The New Life Community Choir
Featuring John P. Kee / Star Song
"Show Up!" - 417kShow Up!
He's just as comfortable relating to Charlotte's hard-core drug traffickers as he is performing to sold out crowds at churches across the nation. But then, as a former drug dealer who operated out of the church, he speaks both languages. Ironically today, his best-known accomplishments have crowned him 'the prince of gospel'. In fact, there are those who see him as the successor to its former king, the famed Rev. James Cleveland.
John P. Kee takes the notion as sheer compliment, admitting that he is a student of Cleveland's powerful stage persona and charismatic style. "Rev. Cleveland could captivate an audience and command its attention with just two words," Kee fondly recalls. But Kee is quick to add that Cleveland's successor "would have to be a placement from God."
Well, then perhaps God has decided. For today, it is Kee who is not only commanding the attention of sold-out gospel concert-goers throughout the nation, but with the explosive growth of gospel, is more and more catching the ear of secular music buyers.
What's more, Kee is doing it all on his own merits, and has to his credit a handful of chart successes including two smash albums, We Walk By Faith and Wash Me. In fact, it is his own distinct style that has gotten him noticed; and while he says his brain outplays his fingers, he characterizes his music as simple, Sunday morning hip-hop, noting: "It's got the thing that makes the kids move, but I also can stop and grandma will be clapping too."
He was born John Prince Kee in 1962--the last of six boys in a family of 16 children. The only thing overshadowing the fact that all of them could sing was the love John's father had for gospel. "You were born to do that and if you didn't you couldn't get anybody's attention, especially Daddy's," Kee states, "and everybody wanted Daddy's attention."
At 13, he formed his first choir. He went on to study voice and classical music at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and later at the Yuba College Conservatory School of Music in Marysville, California. Off campus, Kee performed short stints with groups like Donald Byrd & the Blackbirds and Cameo. However, those formative years proved to be turbulent times for Kee, who got caught up in the drug scene, both using and selling cocaine. It wasn't until he witnessed the slaying of a close friend in a drug deal gone wrong that he truly surrendered his life to Christ. Today, he recounts the experience as part of a powerful testimony to his vast youth following.
Kee's professional career began to take off in 1985, when he became the first artist to record lead vocals on two selections for the Gospel Music Workshop of America's annual mass choir recording. Next, he wrote and recorded "Jesus Lives in Me" for the Edwin Hawkins Music & Arts Seminar album, Give Us Peace. Fueled by their momentum, Kee financed a demo. He was subsequently signed to Tyscot Records, and in 1987, released his debut album, Wait on Him.
Kee's second solo release, Colorblind, is issue-oriented. "One of the things success has dealt me," John reports, "is an eye opened to prejudice and other things that go on every day but are swept under the rug." The lead single (title track) deals with prejudice. Other highlights include a remake of Stevie Wonder's "Love's in Need" and Rance Allen's "Salt of the Earth," which also features Allen. Kee and Allen also team up on the reworking of one of his father's old favorites, "It's Alright," a traditional tune reworked with a touch of hip-hop.
On his latest project, Kee chose to work with an inner city choir of neighborhood kids, rather than his own renown New Life Community Choir, who has earned a reputation as one of the nation's top ten gospel choirs, and occasionally includes his nine-year old daughter, Shannon, and ten-year old son, Christopher.
He formed "New Life" in 1990 of inner city recruits just off the streets, whose lives --like his--took dramatic turns when they surrendered to Christ. "Our ministry today is one that can touch the hearts of young people. I have seen a lot of lives changed, whether it be deliverance from drugs, homelessness or homosexuality. That's the turn on and I think the key to my success" John says. "Getting the mind off being a performer and actually doing what God says. Going back to the street and ministering to the drug dealers and street kids. We don't spend all night recording or practicing. That's an area that God just blew up for us. I am still just dumb enough to believe that I have placed my faith in something else (like Him) and in that alone, I have been blessed."
"Last year, we built an inner city playground and donated $3000 to an inner city reading program. In 1990, I formed the Victory in Praise Music & Arts Convention because I wanted to make sure that the young people I see getting saved realize that victory isn't just for thirty minutes or an hour while I am on stage, but to let them know that victory can be a permanent part of their life."
Out of that experience came yet another popular album, Never Shall Forget, from the VIP Seminar Mass Choir. Still, if Kee is in line to become the next king of gospel, he insists music is just a small part of the reason why. "What we are dealing with today in America is tangibles," Kee maintains. "People are searching for things to which they can attach sincerity. We are still selling out concert houses from New York to California on a three year old album so it can't be just the music, but the fact that people can come out and sense or touch realness. So if I get the crown, that's why I got it."
Show Up!I Shall Do
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Comfort Me
The Lord Is Able
I Shall See Him
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Made Up Mind
Survive
Sweeter
Be Encouraged
I Surrender
No Christmas Without You
Made Up Mind (Skate Mix)
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