Fivio Foreign is not doing a rollout right now. He is doing a testimony. The Brooklyn rapper who built his name on some of the hardest drill records to ever come out of New York is in the middle of a full pivot toward gospel music, and the internet already caught a glimpse of it with a gospel freestyle that has been spreading fast online. But the freestyle was just a preview. What Fivio told Baller Alert in a recent sit down is that this is not a one off moment. It is a whole album, a whole musical, and a whole new chapter of his relationship with God that he has been building quietly for a while.
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He described the project less like a typical rap rollout and more like a stage production. It is going to be a full body of work, an album’s worth of songs, and he wants a video for every single one of them. But he was clear that these videos are not going to look like the usual music video format. He is leaning into a musical style approach, heavy on acting and performance, because the songs themselves are less about the studio version and more about how they land live. He said the part he is genuinely excited about is not the streaming numbers, it is the reaction he gets from performing the songs in front of people. And he already confirmed a tour is coming, saying flatly that it is happening, no hesitation.What might surprise people most is what he said about features. In an era where almost every major rap rollout is stacked with guest verses to maximize buzz, Fivio says his gospel album is likely going to have none. He explained that right now, he feels God putting it on his heart to keep the project untouched by outside voices, though he left room to pray on it further before locking anything in. For him, the point of the album was never about who else shows up on the tracklist. It is about the message landing the way it is supposed to, however people end up receiving it. He described himself as at peace either way, saying he is comfortable letting the music find its audience organically rather than engineering it for maximum reach.
The most telling part of the conversation came when Fivio was asked directly where he and God stand today. His answer was immediate. He said he feels closer to God right now than he has ever been in his life, and he tied that closeness to effort, not circumstance. In his words, anybody can be close to God, but it takes actually trying. He framed it as less about God pulling away and more about waiting on people to figure out their own part of the relationship. He also made a point that felt personal beyond the interview itself, saying that if you are alive right now, if you woke up today with the ability to think, speak, and move through the world, that alone means you still have a chance to figure it out. Whatever someone is currently going through, being alive is still an open door.
Fivio’s faith story traces back to his mother, who he described as old school in the most literal sense, a woman who was in church constantly and made sure her kids and cousins came with her whenever she could get them there. He said he was in church as a baby before he ever had a choice in the matter. But once he got old enough to make his own decisions, he admitted he strayed and went down a different path, the kind most people can relate to in some form. He talked about how life eventually puts people in positions where they do not know how to get themselves out, and how in those moments, prayer becomes the one thing almost everybody instinctively reaches for. He described hitting a point of exhausting every other option and realizing prayer was the last thing left that still felt like it could work. And even through the years he spent straying, he said he never let himself get to a place where he was ashamed of God.
That personal history lines up with what has already gone public. Fivio recently released “Chasin,” a gospel leaning single recorded with The Fire Choir, with a video shot in Paterson, New Jersey that doubles as a tribute to his late mother. The song touches on accountability, faith, and community while still carrying his hip hop identity underneath it, which tracks with everything he described about not wanting to abandon who he is, just expand what he is willing to say. He has also been open with fans about entering a rehab facility late last year, telling people at the time that he had reached a point where he wanted real change and was tired of the decisions that kept working against him. Since then, he has shared pieces of his sobriety journey publicly, and the gospel pivot looks less like a marketing angle and more like the natural next step of that same story.
For an artist who helped define the sound of Brooklyn drill, this is a significant turn, but Fivio does not seem to be framing it as leaving anything behind. He is framing it as addition, a fuller version of a story that started in a church pew before it ever touched a booth. The freestyle that got people talking was just the opening line. The album, the musical, and the tour he says is already locked in are where the rest of the story gets told.
