Kirk Franklin

Franklin met Stevie Wonder backstage in Los Angeles in 1997, and by his own account never quite recovered: 'I was just really blown away by him,' he told Crossrhythms in 2006. 'He came on stage at a concert that we were doing and I just sat down and it kind of blew us away.' The two traded numbers and stayed in touch, and years later, writing 'Why' for his 2005 album Hero, Franklin heard something Wonder-shaped in his own chord changes — enough that he called Wonder to play him the demo. Wonder didn't just approve; he came in and sang lead, and played the harmonica solo himself.

listen: upstream & heresource: Crossrhythms — Kirk Franklin ↗share

1982

Ribbon in the SkyStevie Wonder

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2005

WhyKirk Franklin

listen forPlay 'Ribbon in the Sky' against 'Why' and listen for the harmonica: it's the same instrument, in the same conversational register, wrapping around a vocal melody rather than soloing over it — a Wonder signature Franklin wrote toward before Wonder himself walked into the booth. The chord movement underneath both songs favors the same unhurried, jazz-inflected soul changes, letting the harmonica and the lead vocal trade the emotional weight back and forth instead of racing to a hook.

When Andraé Crouch died in January 2015, Franklin didn't just eulogize a colleague — he named a debt. A decade later, marking the anniversary for Christianity Today, he called Crouch 'more than a trailblazer. … His music taught me that worship could be boundless, weaving powerful testimony with unmatched artistry.' Crouch had spent the 1970s smuggling jazz chords, pop hooks, and rock guitar into churches that considered all three suspect, proving a gospel record could sound contemporary without losing its testimony. Franklin, a generation later, ran the same experiment with hip-hop and R&B.

listen: upstream & heresource: Christianity Today — An Andraé Crouch Song Has Kept Me From Sin (Kirk Franklin's tribute quote on Crouch's influence) ↗share

1976

Soon and Very SoonAndraé Crouch

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1996

Melodies From HeavenKirk Franklin

listen forCue up Crouch's 'Soon and Very Soon' next to Franklin's 'Melodies From Heaven' and the shared architecture is audible in real time: each opens on a plain, repeatable refrain before layering in full-choir harmony and a key-change lift that turns a hymn into a communal release. Crouch built that praise-break shape — verse to unison chant to gospel-choir explosion — as pop-adjacent worship music; Franklin inherits the same rising structure, dressed now in synth bass and a choir that raps as easily as it sings.

Franklin has never talked publicly about George Clinton the way he talks about Crouch or Wonder — this influence shows up on paper, not in an interview. The 1997 remix that turned 'Stomp' into gospel's first Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Number One is, as critic Josh Langhoff put it, 'built on a repeated snippet of Funkadelic's utopian "One Nation Under a Groove."' The interpolation was substantial enough that Clinton, alongside Funkadelic co-writers Garry Shider and Walter 'Junie' Morrison, received formal songwriting credit next to Franklin's own — a factual, contractual link where his testimony is silent but the paperwork isn't.

listen: upstream & heresource: Wikipedia — Stomp (God's Property song) (songwriting credits confirming the George Clinton/Funkadelic interpolation) ↗share

1978

One Nation Under a GrooveGeorge Clinton

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1997

StompKirk Franklin

listen forListen for the vamp: 'One Nation Under a Groove' rides a springy, syncopated keyboard-and-bass riff under a chanted, all-hands vocal hook, and the 'Stomp' remix drops that same riff — sped up and gospel-choir-thickened — under a chant of its own title. Where Funkadelic stretches the groove out over eight droning minutes, Franklin compresses it into a three-minute radio single, but the interlocking, one-chord bounce underneath both tracks is the same machine.