Interview: Award-Winning Gospel Trio 'Virtue' on Reunion, Family Heartaches, and Special Meaning Behind Single 'You Are'
I have four kids and they're all under the age of seven and they all know how to use my phone, iPhones, they all play with iPads and you constantly have to watch them and be sure they're not watching something or listening to something that they have no business listening to, so those are concerns for me as a mother and it's the same for music because they can listen to anything.
People are making their own music and doing all kinds of stuff and you have so much more access than you ever had. People are becoming self-made stars these days but all it's all very frightening for me. I just hope that our music will be relevant and that it will be something that meet their appetites. We just plan on giving people our hearts and we are really trying with all of our hearts to follow Jesus and I hope that our music speaks that and that it leads people to Christ even in this day and age when things have become super scary for me
Karima: I feel the same (way) because all of us are mothers and the kids this generation are just so different. We didn't have the technology so outside was our playground. We didn't have to pick up an iPad to play a game or find a word. You picked up the dictionary and find what the meaning of a word is, you know. It's so different so you have to be extra careful.
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My daughter's nine and just the other day she had an iPad and she knew she was wrong. She had an iPad and she turned the volume down and she was watching something on Disney but even those Disney shows are advanced for nine-year-olds – boyfriends and girlfriends and all that stuff – and she knew to turn the volume down so I wouldn't hear, but the Holy Spirit talked to me and said to ask her what's she's watching because she was very quiet at the table. She was minding her own business and I said, 'hey let me watch what you're watching,' so you do have to find a way to get in there and let them know, 'look this is unacceptable.' You have to ask about everything. So like Heather said, the music – our kids love our music so we know in them listening to it that it's going to bless other kids and people gravitate toward it because it ministers.
First of all they do hear the beats. The beats are different. We try and keep that relevant because, you hear the beat, you're moving. But then those words start to sink in and they're thinking and thinking and that is what we want. Our message is what we want embedded in the minds and hearts of kids and people in general. So I look forward to releasing the new music and being a minister and a role model not only for our kids but for this whole youthful generation that we live in.
Ebony: To me the world, they're looking to follow something and if you have something positive they're going to follow it and if you have something negative, they're going to follow it. I teach first grade and their minds are so impressionable if you're putting positive things and then that's what they're going to look for, positive things. So our music is very positive and I know that we bless others with it before and I know that this album is going to do the same thing. It's going to bless the hearts of a lot of people because we've had so many testimonies of how our songs have pulled people through and we just really just want to be an example, not just talk about it. We want to be an example.
Karima: And live it, virtuous women. We're Virtue and we want to be the true example of what a virtuous woman.
CP: What can fans expect from the new album?
Heather: We are definitely pouring our hearts out this time around. We've been through a lot in the time that we were gone. I think we've grown a lot so we definitely have a new message to share – one that is more experienced for us and hopefully it will help somebody who can say, "hey I've been where she is. Thank God that she's singing this song just for me. I've lost my mother or I've lost my father or I lost my sister or I lost my dad."
We lost three people who were close to us in a matter of three years – three summers straights – and I just think what we look forward to know is heaven so you're definitely going to hear a lot of singing about heaven and wanting to look beyond what we have here on earth. So the beat's always going to be relevant. We always try to bring the fire and stay giving the people what they want to hear but giving them a good message.
So I think this music is phenomenal, ground-breaking for gospel music, and we hope that our music this time is going to go beyond the four walls of the church. We want to reach people who don't know Jesus, who are getting ready to jump out of a window, who are contemplating suicide because they don't know what to do with themselves because we all felt like the weight of the world is on our shoulders just being parents and being wives and just being humans. We have discovered as we have grown up that life is not easy but with God you can make it through it. It sounds like a cliché, but it truly is not because we have lived it and hopefully we now will be able to bear our souls and people will be able to find hope and see the realness. It is just real. This is not just some songs we decided to sing. Whether we wrote them or not we sung the ones that we wrote and we chose writers on because they speak to us and they speak of our circumstances. So I think our listeners and our fans and our supports are in for a blessing because it's from God. It's not even about us; it's all about Him. So I think it's going to be fabulous tracks – great tracks, great lyrics, the harmonies are there and it's banging, that all I can say.
