Whether looking at pop music, hip-hop or R&B, it's rare to find an artist who hasn't been touched or affected by the power and soul of gospel music. In fact, many of today's popular artists such as Whitney Houston, John Legend, and Katy Perry started their careers in the church choir.
There is a sound that comes from gospel music that doesn't come from anything else. It is a sound of peace. It is a sound of, 'I'm going to make it through all of this.'
Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place - folk music, rock n' roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.
If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.
For a long time, I was shy about recording gospel music, because I didn't necessarily want to show the inside of my soul, Milsap revealed. But now, the spiritual side of me is really shining through.
Gospel music allows us to become closer to God and closer to each other.
I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.
I'm associated with gospel music in the minds of millions of people.
Now we have so many different genres of music, it's amazing to me. Even in the gospel music arena, you've got hip-hop, you got contemporary, urban contemporary, you got traditional, you got neo-soul gospel, you've got all of these different things.
Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.