“Purpose and Destiny” – Nicole “Faithful” Franklin

“Purpose and Destiny”
Nicole “Faithful” Franklin
From the Thank You Entertainment/Living Water Records album Taking It Back
(release date: September 29, 2009)
www.nicolefaithfulfranklin.com

The lovely and multi-talented Nicole “Faithful” Franklin is a singer, dancer and someone who knows her way around the backstages of music, television and film. She has worked with artists from Mary J. Blige to Nas to Boys II Men. She is now redirecting her talents to the Kingdom with the hip hop/praise and worship album Taking It Back.

“Purpose and Destiny,” the album’s current single, finds Franklin singing and preaching in front of a hard charging rhythm and praise track. “God’s got a plan for your life,” Nicole and her group of background vocalists sing. To provide the song’s provenance, Franklin quotes from Jeremiah 29:11: the Lord has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

The single’s focus on the attainment of blessings (e.g., abundance, prosperity, “a future”) is an oft-visited theme in today’s gospel music, especially given the hope it offers people in the midst of challenging social and economic times. What Franklin and others challenge their listeners to do is focus on a higher rung on the hierarchy of needs, higher than the progenitors of early gospel music sought, because for them, deliverance from sorrow, injustice and spiritual/emotional suffering and pain took precedence.

The radio version of “Purpose and Destiny” is energetic, but TBGB prefers the uber-rhythmic house version because of the intense power it bestows upon the performance.

On a side note: while much attention is spent on the evolution of the sound of gospel music from traditional to contemporary to urban, the (generational?) transition of gospel song lyrics from a “deliverance from” to a “deliverance for” rubric is itself worth in-depth analysis.