Kim Burrell dropped as BMI honouree after homosexuality remarks

Gospel singer Kim Burrell will no longer be honoured at the BMI Trailblazers of Gospel Music Honors following her controversial remarks about homosexuality.
Burrell was due to be honoured by officials at the performing rights organisation alongside singer/songwriter Marvin Sapp on 14 January (17) but in a statement released on Friday (06Jan17) they announced she will no longer be honoured or be a part of the ceremony after video footage from a sermon showed her calling homosexuality “perverted” was posted online earlier this month (Jan17).
“BMI’s Trailblazers of Gospel Music is an annual celebration of gospel music and its many talented songwriters,” BMI officials said in a statement on its website. “Given the controversy surrounding this year’s co-honoree Kim Burrell, we have asked her to not take part in the ceremony in order to allow the focus to remain on the songwriters and their music.
“BMI was founded over 76 years ago with an open door policy to welcome songwriters across all genres, and that same spirit of tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness continues today.”
Sapp will still be honoured at the annual event, which is due to take place at the Rialto Center for the Arts in Atlanta, Georgia.
Burrell, who sings I See a Victory alongside Pharrell Williams on the soundtrack of new film Hidden Figures, was also dropped from performing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show following the controversy and her radio show on Texas Southern University radio station KTSU has also been cancelled.
Pharrell told Ellen earlier this week (beg02Jan17), “I love her, just like I love everybody else, and we all got to get used to that – we all have to get used to everyone’s differences and understand that this is a big, gigantic, beautiful, colourful world, and it only works with inclusion and empathy.”