Jason White, a veteran gospel musician and vocal contractor, has worked on “American Idol,” “X Factor,” the Oscars, Grammys and most notably as choir director of Sunday Service. The group released their first Christmas album last month. White visited the Rolling out studios to discuss the album and Sunday Service.
How much impact did Ye have on this album?
Everything is approved by Ye. Everything has to go through him. He’ll be like “oh, I like this,” or “Oh, have y’all thought about this?” Boom, boom, boom, is what he calls it. He likes to say “Y’all got to let me Quincy Jones the album.” … After he Quincy Jones’ it, he basically said y’all go ahead with it. He would never really come around, but we would send files to him back and forth until he was fine with it.
Why was “Go Tell It” the first single for this album?
The energy … We didn’t want the first single to be too traditional. We both like traditional Christmas songs. There’s nothing like an Old Little Town of Bethlehem or A Silent Night. We wanted it to be melodious, but flipped … How can we inverse this? So you still got all of those elements of telling the good news that Jesus is here, but with some different angles and some different vibes to it.
How did you start making gospel music?
I was born into it. … I started playing the piano at 4. My grandmother and I would be the first ones up every morning, and we would get to banging on the piano. We went to church every Sunday, and one Sunday after church she could hear me trying to bang out this song from church. So she began to go throughout the house and wake everybody up, telling them something is happening with Jason. … In our culture there’s something that’s called the anointing oil. So she went and got the anointing oil and prayed over me. And so ever since then, I’ve been playing piano.
What’s your favorite Bible story?
Jacob … Look at how God uses other people. … Jacob and Esau were twin brothers, and Esau came out before Jacob. But the prophecy came to Rebecca, Jacob’s mother that the older would serve the younger. Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and Rebekah tricked Isaac so that Jacob could get the birthright. But pretty much God used all this mess for his will and his purpose and his plan so that the older would serve the younger.
How did you and Ye first link up?
Ray Romulus. He’s the producer for Bruno Mars, and he and Ye were friends through Kim’s publicist. Kim Kardashian’s publicist was Tracy Romulus, which was Ray’s wife. … Ray is the one who called me and said, yo, Ye is looking for a choir. He’s trying to put a choir together, and everywhere we turn, you’re the guy. Every door that we turn, it comes back to Jason White. … Like most things, Ye wants everything yesterday. So it was Wednesday. He wanted a hundred choir members by Friday.
How did the iconic “24” song come together?
Kobe had just died. We were coming out of Sunday service … that first week of January, it was Grammy Sunday … That week, he had wrote “24” and he had played it for us, but he wanted to put the choir on it. … After we went in and really kind of made that happen. But it was all Ye … He came up with 24. We didn’t really have to touch it too much, that was all him … He is a genius.
