In an extensive interview with Mike Rimmer gospel star KIRK FRANKLIN talks about his battle with pornography, his lawsuits, the faith of Stevie Wonder and much more.

Kirk Franklin

Until recently I would have said my favourite Kirk Franklin album was the 'Nu Nation Project', his radical gospel release from 1998. Back then Franklin was pushing back the frontiers of gospel music, melding its traditional vocal forms with a new crunching R&B/hip-hop groove and plenty of excitement. But then things went quiet and he returned a couple of years ago with the live 'Rebirth Of Kirk Franklin' album which was a restrained, careful, live album that seemed designed to get the black majority church back on his side after years of outraging them with the audacity of his musical collaborations and styles. The album was good, won lots of awards but to this critic, was a little too safe to be truly interesting.

'Hero' sees Kirk back in the studio and back in the business of making cutting edge gospel music and the results create the most dynamic album of his career. Radical music meets radical message and an honesty and vulnerability in the lyric writing that we've not seen before. The last time we spoke back in the '90s I conducted a no holds barred interview trying to unravel some of the issues like his struggle with porn and the law suit with God's Property that this time around he's more than willing to talk about.

Kirk seems relieved to hear that I like the album! "Thank you for lovin' it," he responds, "because you're not an easy win! You're a tough guy but that's good!" So was 'Rebirth' deliberately safe to reconnect with a church audience before doing something more cutting edge here? Franklin considers for a moment, "I love both areas - praise and worship and just being honest and free. I love them both the same. I think that being raised on hip-hop and being connected to the hip-hop culture there's certain things that I enjoy sometimes more just musically. But the 'Rebirth' album was a very special album for me because it was a very dark time in my life. The 'Hero' album was the more mature, more free.I grew some spiritually. They both speak about different areas of my life."

The 'Rebirth' album was recorded in June of 2000 but it didn't come out until February 2002. Franklin was still fresh from the lawsuits surrounding the success of the God's Property album with its runaway hit single "Stomp". And he was yet to enter into lawsuits with The Family, his original group from previous albums. He confesses, "I was having some challenges - just some business challenges as you know with what was going on with me and different record companies and different things. So this was kind of like a dark time in my life."

They say that "where there are hits there are writs." The God's Property album is the biggest selling album in the history of gospel music. It seems that Franklin has always been generous in collaborating with people but does it feel like when he does collaborate with people, they come after him when there is success? He considers for a second, "Well you know, that's only happened twice and I thank God that in those situations that have gone to court I was never found guilty of anything. It's just that when you fight and you don't have any money it's easy to make up quicker, but when you fight and have money and money is involved then it's more difficult for people. That's the thing! Back then it's possible to have a community of people around you that are just as excited about what's going on like you are. And somebody has to be sober. Somebody has to be the wise one. Somebody has to be the one that's not enjoying the ride so much that they're not paying attention to what's going on."

So these days when he faces trouble, who is it that he talks to? He confesses, "For about the last seven years I've been at a great ministry. There's a great guy appointed to my life that's fathering me and that's holding me accountable. His name is Tony Evans and he's just a remarkable guy, just a real humble guy. He's not a prosperity, charismatic preacher, you know? He's just more of a teacher, a more normal guy. His not a big TV evangelist type of dude. So that's what I enjoy now." The impact of the spiritual stability in his life is very evident on 'Hero' as he's been able to get through some of his struggles and step into a new freedom that he's not experienced before.

One of the outstanding songs on the album is "Let It Go". Kirk's autobiography Church Boy which was published in 1999 detailed his difficult childhood where he was abandoned by his parents, abused and took solace in pornography and sexual promiscuity. Even in the early part of his career when he was recording albums with The Family he was still indulging in a promiscuous lifestyle. So, this is not the first time that he has gone public with the issues but why record a song about those struggles now? He responds, "What's funny is that the idea for that song came in 1999 but I didn't have an album to put it on. It came around about the beginning of '99. I was in New York and God just kind of dumped that idea for that song. But I couldn't do that song on the 'Rebirth' album because it would have stuck out like a sore thumb."

In December 2005, Kirk Franklin appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to talk openly and honestly about his battle with pornography. Obviously he's had to have experienced a certain amount of healing to be able to go public like that. The song "Let It Go" seems to benchmark a moving on from the issues of his youth. "The song IS part of the healing," he admits. "The healing may take a lifetime, totally, but doing this song was the beginning of that process. Within the last five and a half years I've been really free. I've been walking in victory and I haven't fallen into pornography in about five and a half years, which is something I give God all the glory for because ever since I was nine years old I've struggled with this. I've been faithful to my wife since I've been married and haven't fallen in those areas. I'm just very excited to see God doing a lot of healing in my life from my past, sexually."

"Let It Go" also talks about other areas of emotional damage from the childhood abandonment and sexual promiscuity which still has a knock-on affect today. "Those are the hurts which from time to time can flare up on me. They can just flare up and you not even notice that they flare up. So those are part of ongoing healing processes."

Sometimes we have an expectation that our on-stage, in-the-spotlight Christian artists are perfect. Franklin is brave opening up his life so that people can view the weaknesses that he has inside. From a place of hurt, he is slowly receiving his healing and able to minister to others. He's not alone, there are many people in churches who struggle and yet don't find the liberty to share it. In Christ we find wholeness but sometimes we need to go through a process to experience that wholeness. "Sanctification can be an ongoing process," Franklin observes. "Like Paul in the Bible talks about being transformed from glory to glory and realising that healing and freedom is only found in Christ Jesus. The challenges are sometimes you don't always walk in the Spirit. You may have people that are connected to you and they haven't gotten their healing and their sickness can sometimes rub off on you. Let's say that you're healed from your past, but let's say that your past also associated with someone else that's not healed. So when you run into that person and if their personality or their ways are the same, it can maybe strike up something. That time might not affect you like the time before, or like the time before that because you're growing and it doesn't hurt you like it used to. But you still find yourself on the journey of being healed. The illustration that I still love the most is that it all depends on how deep the scar was. Some cuts you can just put a Band-Aid on but some cuts you have to get stitches in. So it all depends on how deep that cut was."

In the early days of his ministry, Kirk Franklin has confessed that he was living a double life, playing gospel music on stage and in church but behind the scene he was sleeping around. He even fathered a child outside of wedlock. He's not proud of these things and I wondered what impact his sin had on his ministry. How could he think about doing gospel concerts when his personal life was in such a mess? He speaks honestly, "There were many times that I would wonder, how somebody as jacked up as me could be in full time ministry? I guess because God saw 2006 and saw that it would become part of a testimony that would help other men; that would help other women. It was a very painful season. It was a very convicting season and I just really felt condemned a lot. And just really struggled. That was a major struggle for my life and I'm just very grateful that his grace and his blood doesn't count me out. He's more patient with me than I am with myself."

There are plenty of people who find themselves stuck in a cycle of sinful habits who feel guilty all the time and long to become free. How did Franklin break out of that cycle? "When you really get tired of yourself and when God surrounds you with good people and you really start connecting with people that are hungry for God and tired of playing church. Then that gives you some inspiration. I think the hard part is when you're struggling like that and you don't have people around you that are hungry for Christ. A lot of times in the African-American Church there's a lot of emotion and not enough teaching, not enough accountability. You even see it sometimes in the Anglo Church. I just happen to find more Anglo brothers and sisters that were taught relationship with Christ at a young age than we were. They talk about a Scripture like Galatians 2v20 where it talks about being crucified with Christ: 'I no longer live but Christ liveth in me.' That wasn't a Scripture or a train of thought that was taught to us as young black Christians. The black church is all about emotions. My life is saved because of truth, because someone sat me down and told me the truth about the Gospel. So I'm just very grateful that someone just loved me enough and shared the truth of the Gospel with me and it just really changed my life."

At this point in the conversation, it is time to unleash the most important question I want to ask Kirk. I have been saving it up for the right moment and here it is. I warn Kirk of the seriousness of the question and he prepares himself. Come on then Kirk, tell me, how does an alligator praise the Lord?! He laughs! How Does An Alligator Praise The Lord is the name of his children's book that just been published. "That is funny! That was a good one my friend! You got me! One of these days we're going to get a chance to ask an alligator and when we ask him we will find out how he praises the Lord!" So he hasn't got an answer! "Well the book is just a book that is helping to try to teach young kids about their Christianity. Just trying to develop relationships with Christ in their lives when they're young. So I thought of something that was kind of fun and funky, you know? That just sort of came to mind and so that's how we came up with How Do Alligators Praise The Lord?" So it's just a title! I explain that I am deeply disappointed that he can't answer the question!

Recently Franklin was a guest on Stevie Wonder's 'A Time To Love', contributing a choir arrangement. Wonder returns the compliment on the song "Why" singing lead and adding his distinctive harmonica. How did they first meet? "It was back in '97 in Los Angeles," Franklin explains. "I was just really blown away by him. He came on stage at a concert that we were doing and I just sat down and it kind of blew us away. So we kind of got the friendship going and I did something for him later on that year in New York city. So we swapped numbers and said, 'Let's stay in touch with each other.' We'd run into each other at airports and stuff. When I was working on this song it just had a Stevie Wonder feel to it. So that's how the song came up."