Creating gospel and inspirational music is what The God Hour love to do as a collective of artists with the goal of spreading the message of god through their own human experiences. Their hope is to uplift and encourage people to strive for greatness through Christ.
“Hymn” is the mix of genres such as Gospel and Hip-Hop that has completely taken me by surprise with the level of talent that the collective The God Hour has gathered to deliver this touching message. The beats are simplistic yet filled with various different sounds that accompany a fantastic choral section and phenomenal raps. The intensity that can be found in the slight change of style between each rap section adds real depth to “Hymn” and I personally think that this song is a great way to rally people of all walks of life together to worship. The God Hour has made great use of references that make “Hymn” relatable and emotions that will catch the listener off guard like “When really I'm in the matrix, looking for neo to save it, and then it's you” and “This life is suicide, so daily I gotta die, just to see the sun shine, with this enormous light of mine” all while emphasizing in their chorus “Nobody but you God”. The use of these techniques is very creative as it shows the listener that everything can be related back to religion if you think about it and helps get the message that The God Hour is trying to deliver across.
Listen to "Hymn" here and get to know more about The God Hour below!
Hey Everyone! You have a fantastic sound! Can you tell us a bit more about yourselves?
Aux: Hello, thank you so much. The God Hour is a gospel inspired collective from
Chicago. Through our friendship we have been able to create amazing art with our God
given gifts. These gifts pushed us to express and create a God given sound for God's
people.
7 Metrix: Our collective consists of five members, M.A.C. (Man About Change), ELL
V!rtuoso, Aux, 7 Metrix, and PRO our producer. We all started off as individual artists
and would support each other with our different projects. We finally decided that we all
would work together to make music that reflected our belief in Christ and our personal
life journeys.
What inspired you to create a sound with collaboration of genres?
7 Metrix: We all grew up in church, so gospel music has always been our foundation. As
I grew up I began to get into Hip Hop, R&B, Soul, and some Rock. These five genres
have always touched my heart in a special way and as I got into college I sang classical
music. We wanted to give people something that all music lovers could enjoy. Our goal
was to express God in whatever genre we loved.
ELL V!rtuoso: Gospel has always been my base but I naturally gravitate to other genres
of music as well. As one of the writers and music producers of the collective I always like
to branch out combining genres together. As much as humans try to, God can never be
put into a box so why would our music be. Combining genres allows us to explore our
heart and message more in demonstrating our faith.
M.A.C.: I think it was a combination of all of our styles, our influences and things we
went through that gave us the sound. In our minds, we were creating songs that we
loved.
AUX: I would have to say the true all-around love for music is what brought those genres
together. Emotions make us react to what is happening in our everyday lives. Music has
that same impact, it's the avenue to the soul. Different genres express different emotions
and we wanted our sound to express that.
Can you tell us the story behind “Hymn”?
AUX: Hymn is a song that's a testimonial to the deep issues that each member
experienced in their personal lives. The sound brings out topics of past/present emotions
that we deal with as we ask God to give us his help.
M.A.C.: Hymn caused us to dig deep and speak on some of the pain that we've been
through. Our focus was to show people that no matter what happens in your life God can
still bring you through it.
7 Metrix: This song means so much because when we were writing the hook my mother
was dealing with cancer, I was struggling financially and so many other things were
happening to us personally. In moments like this, sometimes you question whether God is
even real because of what we suffer. So in one of the lowest points in my life, I
remembered my mother would always say to believe that God will answer whatever you
need and even when God doesn’t do things the way we want God is still God.
So, I thought about what I needed God to be for us at that moment. ELL and I began to
pray and then the hook came. From there, the third verse became easier to write because
the song became a moment of therapy where I told God my problems. Hopefully others
can relate to the struggle of life but come to the realization that God is still the answer..
What does the creative process look like when creating music as a collective?
ELL V!rtuoso: The creative process looks like a classroom working on a group project.
We all add different elements to each song. Sometimes we're all focused on the beat and
other times we're off to different areas of the room writing our verses.
M.A.C.: We have production days, where we focus strictly on creating beats. Other days
we focus on finishing the songs. We usually start off with a concept of what we want to
talk about. We discuss what we are going through and what we feel like the instrumental
is saying to us. Collectively we always work together to inspire each other. The goal is to
push each other to go harder and do better than the last song.
AUX: I would have to say our creative process is very organic and spiritual. We
acknowledge God and ask him to create music though us. This process has brought our
music to levels we could have only dreamed of. The music has to flow by God's hands.
Tell us what we can expect from The God Hour in 2019.
The God Hour: In 2019, we will keep promoting our debut album and keep creating
more music. Rather it be by us pushing our own individual content or just singles.
Overall, we will be releasing more content, but our our main goal is to keep promoting
the album. You can expect more shows because we're looking for more opportunities to
perform and our fans can expect more updates on things that we're doing. Thanks to
everyone who took the time to listen and has supported through the process. More music
is definitely on the way!
Connect with The God Hour on social media
www.instagram.com/thegodhour5
www.twitter.com/TheGodHour5
www.facebook.com/TheGodHour