Legendary Gospel singer BeBe Winans pens new autobiography ‘Born for This: My Story in Music’
BeBe Winans has won six Grammy Awards, ten Dove Awards, six Stellar Awards, four NAACP Awards (three with CeCe and one with 3WB with brothers Marvin and Carvin), three Soul Train Music Awards (two of them with sister CeCe) and a NAACP Theater Award for his musical Born For This. In the memoir, Winans intimates never before shared details with readers. Though many of the details are new to readers, BeBe Winans’ transparency and endearment to many is not.
After 10 years out of the spotlight, BeBe Winans returned to the forefront with the release of a new album, ‘Need You,’ released on August 30. The album features “Laughter: Just Like A Medicine” featuring the new group, Korean Soul, who are from Seoul, Korea. Also featured on the album is the single “He Promised Me”, his first solo single to reach #1 on the Gospel Airplay charts.
BeBe Winans has set to book a reflection on his life called ‘Born For This: My Story in Music’ releasing on Tuesday, October 15, 2019. Like a conversation with a life-long friend, Born For This, invites new readers and loyal fans alike to share in never-before-revealed details about his life in the crossfires between church, gospel music and the mainstream recording industry. BeBe shares personal stories about his mentor Andrae Crouch and close friend Whitney Houston who both had a major impact on his life and reflects on the challenges and triumphs of maintaining his Christian faith over the course of a decades long recording career where he has sold millions of albums.
There’s a destination connected to your name
BeBe Winans
Stopping by to chat with us for a taping of “On the Record”, Winans talked about the impact of the late Andrae Crouch and Whitney Houston. Though a gifted singer, BeBe loves songwriting. So much so that it was a poem read in the fourth grade by Ms. Byers that inspired him to become a songwriting. His love of songwriting was spurred by his older brother, Bishop Marvin Winans, Crouch and Houston who was much more than a family friend. She was more like family and BeBe credits her with encouraging his songwriting.
Following her untimely death in 2012, BeBe penned a book “The Whitney I Knew” sharing his memories of his late friend. Talking more about Whitney Houston, he recounted the time she sang background for Bebe and Cece, the award-winning duo of him and his younger sister, Priscilla Marie Winans. He shares full names of his brothers and sisters, throughout the book. Houston was close to the Winans family and he remains grateful for her selflessness and sisterhood saying: “it’s so important that we love each other and through that action, doors open!” Many doors opened for Bebe and Cece as the siblings crossed over to not only R&B audiences, but remained a staple with contemporary christian and gospel audiences, as well.
In the book, you will find out more about the early Praise the Lord years and first hand encounters with racism in the church. You’ll find out about how he handled the challenges when faced with racism in the unlikeliest of places, the social dangers of interracial dating and a powerful testimony of the power of agape love. Simply put, LOVE WINS.
When you learn who you are and you accept that, then you can become who you’re supposed to be!
When asked what the most powerful lesson in the book is, Winans says that he wants readers to understand that rejection is not a negative thing but something God uses to get us to the right door and prepare us for the big moment we have ahead. He shares moments of rejection that left him reeling but ultimately pushed him in the right direction.
You’ll be riveted by the account of generational rejection that caused his paternal grandfather to spurn his father. Surprisingly, his great-grandfather, a bishop in the Church of God in Christ helped bring the family full circle. However, one happy ending was a bittersweet ending to the legacy of Winans’ maternal family who for years was the only family he knew. Fatherlessness and absentee fathers is an epidemic that has long plagued communities all over the nation, but who knew that this family surname was not originally not Winans and that BeBe was the last Winans child born with their maternal family’s last name. In an outcome that only the miracle of forgiveness could produce, Winans surmises that perhaps “the blessing of God extended to all the children, and the children’s children, and on and on, just because Dad didn’t hold a grudge…“
Dad believed that God blessed his act of forgiveness by blessing the name Winans.
Bishop Marvin and BeBe Winans help uncover their family’s history of not only preaching, but slavery and sharecropping. You guessed it, the Winans name didn’t emanate with singing siblings in Detroit. The journey from there to here in “Born For This: My Story in Music” holds very little back and offers readers a glimpse inside the mind and world of one of gospel music’s legendary talents. What was BeBe Winans born for? Though he was born into a singing family, he had to do the work to find his place in the world, first alongside his sister, then alone as a solo artist. Be prepared to not only learn more than you’ve ever thought you’d know about Benjamin Winans, but to embark upon your own journey of self discovery after reading “Born for This: My Story in Music”.
