Marvin Sapp and Hezekiah Walker keep control of their music under new distribution agreements, even as some fans question the company behind them.
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
From left, Bishop Marvin Sapp, Roc Nation founder Jay-Z and Bishop Hezekiah Walker. (Photos: Getty Images; Composite: EEW Magazine Online)
Bishop Marvin Sapp has recorded Gospel music for more than three decades and given the church anthems such as “Never Would Have Made It” and “Praise Him in Advance.” When his 17th album, Restoration, arrives Nov. 20, he will own the master recordings, a right he says he never held while signed to a record label.
The company putting the album on streaming services and in stores is Roc Nation, the entertainment business founded by rapper and mogul Jay-Z, and that partnership has left some Gospel listeners uneasy.
Bishop Hezekiah Walker, the Brooklyn pastor behind “Every Praise,” signed with Roc Nation Distribution in November 2025, according to his announcement. Restoration will be the first full-length Gospel album the distribution company has released, theGrio reported.
Online, some fans questioned why two pastors would place their music with a company whose roster is built largely on secular hip-hop. One commenter argued that Sapp could have signed with any Gospel label and instead chose one whose artists celebrate lust and adultery, among the reactions Black America Web collected after the announcement.
Bishop Marvin Sapp performs during The Reunion Tour at Toyota Center in Houston on Oct. 21, 2024. (Photo: Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)
The agreements themselves give the artists more control than the contracts that shaped most Gospel careers. Under a traditional record deal, the label typically finances the recording, directs the marketing and owns the masters, often permanently. A distributor delivers music the artist already owns to streaming platforms and retailers, collects the revenue and provides marketing support in exchange for a share of the earnings.
“When I was signed to a label as an artist, the label owned all of my masters,” Sapp told Christianity Today. He said the Roc Nation arrangement lets him keep those rights while giving up a much smaller percentage of his earnings. The financial terms of neither agreement have been made public.
Sapp has said Roc Nation approached him while he was preparing to release Restoration independently. He wrote most of the album, which was produced by his longtime music director, Curtis Lindsey. When the partnership was announced in July, Sapp described it as a reminder that with God all things are possible.
Charrise Barron, a Harvard University music professor and author of the forthcoming book The Platinum Age of Gospel, told Christianity Today the deals continue decades of cooperation between Gospel artists and the mainstream music business. What makes these arrangements feel different to the public, she said, is Jay-Z’s profile.
Jay-Z, founder of Roc Nation, attends the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 4, 2026. (Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
That history includes one of Gospel’s most successful crossover records. In 1997, God’s Property from Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation was released through B-Rite and Interscope Records, the mainstream label then home to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment. Powered by the single “Stomp,” the album reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum.
The man connecting today’s Gospel veterans to Roc Nation is producer Stanley Brown, whose Timeless Music Group brokered both deals with the firm TITLE 9. Brown worked on Sapp’s 1999 album Nothing Else Matters. In 2023 he released his own single, “God Is Good,” through Roc Nation, featuring Walker, Karen Clark Sheard and Kierra Sheard. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Gospel Performance/Song, which Brown has called Roc Nation’s first nomination in the genre.
The expansion comes as religious music draws more listeners. U.S. on-demand audio streams of Christian and Gospel music rose 18.5% in 2025, according to Luminate’s year-end data, as reported by The Associated Press. Luminate credited worship acts such as Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship with driving much of the growth in new releases.
Walker’s first single under his deal, “Favor,” reunites him with the Love Fellowship Choir for their first stand-alone single in a decade. He has said the song grew out of his journey through prostate cancer. He is now two years cancer-free.
The release arrives the same month Walker opens HezHouse Apartments, a 10-story, 236-unit affordable housing complex in the East New York section of Brooklyn that took six years to complete. The housing, the new song and the Roc Nation partnership, Walker said, “are all part of the same journey for me.”
Sapp has asked critics not to assume the worst about his decision. His lead single is titled “He’s Not Finished.” Restoration is due Nov. 20.