Jovonta Patton

Jovonta Patton operates from Minneapolis as a chart-topping vocalist, songwriter, business owner, radio program host, and the founder plus director of Deliverance for Youth, a choir boasting more than one hundred members plus its adept backing ensemble rooted in the Twin Cities, with participants between fourteen and twenty-one years old. His delivery features a reedy baritone that brings Stevie Wonder to mind, grounded in contemporary gospel yet widely approachable via the uplifting method he labels "pop-gospel," which delivered strong results on his independently issued debut album, 2016's Finally Living, that reached the summit of the Gospel charts. Beyond performance, Patton shows marketing skill; during Super Bowl week in 2018 he launched the standalone single "Way Maker" online and promoted it solely via social platforms, driving it to the top of the Digital Gospel Songs chart.

Minneapolis served as Patton's birthplace and upbringing site. He began singing at age four inside Berean M.B. Church and took up songwriting at six. Middle-school years found him leading the church choir, while high school brought performances at events across the Twin Cities.

In 2006 he entered his first professional ensemble, the Stella Award-nominated Nu Friends Community Choir, under James Grear's direction. Influenced the following year by Kirk Franklin, Donald Lawrence, and Destiny's Child, and reacting to rising gang violence in Minneapolis, Patton launched the community choir and organization Deliverance for Youth, commonly called DFY, originally comprising roughly twenty-five members under twenty-one from varied socio-economic backgrounds, with the mission of E.A.S.Y (Empowering and Saving Youth). The group issued the album There Is D.F.Y. (Live) in 2011, containing multiple originals written by Patton, and he earned recognition for service to residents, especially families affected by gang and gun violence.

DFY maintained momentum through partnerships with rock band Foreigner and gospel figures including Kim McFarland and Erron Williams. As members aged, Patton created The DFY Summer Program, opening participation to youth of every background from ages five to twenty-six; more than one hundred took part in his first solo live recording, the 2012 project I Am…A Winner, which also featured Sheri Jones-Moffett and Bishop Richard D. Howell of Shiloh Temple International Ministries. Patton and DFY captured the studio debut Finally Living in 2016; lacking a radio plan, he sold fifteen hundred copies after Sunday services the first week, then used online promotion to top the Gospel charts in August, supplanting WOW Gospel 2016. The set also reached number twelve on the Christian & Gospel Albums chart and number twenty-one on the Independent Albums chart. The achievement produced local celebrity and regional notice, which Patton redirected into the choir organization even as his profile grew. Two years afterward he released The Best Me, which likewise topped the Gospel charts, and he began hosting the radio program Morning Praise with Jovonta. Patton issued the digital-only EP Sanctuary in August 2019, securing his third number-one Gospel-chart entry.