During the 1990s Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers ranked among gospel music’s most widely embraced ensembles, drawing notice from mainstream outlets in much the same way as several other Christian performers of the era. The ensemble consisted of Lawrence together with thirty-four singers drawn from the so-called Tri-Cities region encompassing Spartanburg, South Carolina, as well as Gastonia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Their first recording, the 1993 album A Songwriter’s Point of View, appeared on the modest GospoCentric imprint and later climbed to the second position on the gospel album chart. By year’s end the group had earned a place on Billboard’s list of the Top Ten Gospel Groups, collected multiple Stellar Awards, and received a nomination for the NAACP Image Award. Their follow-up, Bible Stories, came out in 1995 via Crystal Rose/Chordant Records, and a seasonal collection titled Hello Christmas surfaced two years later. In 2000 the choir moved to EMI Gospel and issued tri-city4.com that summer; Go Get Your Life Back arrived in 2002, followed by the 2003 retrospective Restoring the Years, which added two previously unreleased songs. Lawrence’s debut solo project, I Speak Life, reached stores the next year. During spring 2006 the Singers disclosed their intention to disband and captured a farewell performance that was subsequently issued as the paired albums Finalé: Act One and Finalé: Act Two. Lawrence returned with his second solo effort, The Law of Confession, Part I, in February 2009; although a sequel was anticipated, his subsequent release took the form of the 2011 album YRM (Your Righteous Mind).
