“To be able to pay tribute to someone who heavily shaped the way I hear music, it was a monumental task, but it’s something that I'm ecstatic about sharing,” Dallas-based gospel star Myron Butler tells Apple Music of this tribute to the legacy of the Andraé Crouch, who revolutionized gospel by incorporating soul, jazz, and orchestrated pop elements. Like Crouch, Butler got an early start in church music; by age nine, Butler was learning Crouch’s gospel standards and developing a similarly broad set of skills—singer, songwriter, vocal arranger, choir director and producer—and stylistic influences. “When you grew up in church, there's this traditional sound of what gospel is, typically,” Butler says. “Andraé just came and completely took the ceiling off of all of that. Whatever you can dream or imagine, you can do it in gospel. That's one of the most impactful things that he instilled in me through his music.” Butler gathered an array of guest performers, big names and emerging talents spanning traditional and contemporary gospel, soul, and R&B. “But for me,” he emphasizes, “the songs of Andraé Crouch are the star. Growing up in church and growing up on his music, the songs were what guided us. The songs are legendary in and of themselves.” Here Butler talks through each of the tracks on this homage to his hero. Right Now (feat. Dorinda Clark-Cole) “It has this not necessarily big-band, but kind of this jazzy kind of feeling. ‘Right Now’ was one of those uptempos that I felt like had just a good rhythm to it; I wanted that BPM, for lack of a better word, on the record. The Clark Sisters are some of the most trendsetting vocalists that we have in gospel music—and music period—and when we think about the jazzy Clark sister, Dorinda Clark-Cole is the first one that comes to mind. She has this little preachy thing that's in her voice as well. That makes the vamp kind of evolve into this ad-lib kind of sparring thing. I wanted the choir to have that big choir feel. So I wanted to kind of infuse those things together. It made me feel happy whenever I heard that song growing up.” Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus (feat. Fred Hammond) “When we typically hear the song ‘Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus,’ it's a song that the whole congregation knows, and you start the verse and everybody sings it, kind of as this kind of congregational moment. I wanted to flip it. I was listening to one of Andraé's other songs entitled ‘It's Gonna Rain,’ and it had this funk vibe. I said, ‘What about if we take the vibe to ‘It's Gonna Rain’ and put it on ‘Can't Nobody’? Fred was completely open to it, and I loved that. I sent a track to him and said, ‘Put your thing on it.’ As you listen to the beginning part of it, you've got these background parts that kind of are reminiscent of the things that he would do in Commissioned. It's got this Commissioned-meets-funk kind of thing. Growing up in the Black church, we've heard that song, I thought, in every imaginable arrangement, but we haven't necessarily heard it like this.” All Things Well “‘All Things Well’ is the only non-Andraé Crouch-written song on the record. That's a song that was written by myself. I wanted to have sort of Myron Butler's offering to pay justice to Andraé inspiring the songwriter in me. I'm reimagining, repurposing, representing his music, but I also would like to add my personal token in the mix as well. It’s a song that speaks to this situation or circumstance that we believe that whatever you're dealing with in life, whatever you are facing and going through, that God ultimately makes all of those things work together for good for you. I wanted it to sound like something that was in step with all of the other known Andraé songs.” We Are Not Ashamed (feat. Kim Burrell) “When we think of that song, we think of the triumphant, choir, regal sound. I wanted to put this, I don't want to say smooth jazz, but kind of jazz-esque thing to it. One of the other most incomparable voices in gospel—and in music, period—is Kim Burrell. She is one that can handle any piece of music that you put in front of her. The way she reimagined different vocal liberties and the melody of the song was really refreshing.” The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power (feat. Michael Lampkin) “I started playing piano at nine years old, and it was one of the first songs that I had to learn, that I had to teach the choir. That song is at the bedrock of church music. There's this whole story behind the song of how he almost discarded that song, and how that song has literally been one of the most life-changing Andraé Crouch songs. Especially in the church, because the message of the song, the atoning work of the blood of Jesus Christ for the believer is just at the foundation of what we believe.” My Tribute (feat. Dayanna Redic) “We were trying to get the double meaning of ‘My Tribute’ as in ‘This is Myron's personal tribute.’ The other meaning of that's one of his famous songs. If you just recite the lyrics to the song, it is poetry. It is heartfelt emotion at its purest. That was one of the songs that, growing up as a songwriter, I would literally transcribe the words out: ‘Man, how can I write a song that is as impactful lyrically as this?’ From an arrangement standpoint, I wanted it to ebb and flow, like a peak and valley dynamically in the song, and then end on the mountaintop.” Living This Kind of Life (feat. Peter Collins) “Peter is just this anomaly. He's the singer-songwriter guy with the guitar that has this crazy vocal ability. His approach to anything is not going to be the normal approach. He hadn't heard the song before, so I sent it to him and said, ‘How would you interpret that?’ He sends me back this note, and I'm like, ‘Yes!’ Because it goes from this intimate singer-songwriter guitar moment, and then kind of mushrooms into the full band thing. Andraé took risks. He reimagined; he reshaped. So that's what I kind of wanted to take someone like Peter Collins, who is just one of the best-kept secrets out there.” The Andraé Crouch Medley (feat. Anthony Hamilton, Kenny Lattimore, Shelby 5, and Candy West) “I had some apprehensions when we were putting it together, because I was like, ‘We live in a day and age where everything is three minutes and 30 seconds. I've got a medley that's eight minutes.’ I loved ‘There's No Hatred in Christ,’ just the message of that. When I listened to the original recording of it, the original lead singer had this kind of soul thing that was in his voice. I was like, ‘I wonder what Anthony Hamilton would sound like singing that.’ Just his voice, just the natural cadence of his voice, is soul. I wanted my voice to kind of be the narrator or the storyteller throughout the song. We get to ‘Soon and Very Soon’ and ‘Through It All,’ which is my friend Candy West. She's been in my group, Myron Butler & Levi, since the beginning. Then the song that she and I did a duet on, it was ‘His Truth Still Marches On.’ Kenny Lattimore has just got one of those golden voices that it's just like butter. He just kind of creates that moment of ‘Jesus Is the Answer for the World Today.’ It's the simplicity of the message, of the melodic progression of the song, but then the pureness of his voice. Then there's a family out of Detroit that I know that are just an amazing gifted musical family. They're called Shelby 5, and they have amazing harmony and blend and intonation. ‘Always Remember Jesus,’ I had heard them do it at a music conference that we both attended and sang on. I was like, ‘That would be the icing on the cake.’ For me, it was just combining all of those elements to kind of tell the story, walk through a brief landscape of the life and legacy and music of Andraé Crouch.” Take Me Back (feat. Kirk Franklin and Kelontae Gavin) “It was kind of an amalgamation of old school meets new school, and how the two are not antitheses, but they complement each other. Kelontae, he's got this kind of old-schoolness in his voice, but his vocal acrobatics, that's young. That's the millennials. You got Kirk, the elder statesman. It was this monumental song, ‘Take Me Back,’ that speaks to going back to that place where I first met, the place of beginnings, the place of infancy. How do we hear that through both lenses? That's really what I was wanting.” Oh It Is Jesus (feat. Blanche McAllister-Dykes) “I remember the very first time I heard ‘Oh It Is Jesus.’ I was like, ‘Who is that singing?’ I couldn't tell, ‘Is that a man? Is that a woman?’ I hadn't heard a voice like Táta Vega. It was the uniqueness of her voice made the song come that much more alive to me. I've got a friend who I love and worked with, her name is Blanche McAllister-Dykes, and her voice is kind of like that as well, where it's just so much character in her voice. I feel like Blanche's voice can accomplish the same thing that Táta Vega's voice did for me when I first encountered the song.” Holy Spirit (feat. Samoht) “That is the one song that is written by Andraé and Sandra Crouch. Sandra is his twin, and she was one of the lifelong caregivers for Andraé and his music. When you talk about Andraé, you automatically have to talk about Sandra, so I wanted to include some sort of musical element from her. And I remember hearing that song, ‘Holy Spirit,’ on one of her albums. Maybe about a year ago, Samoht reaches out to me on Instagram. He started going down obscure songs on my albums that you would only know if you were really into Myron Butler music, and he could sing them. He was like, ‘Man, you will never know how your music helped me.’ I'm listening and looking through all of this, like, ‘This guy is dope, and he's different.’ And that's what I wanted to encapsulate, that for me the music of Andraé Crouch celebrated the difference in music—not even necessarily church music, but in music. Building the track, it needed to feel a little bit like stuff that [Samoht] does, but we can't lose the gospel, the vibes of the original song.”