Kirk Franklin double album marks a gospel first

Kirk Franklin double album I Am What I Am arrives October 30, and it is the first time in a career of more than three decades that Franklin has released a double album. The record carries fourteen tracks, with one half recorded in a studio and the other half captured live in a church, with a choir, a band and a live audience in the room. At 56, Franklin remains one of the defining figures of modern gospel. According to the album listing on Apple Music, the release comes through Fo Yo Soul Recordings and TRIBL Music Group, under exclusive license to Uptown Records.

The rollout already has a chart milestone behind it. "This Time," Franklin's single with Memphis rapper GloRilla, was released September 25 and debuted at the top of Billboard's Hot Gospel Songs chart dated October 10. The song gave Franklin his tenth leader on that chart, making him the first artist to reach double digits since the ranking began in 2005. According to Billboard figures reported by EURweb, the single drew about 1.7 million streams and a radio audience of 2.5 million in its first tracking week.

A studio half and a live half

The split is the point of this Kirk Franklin double album. The studio half leans on contemporary gospel production, while the live half puts Franklin back in front of a congregation, where call and response and choir swell do work a studio cannot quite copy. The guest list crosses generations and genres. Davido appears on "Hope In You," Jelly Roll sings on "Free Me Tonight," and Karen Clark Sheard appears on the live recording "Thank You For Everything," according to the announced tracklist reported by Gospel Register and EURweb.

The single itself leans on an older horn line. According to EURweb, its production borrows from Mandrill's 1972 song "Children of the Sun," a line hip-hop listeners may also know from Shawty Lo's 2008 hit "Dey Know." That kind of borrowing is typical of Franklin, who has spent his career mixing gospel with R&B, soul and hip-hop without leaving the church behind.

A record built on a long run

Franklin's debut album came out in July 1993, and the songs that followed, from "Stomp" to "Love Theory," kept gospel on pop and R&B radio for years. He and GloRilla have topped this chart before. Their earlier collaboration, "Rain Down on Me," reached the top of the same chart in 2024 and went on to win the Dr. Bobby Jones Best Gospel/Inspirational Award at the 2025 BET Awards, according to EURweb. Maverick City Music and CeCe Winans sit next in the chart's history with six leaders each, which puts some distance between Franklin's total and the rest of the field.

For GloRilla, the Kirk Franklin double album brings a second trip to the top of the gospel chart. Both of her entries on the ranking have reached the summit, so her gospel record so far is unblemished, even though her home genre is rap. That crossover is part of why the pairing drew attention beyond gospel circles, where a Memphis rap verse on a choir-backed track still counts as news. Coverage of the chart debut notes the same pattern: both of her gospel chart entries have gone to the top.

Franklin previewed the Kirk Franklin double album at a listening party in West Hollywood on October 19, where gospel singer Erica Campbell and musical director Adam Blackstone were among the guests, according to event coverage from Presence News. Franklin, a winner of twenty Grammy Awards, has spent the weeks since that night letting the singles speak for the record rather than talking it up himself. A room like that, small and full of other musicians, is a long way from an arena stage, and it fits a record that keeps one foot in church.

Preorders for the Kirk Franklin double album are already listed on Apple Music ahead of its release, and the full tracklist is already public. Listeners who know Franklin only from radio singles will hear the other half of his career on the live disc, and listeners who know him from church will hear how much studio polish he still brings to a new song.