Building a Memory: (Albums Recommendations) DC Talk

There are some albums that follow us everywhere we go. Some of them you first listened to a long time ago and, when you give it another a look, it feels as great as the first experience. This is what DC Talk's Free At Last means to me.

The first time I've heard of them was sometime between 2001 and 2002. My brother was part of a youth group at the local church where they played "different" songs than we were used to hear during church's services. It was a mix of rap/hip-hop and rock. The only thing I knew about this album was only an unofficial recording that was labelled in Portuguese as "dois homens de branco e um de preto" (two men in white and one in black). The song that mostly played while at home was "Say The Words", because it was relevant for whatever this youth group was doing, and that's the first one I remember listening of them.

Not much time after these events I mentioned, I discovered it was the album Free At Last by DC Talk. The album is their third release. Not differently from their debut album, in 1989, they made some difference in churches as a whole, by being "indecent" for the traditional and "interesting" for the young.

The band consists, mainly, of three guys that, as ironically as the label I remember from the album, are two white men and a negro (there's a song in this album similarly named to this). They are Toby Mac, Michael Tait and Kevin Max. Each one of them have a different style in music and, while together, they made something unique and interesting of listening to. All of them followed different careers in music after the band was put in hiatus, at first as solo artists. The only one who really had a big name in solo career was Toby Mac. Michael Tait (who had the shortest solo career of them) is heavily remembered by being Newsboys' current singer, and Kevin Max by being the lead singer in Audio Adrenaline's album King and Queens (2013), although his solo career is also promising.

This album was named after the conclusion of Martin Luther King's most famous speech "I Have A Dream", which is sampled at some point in the song of same name. As mentioned earlier, the three guys in this band have different influences in music and it's noticeable while listening the nearly 1-hour-long album (or over than an hour if we listen to the 10th anniversary edition), with some songs flirting more with rock, others being more hip-hoppy and some more chilling. Imagining this blend without listening seems very odd, but the final result is incredible and, as I also said before, unique. The rhythm is contagious and invites you to dance. Well, some churches that have dance groups used to use some of this band's songs because of the beat and the message they were singing.

The album also had some prizes and recognition like the Best Rock Gospel Album at the Grammy Awards in its 36th festival (1993), three songs winning the Dove Awards in the 24th (1993) and 25th (1994) editions of the Dove Awards, and the #9 position in The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music by the CCM Magazine in 2001.

The songs I like the most, as they are played in the album, are: