Accentuating his celebrated career with dc talk, tobyMac made his solo bow in 2001 with the Grammy-nominated Momentum. The disc marked a return to tobyMac's hip-hop roots, the very style with which dc talk first emerged, and yet the rapper-singer once again finds himself branching out from this base. As the title implies, Welcome To Diverse City is an album bursting with musical flavors and nuances, and yet this stylistic blend finds unity through faith as it's threaded through a melding urban rock and hip-hop frame. Reaching into a world of different sounds and cultures, this album knits it all together with a genuine artist's touch.
Building upon this throwback style, tobyMac infuses new life with raps, hooks, and melodies that transform the party energy into a celebration of races united as a single city on a shining hill.
"My style is diversity, it always has been," says tobyMac, who co-produced the album along with such notables as Chris Stevens, Paul Meany, Robert Marvin, Mike Linney, Joe Baldridge, and Solomon Olds. "It's about taking hip-hop and injecting pop melodies and guitars and harmonicas and whatever else it takes to make the song fit the message I'm trying to communicate."
In regards to the message, the new album reflects a shift in the way he expresses ideas. Whereas past albums tended to tackle issues in a more universal manner, Welcome to Diverse City takes a closer look at specific people, at times himself, problems, and situations as real life backdrops to the lyrics.
"In the past I dealt head-on with social issues, but I'm starting to see that social issues come down to real lives," says tobyMac. "As you dig into personal issues and find resolve in God, social issues will begin to take care of themselves."
Showing everyone he's more than just "talk," tobyMac put his artistic vision and values back into action with Welcome to Diverse City, fully living up to its title. "People fashion a great city by holding tight the beauty of our differences with the bonds of our unity," he concludes. "My new album invites people to ponder how they relate to each other and to God and how He relates to them, but at the same time, I know it's gonna drop a bomb that'll make any listener feel the energy".
Radio will get their first taste of the project in late August, when the first single Gone goes out to all three formats AC, CHR & and Rock radio.
In support of Welcome To Diverse City, tobyMac is in the midst of performing at all major summer festivals, and will continue touring with Third Day this fall. Also this fall, Toby has joined with Michael Tait for a book examining America's spiritual legacy, offering accounts of sixty famous and little-known Americans whose faith forged our nation. Titled, UNDER GOD, the book portrays many our founding fathers and other compelling stories of slavery, racism and injustice, and how faith played a role in each outcome. UNDER GOD includes many famous stories that have recently been taken out of educational curriculum due to religious content, and urges readers to take a stand to return our country to being "one nation, Under God." With over 250,000 copies already pre-ordered, the book is sure to be one of the biggest sellers of the year.
