About — Richard Michael

Richard Michael seated in a grey double-breasted suit — Portrait session — Lagos

Richard Michael is a gospel minister and a recording artist, in that order. The music is the instrument; the ministration is the point. It is a distinction that shows up in the way he sings — fluid, melodic, patient, more interested in where a room is going than in what a phrase can do.

He founded Jesus Breed seven years ago and still leads it: a working crew of singers and players who travel to gospel meetings, conventions and church gatherings and carry the worship rather than decorate it. Seven years is long enough for a crew to stop being a project and start being a discipline.

He also convenes Revealing Jesus, an annual gathering of believers built around a single purpose: to see Him more clearly than the year before. It is not a concert with a sermon attached. The worship and the word are the same movement.

His catalogue is deliberately small. Paid It All is his own single, produced by D-Elect. The rest are features — with D’Elect, Victory Elect and Okey Music — where he is brought in for the part of the record that has to carry weight.

The story so far

Four chapters, still being written.

01

The voice

Before anything was recorded there was a voice people described the way you describe water — fluid, melodic, hard to pin down. It shaped everything that came after: the phrasing, the pacing, the refusal to oversing.

02

The crew

Jesus Breed was founded to make the ministration repeatable — the same standard whether the room holds forty people or four thousand. Seven years on it remains a rehearsing, travelling company rather than a name on a poster.

03

The catalogue

One single under his own name and three features. The features came first and the invitations kept coming, which is its own kind of credential in gospel music: other artists trust him with the part of the song that has to land.

04

The gathering

Revealing Jesus began as a yearly return to one question and has become the anchor of the calendar — for him, for the crew, and for the believers who plan around it.