How Jon Keith Found Renewal After Hitting Rock Bottom
https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/how-jon-keith-found-renewal-after-hitting-rock-bottom/
Jon Keith didn’t expect to still be here this year.
He says it plainly, without dramatics or pity. Last year, his mental health hit a breaking point, and the darkness nearly swallowed him.
“It got bad to the point where I didn’t plan on being here this year,” he says. “Or better said — I planned not to be here.”
But he is here. And his new album, Grow Wings, is proof of that. Not just because it exists, but because it captures, track by track, the long, messy, beautiful process of coming undone — and being remade.
“By the grace of God, I’m still here,” he says. “Hope has been restored. I actually feel like I’m being made new.”
If you’re not already familiar, Keith has been a rising voice in Christian hip-hop for the better part of the last decade. Blending sharp lyricism with an unfiltered honesty about faith, doubt and mental health, his past work carved out a lane that made space for spiritual complexity. Now, with Grow Wings, he’s stepping into something even more raw — and even more free.
Grow Wings is the sound of someone clawing their way through the chrysalis. The title comes from Keith’s deep love of butterflies, which he says God often uses to speak to him.
“The thing about butterflies is that when they’re in the chrysalis, the caterpillar actually has to die. It becomes liquid,” he explains. “But if it surrenders to the process, the butterfly can be born. You can’t fight the falling apart.”
The idea of surrender isn’t just metaphorical — it’s the entire premise of the record. Keith says he didn’t write this album after healing; he wrote it during the breakdown. And that’s exactly the point.
“I wrote it to help people fall apart,” he says. “That sounds backwards, but it’s not. It’s about letting people know that breaking down isn’t failure. It’s part of being made new.”
If it sounds like a departure from the hard-hitting, confident hip-hop Keith has built his name on, that’s because in some ways, it is. Grow Wings is a pop album. And Keith is completely unbothered by that.
“I still love rap,” he said. “Most people know me from hip-hop, and it’s still part of who I am. But this is a pop album. And I love that,” he says. “It feels good to write melodies that people can sing — songs that connect deeply and heal.”
There’s a freedom in his voice when he talks about this project, and it’s not just about genre. It’s about finally letting go of expectations — his own and everyone else’s.
“I used to worry a lot about cohesion. Like, if I jump from genre to genre, are people gonna think I’m all over the place?” he says. “But then I thought about the artists I love, and they’re just out here doing what they want. And the people that rock with them? They stick around, no matter what.”
That creative freedom came, in part, from something else that was new: this is Keith’s first album released through Rodney Jerkins’ label, Alienz Alive. The legendary producer — who’s worked with everyone from Brandy to Beyoncé — handpicked Keith to be part of the label’s debut roster. And the support has made a tangible difference.
“This was the first time I could lock in with someone for a whole project,” Keith says, referring to his creative partner Enzo Grand. “Before, I never really had the resources to do that. I’d be piecing things together, doing most of it myself, because I couldn’t afford to bring someone in full time. But this time, we got to go all in. And it shows.”
The partnership with Jerkins, he says, wasn’t just about access to industry connections or production power — it was about shared values.
“I’d known Rodney for a couple years before this. He’s got a heart for the Lord, and for music that glorifies God,” Keith says. “He’s not trying to come up off me. He’s already done everything he wants to do in his career. Now he just wants to get good music in front of people.”
Keith admits he almost didn’t believe it when Jerkins first reached out.
“He DM’d me and I was like, ‘This is 100% fake, right?’ I screenshotted it and sent it to my friends,” he laughs. “They were like, ‘No, bro. That’s real. Answer the DM.’”
He did. And now, he’s found himself not just making the best music of his career, but stepping into something bigger than himself.
“I think Christian music is at a turning point,” he says. “There’s a wave of artists doing stuff that’s just as good — or better — than what’s in the mainstream.”
But he’s not blind to the challenges.
“We’ve still got a ways to go,” he adds. “Like, we need to stop doing Christian remixes of secular songs where the only thing changed is the cuss words. That doesn’t help us. It’s not creative. It’s just whack.”
What excites him, though, are the artists who are innovating, pushing boundaries and reclaiming the church’s historic role as a cultural leader.
“For most of history, Christian artists were at the forefront of art. That’s not the case now. But I think we’re on our way.”
Keith doesn’t always see himself as part of that movement — at least not right away.
“I usually talk about other artists when I talk about that wave,” he says. “But the people around me remind me that I am part of it. And that’s humbling.”
That humility bleeds through everything he says — from the stories he shares about listener DMs to the care he takes describing the spiritual process that underpins the album. He talks less like someone trying to build a platform and more like someone trying to make sense of what God’s doing in real time.
“This is the first time in a long time I can say I actually feel like I’m being renewed,” he says. “And it’s wild, because for so long, I didn’t even want to be here.”
He’s quiet for a second, as if letting the weight of that statement land.
Then, simply: “But I’m still here.”
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July 11, 2025 at 05:36PM