Maverick City Music, one of the most influential worship collectives in recent years, is facing online backlash after one of its founders, Norman Gyamfi, made seemingly controversial comments about the state of gospel music during an interview on The Isaac Carree Show.
In the wide-ranging conversation, Gyamfi — who played a key role in launching Maverick City alongside Jonathan Jay in 2018 — discussed how the group found success by blending traditional gospel with contemporary worship music. He credited the group’s rise to its collaborative model, singable songwriting and a cultural shift within churches toward worship-style music.
“Churches had stopped singing traditional gospel music,” Gyamfi said. “And the churches that were growing were singing worship.”
He explained that during the pandemic, Maverick City was able to capture attention by releasing music when most of the industry had paused. The group’s fusion of Black vocalists and white writers, he said, produced songs that were intentionally less embellished and more accessible to congregational singing — what he described as a key to commercial success.
“You had Black kids with, respectfully, white writers and producers. So they were training them not to oversing … to be singable,” Gyamfi said. “That’s why Chris Tomlin was the greatest worship leader ever. He’s not the best vocalist … People like to hear music they think, ‘Oh, I could do that.’”
He also claimed that Maverick City Music “outstreams the entire gospel industry combined,” using that data point to argue that gospel music should have embraced the group’s crossover success rather than resisting it.
“Gospel [music] should have embraced Maverick,” Gyamfi said. “They should have embraced it, made it their own, collaborated with them, done everything they could to see them go forward. They should have done everything to support and keep them together. This is why it only benefited everybody else.
“The gospel norms wasn’t working no more, man,” he continued. “Y’all sing too hard. Y’all oversing. Stop doing that. Nobody want to hear no runs.”
His comments sparked immediate criticism online. Some gospel music fans felt that his remarks disrespected the genre’s legacy and significance within Black culture. Others viewed the conversation as an indictment of the industry’s business practices rather than an attack on the genre itself.
One user wrote, “This isn’t about nitpicking CCM artists. This is about anti-Blackness at its core … Gospel music has gotten my people through bondage since we landed on these shores. It’s not just music for us, it’s woven into the very fabric of our being.”
Another added, “Black church and Black church music has gotten me through every battle in my life. We criticize it because we truly love it, and this wasn’t that. This was complete disrespect for our religious tradition.”
Others defended Gyamfi, noting that his perspective was based on real data and industry shifts.
One post read, “Norman Gyamfi’s viewpoint on gospel music is data-driven … It’s difficult to say he doesn’t care about gospel music when over the last few years all successful gospel tours were built under him.”
As online debate continued building over the weekend, Maverick City Music vocalist Naomi Raine responded with a statement of her own. In a caption posted to Instagram, she acknowledged that the group hasn’t always gotten everything right, but emphasized their commitment to integrity in worship.
“I can sleep at night knowing that when it comes to the content of our worship and our songs, it has always been pure and released with the intent to glorify God,” she wrote.
Raine also pushed back on the idea that Maverick City had distanced itself from gospel music, saying the collective has always honored its roots.
“From the beginning, Maverick has been unapologetically committed to the advancement and celebration of gospel music and Black people,” she wrote. “We stood for Black lives even when some fans unfollowed us, attended and led worship at marches, and used our platform to speak up when it wasn’t popular.”
She went on to affirm the gospel community and the ongoing evolution of its sound: “I deeply value the evolution of [gospel music’s] sound and space that’s happening … I pray that as things continue to shift and grow, we never lose the essence of what makes gospel music so powerful.”
As of now, Maverick City Music has not issued a formal statement on the interview, and Gyamfi has not responded publicly to the criticism.
