pulpit, because there’s a spirit in every song, which determines how far the song will go. And so, this is a song that every church will sing on Sunday morning and worship back to God, God himself has to prepare the vessel.
At the level of my life now, exactly twenty years of doing gospel music, I’m not going to go if God doesn’t go before me. So, when God decrees it to take me all over the world, because I’ve gone all around the world doing gospel music, but not in the church, you understand. I was doing contemporary, inspirational, gospel music that clubs could play, DJs could play, the streets could play. It was only one that churches could use, and so it’s now twenty years after that He’s given me another one. It’s Him that will take me around the world by Himself. If it’s about my book, last year I released a book entitled Stop! Turn It Around and it’s going on tour. If it’s my book tour, I’ll go round the world and its tour is in the pipelines. But for the worship song, it’s only Him that will direct me on it.
