Especially Aretha Franklin,” Randall reveals.
The eighth of ten children, Randall says
that music helped him survive as a child.
“Music kept me in school,” he says. “When
everyone else was out doing what they
had no business doing, I was in the house
listening to music.”
“I was in various singing groups. They would
always kick me out,” Randall confesses. “I
always had a really big voice and I didn’t
blend in. ‘You sing too loud,’ the others
would tell me. It wasn’t intentional. I just
had a huge voice.”
Tracy Randall is all over the music biz. The
talented singer, fresh off the success of his
debut Gospel album, “Sinners Have Souls
Too,” can hyphenate his way through producer,
composer and writer onto manager, agent and
attorney.
With so many talents, Randall is an
extraordinarily busy man. ChristianMusic.
com finally caught up with him in Jackson,
Mississippi, where he was finishing some tracks
for his next Gospel album, GANGSTAHS FOR
JESUS, at the studios of his partners, Corner
Boyz Worldwide, before he had to catch a plane
back to his home in New York City.
“I sang the hook on one of [Corner Boyz artist]
Baby Stone’s songs, ‘Brighter Days.’” Randall
explains how the partnership of his label,
Lavish Records, and his business duties as
chief operations officer, melds into a Gospel
recording career. “It became a regional hit, and
that convinced me to do an album.”
With titles like “Sinners” and “Gangstahs,”
Randall is committed to taking the message
to the streets. “I always loved singing and
speaking in front of people,” Randall says. “That
was my ministry, but I ran from it for a long
time. I always thought I’d do love songs instead
of talking about the love of Jesus.”
Randall grew up singing. “My mother would
play Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia
Jackson, and I would mimic their voices.
13
It’s Christ Or Nothing
Randall avoided the church choir so as not
to suffer from the perception of his peers,
he says, and when he left Lake Charles,
Louisiana, for LeMoyne-Owen College
in Memphis, having graduated at 16, he
decided to pursue an engineering degree.
But, he says, “math and the sciences bored
me. They were too constraining. No flexibility
or anything.” He switched his pursuit to
business and graduated in three years.
He parlayed his musical and business abilities
into a contract with T-Neck Records/Island
Black Music as a performer, but he wasn’t
happy with various mergers and shifting
of labels. So, Randall went back to UCLA to
get his PhD in International Business and
Marketing and a law degree, all-in-one. He
then returned to the business side of the
music business.
Randall’s management company now
handles an array of artists including hiphop singers, songwriters and producers.
He uses his business degrees to help some
of the artists with their finances, setting up
business plans for them. He also uses his
law degree in negotiating contracts. But
the greatest service he gives to many of the
musicians is his example.
“Some of the other artists are becoming more
Christian. No more clubbing and drinking
and such. They see that I’m happier.” And, of
course, that example comes through most
clearly in his music.
“Mahalia [Jackson] would sing one phrase,
like ‘Troubles of the World,’ and she’d take
you there. You really believed what she was
singing. You felt it,” Randall says. “I want
people to feel that, to know that in spite of
everything, God loves you. Unconditionally.”