“So here go my single, dawg, radio needs this. They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, videotape, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?”

These are lyrics from “Jesus Walks,” a 2004 hit off of Kanye West’s debut album, “The College Dropout,” which challenged the standard for what can and can not be said in a rap song. 

Though Kanye has had a questionable history in regards to religion, likely driven by his struggle with mental health, this year seemed to mark a change that began to remediate the inconsistencies between his faith and his actions. 

Since Jan. 6, 2019, Kanye has held weekly events called Sunday Service where he and a choir perform both gospel classics and new renditions of some of his biggest hits. At Sunday Service,  the focus is primarily on faith rather than on himself.

Kanye has described the events as his way of healing following mental health struggles, scandals, and recent controversies.

Sunday Service was an essential part of this process and has led Kanye to reexamine his values and what he views to be important. Kanye’s struggles and healing resulted in him now doing what many fans had long thought he would, which was to embrace his faith and shift to a gospel style of music and message. 

Throughout the healing process, Kanye  almost entirely avoided the media, outside of the coverage of his work in fashion, his Sunday Services and his upcoming album, “Jesus is King”. In late September, Kanye held listening parties for the album while also teasing a film titled “Jesus is Lord,” which were both released on Oct. 25th.

Kanye said that going forward he will be making strictly gospel music, according to Andrew Barber of the blog Fake Shore Drive. Nevertheless, any Kanye fan would know that he often makes announcements that he does not follow through on. This was most recently seen in his teased but never released album, “Yandhi”. 

Despite this, West seems to be in a better and more focused place than he has been in recent years.