Her post lands days after an explicit new single with Sexyy Red and weeks after her second Kirk Franklin record debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s gospel chart.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
GloRilla speaks during the launch of her GloVerse app at Buckhead Art & Company in Atlanta on Oct. 3, 2026. (Prince Williams/WireImage)
GloRilla grew up in Memphis singing in the church choir and serving on the praise and worship team. Her Christian household was so strict that she and her siblings snuck rap CDs and loaded the songs onto a PlayStation just to hear something besides gospel. On Wednesday, the rapper born Gloria Hallelujah Woods took to X with a frustration she says she still cannot make sense of.
“Man till this day I’ll never understand why so many people are triggered by me giving God praise,” she wrote. “I can’t find the wrong in it to save my life lol.”
She grounded her stance in Scripture. “The bible says let everything that has breath praise the lord (Psalm 150:6),” she continued. “Long as I’m breathing ima give God the glory and nobody can ever make me feel bad about that.” By midafternoon, the post had drawn more than 3,200 likes and nearly 600 reposts.
The post arrives during a crowded stretch for her. Last week, she released “Jiggly Bow Bow,” a sexually explicit single with Sexyy Red whose video casts the pair as elderly versions of themselves in a retirement home. It is their fifth collaboration. Nearly seven weeks earlier, she appeared on “This Time,” her second gospel record with Kirk Franklin. The song debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart and gave Franklin a record 10th No. 1 there.
Sexyy Red, left, and GloRilla released “Jiggly Bow Bow,” their fifth collaboration, last week. (Alex Free & Joy Hubbard)
Some Christians argue her explicit catalog makes her an unfit partner for gospel music. In an Oct. 27 interview on “Big Boy’s Neighborhood,” Franklin said critics considered her “not holy enough or churchy enough” to record with him.
“It’s been breaking my heart some of the ridicule that some of the religious have given her,” Franklin said, according to Complex. In a separate interview on The Baller Alert Show, he said, “You can’t micromanage people’s process.” In an Associated Press interview tied to the Oct. 30 release of his album “I Am What I Am,” he said secular artists who join his projects “feel pulled and called” to do it.
The exchange has reopened one of the oldest arguments in Black church life: where the sacred ends, where the secular begins, and who decides when someone has crossed over. GloRilla’s defenders call the criticism religious gatekeeping. Her critics say they are asking for consistency between the praise on her gospel records and the content of the rest of her music. The two camps are often answering different questions. One concerns whether she may praise God in public. The other concerns whether gospel artists should share a record with her.
The controversy over her gospel collaborations began in October 2024 with “Rain Down on Me,” a song on her debut album, “Glorious,” featuring Franklin, Maverick City Music, Kierra Sheard and Chandler Moore. It was the only track on the album without an explicit label. Some Maverick City fans were stunned. “What an embarrassment for the Christian music industry,” one wrote online, CHVN Radio reported.
That song also topped Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart and won the Dr. Bobby Jones Best Gospel/Inspirational Award at the 2025 BET Awards. “I owe it all to God,” GloRilla said in her acceptance speech, as EEW reported at the time. Both of her collaborations with Franklin have now topped that chart, even as some Christians continue to object to them.
The sharpest objections center on the rest of her catalog. When “Glorious” arrived, Crosswalk reported that other songs on the album contained heavy profanity and explicit sexual content. “I dunno if this is what the Bible meant by being set apart,” one listener wrote, ChurchLeaders reported.
Other critics have focused on the gospel artists who share her records. They questioned whether Franklin was ministering to GloRilla’s audience or leading church kids toward hers, Atlanta Black Star reported. Franklin has faced similar complaints over his work with Kanye West and Lil Baby.
Gospel and hip-hop veterans have answered with history. Salt of Salt-N-Pepa, who appeared on Franklin’s 1997 crossover hit “Stomp,” told V-103’s Danie B on Oct. 2 that the backlash back then grew so strong that some radio stations stopped playing her verse. Gospel artist John P. Kee told the crowd at Atlanta’s Praise in the Park the next day to leave Franklin alone. On “The Rickey Smiley Show,” Da Brat said reaching young people is exactly what Franklin is supposed to do. “Just ’cause she sing rap music don’t mean she don’t love the Lord and have faith in God,” she said.
Some pulpits agree. The Rev. Melech E. M. Thomas, a Baltimore pastor, quoted lyrics from her song “Tomorrow” in a sermon and called her a “new gospel artist,” Black Enterprise reported. GloRilla reposted the clip.
GloRilla has spoken about what church judgment cost her. On the Rev. Jamal Bryant’s “Let’s Be Clear” podcast on Oct. 15, she recalled attending a service when she was younger and feeling singled out as a pastor preached about tattoos and piercings, Baller Alert reported. She said the experience contributed to her decision to stop attending church in person, though she still watches sermons online. She also told Bryant that a gospel album of her own is coming, according to the episode’s official description.
GloRilla attends the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on May 25, 2026. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
The church has argued over this border before. In the 1920s, Thomas A. Dorsey played piano for blues singer Ma Rainey under the name “Georgia Tom.” When he committed himself to sacred music, mainstream churches rejected his songs. “I’ve been thrown out of some of the best churches in America,” Dorsey once said, according to PBS. He is now known as the father of gospel music.
His path differs from hers in one respect her critics often raise. After his blues years, Dorsey devoted himself to sacred composition. GloRilla continues to release mainstream rap alongside her gospel work, as “Jiggly Bow Bow” showed last week.
The psalm she cited closes the Book of Psalms. In the King James Version it reads, “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.” It is a call to worship addressed to every living thing. The verse does not speak to who should record gospel music or what standard a Christian artist’s wider catalog should meet, and those are the questions dividing believers in this debate.
Both issues are likely to follow her as long as she makes both kinds of music. GloRilla has been teasing her second album and said in July that a member of Destiny’s Child will appear on it.
On Wednesday, she left no doubt that whatever her catalog looks like going forward, she intends to keep giving God the glory in public.
