“I Owe God a Praise”
Jimmy Hicks & ACOJ
From the Blacksmoke Music Worldwide album Waterway
(release date: August 4, 2017)
By Bob Marovich
What I like about Jimmy Hicks is how he can transform a church song into what sounds like a big number from a gospel musical. Hicks and his Voices of Integrity did that with 2006’s “Born Blessed” and “This Kind By Fasting and Prayer.”
He has done it again with “I Owe God a Praise,” an effervescent hand-clapper featuring call-and-response with the Apostolic Church of Jesus (ACOJ) Choir and Hicks’s favorite singing duet partner, Diana Hicks. The Hicks team outlines the many trials God has brought them (and you) through, and that they (and you) should be grateful. “You know what I’m talking about!” Diana declares. We do.
Some may not remember that it was Hicks who, on his 2006 album Born Blessed, gave a pre-Sunday Best Le’Andria Johnson the lead on his “Praises Go Up.”