journalofgospelmusic.com

Moving forward – Ken Heath and the True Disciples The selfie song – Jada Redmond You deserve my praise – M’Renee Freedom – Quamid feat. Brieaunna Ling Love never fails – William Murphy Reach – DOE

On the appropriately-titled “You Don’t Know,” the popular gospel singer Zacardi Cortez His big, rough-as-sandpaper shouting tenor, introduced to a national gospel audience on James Fortune & FIYA’s 2007 album The Transformation, is on full display on this deceptively powerful song, as much a recitative of gratitude as a cathartic expression of trials endured in Cortez’s 33 years of life. The song meanders more than most but ultimately gets its message across.

On a rainy October 19, 2007, in North Adams, Massachusetts, after a passel of church choirs appeared at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Gospel Fest, the audience warmly received the headliner, an eighty-seven-year-old music veteran. Marie Knight, a gospel and R&B star and well-known collaborator with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe, was the veteran, and Mark Carpentieri’s M

The Prodigal Son tells his tale through a mix of urban street vernacular and biblical quotes buoyed by beats that are sometimes gothic, sometimes melodic, and other times minimalist or infused with fuzzy guitar riffs—as diverse as the message is singular. Melissa Reusch, Rezurected’s wife and the aforementioned deaconess at Power of the Word, sings the tuneful chorus of “Right by My Side,” as her husband praises God for breaking his chains, pulling him through, and making him new. The young Italizianna Reusch charmingly provides the chorus from Rich Mullins’ perennial “Awesome God” while Rezurected offers up lines of praise and another image of the sacrificed Jesus, as well as a paean to what faith can do. The Prodigal Son is a brief but well-rendered and genuinely articulated independent hip hop project.