R&B star Kelly Price releases gospel EP, says cancel culture is ‘opposite’ of God’s grace
Nine-time Grammy-nominated powerhouse vocalist Kelly Price has released a new gospel project, titled Grace, and says people need to get in the habit of extending more grace to one another.
"I've needed grace a lot in my life, and we all do,” the R&B singer shared in a recent interview with "The Breakfast Club."
“Every time I've talked about this project, when people ask me, I say, I think the problem is that we, as humans, we really can do better about extending grace to other people. Most of the time, we don't realize how important grace is until we need it for ourselves.”
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Gracewas released by Motown Gospel in partnership with SANG GIRL! Inc. and comes 15 years after Price’s acclaimed gospel album, This Is Who I Am, which charted No. 1 on Billboard's Top Gospel Albums chart and top 10 of the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
The EP was released on Easter Sunday. The first single, “Dance Party,” is now in circulation.
Other songs on the record include the cover of the classic “Faith That Conquers” and the title track “Grace.”
The album was birthed as Price stood on the foundation of her faith in God after her grandfather died early last year due to complications from COVID-19, which was followed by the sudden passing of her mother at the end of the year. Singing gospel music was her way of “healing.”
Grace is a reminder of God’s grace during these unprecedented times, the “Friend of Mine” singer said, adding that grace is needed like never before amid this current climate.
"Cancel culture is the polar opposite of grace,” she said on the morning show. “Everybody's screaming cancel, cancel, cancel, but you're not gonna want to hear cancel when it's time to cancel you.”
She said people who cancel others have "self-destructive" behavior and don't have grace for themselves. She urged people to practice extending grace to themselves and others.
Price, who's had a long career in mainstream entertainment working with artists such as Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, P Diddy, Jay-Z and others, credits her grandparents in helping her see Christianity “outside” the church box. She called the stage her "pulpit."
“I grew up in the church; my grandfather was my first pastor,” she continued. “My mother was — they call them ministers of music now, that's a fancy title. When she was coming up, you were just the choir director, but she did take care of all the music in the church.”
"I feel like I was in church nine days a week, like God made two extra days just for our family because I did church, home, school, church, that was my life. That was a triangle of my life growing up,” Price explained.
Along with the new music, the soulful singer has a YouVersion reading plan coming out on the subject of grace. In the devotional, she breaks down the word grace into an acronym.
“Grace is the gift of giving, responsibility, accountability but with compassion and empathy. That's real grace,” Price declared.
"As freely as you're willing to receive grace, you should give it that freely. So that's why I call it a gift. You have the responsibility to be responsible. You should expect others to be responsible too. We should be accountable, you should hold other people accountable for their actions too. But the difference between just that and a true act of grace is to do it in compassion and with empathy,” she added.
Graceis now available for purchase.
