Jonathan McReynolds has spent the better part of his career climbing. He’s climbed the Billboard charts with six consecutive #1 hits, climbed the stages of the White House and the DNC, and climbed into the elite ranks of Mensa. And on a recent Zoom call, seated in front of a bookshelf lined with Grammys, Dove Awards, and a row of medals, the accolades quietly confirm it.
A year after his 2025 GRAMMY win for Best Gospel Performance/Song, in an exclusive interview with TheGrio, the 36-year-old visionary shares he’s less interested in the view from the top and more focused on what happens when you finally decide to come back down.
With his upcoming live album, “Before You Climb Any Higher,” arriving March 27, McReynolds is offering a much-needed perspective shift for a generation defined by the hustle. He’s offering perspective.
“Who are you?” he asks, pausing on a question that feels deceptively simple. “I understand what you’re doing, but who are you?”
That tension—between doing and being—sits at the heart of “Closer,” a live-recorded project rooted in Chicago, his hometown, and what he affectionately describes as a kind of spiritual checkpoint.
“Chicago’s like grandma’s house,” he explains. “You walk back in, and you can tell how much you’ve grown.”
It’s a fitting metaphor for an artist whose evolution has been as much internal as it has been musical.
A new sound, a familiar truth
Sonically, “Closer” stretches McReynolds beyond the “guy with a guitar” image that first introduced him to the world. This time, he leans into 80s pop textures, acoustic soul, and layered live instrumentation. An intentional blend that feels nostalgic without being stuck in the past.
The inspiration, he says, wasn’t deliberate, though.
“I just woke up thinking about Lionel Richie,” he says with a laugh.
That spontaneity carries throughout the project, which fuses traditional gospel with global influences that reflect both his evolving sound and his expanding worldview.
That perspective shows up most clearly on “Aane,” a standout track featuring Team Eternity Ghana. The collaboration ties directly to McReynolds’ dual citizenship in Ghana, something he obtained about two years ago, not as a symbolic gesture, but as part of a deeper commitment to engaging the African diaspora in a meaningful way.
“I didn’t want to just take it as a vanity thing—like, ‘Hey, I’ve got two passports now,’” he said. “I really wanted there to be some cultural exchange.”
And that exchange was intentional. McReynolds worked closely with Ghanaian musicians, paying attention to the details from sound to language. Even the word “Aane,” often translated as “yes,” required care.
“The way they even look at the word ‘yes’ is different,” he said. “I had to run it by them to make sure they were cool with it.”
In this context, it’s more than a simple affirmation. It can carry spiritual weight, signaling agreement, reverence, and participation in worship.
What comes through isn’t just a blend of styles, but a true exchange. He’s bringing his Church of God in Christ roots into conversation with West African musical traditions in a way that feels expansive.
The myth of “making it”
If the album explores closeness to God, McReynolds’ latest book, “Before You Climb Any Higher,” released February 2025, pushes that message even further, challenging a generation obsessed with “what’s next” while solidifying his voice as a now best-selling author.
In it, he unpacks what he calls the “arrival fallacy,” or the idea that success will finally bring peace.
“We think, ‘If I just get to this number, this award, this level—I’ll be good,’” he says. “But that’s just not the truth.”
It’s a realization he’s earned honestly. McReynolds has reached many of the milestones people spend their lives chasing—awards, sold-out tours, industry respect. And still, the climb didn’t end.
Instead, it kept going.
“The higher we go, the more we forget who we really are,” he says. “We pick up all these titles… and the real you gets left somewhere down there.”
His solution isn’t to stop striving altogether. Rather, it’s to pause long enough to remember.
That’s where the valley comes in.
Far from a place of failure, McReynolds reframes it as necessary ground for rest, clarity, and identity, an idea echoed throughout his book, which encourages readers to see life’s slower seasons as essential, not inconvenient.
A generation doing the most—and feeling the least
If McReynolds sounds like he’s speaking directly to a burned-out, overachieving generation, it’s because he is.
“We’re doing a lot,” he says. “I don’t think any generation can say they’ve done more. But who are we becoming?”
It’s a sharp observation in an era defined by constant output, be it content, careers, side hustles, or visibility. For a generation praised for its productivity, there’s also a quiet exhaustion running underneath it all.
“We don’t get to celebrate because we don’t stop climbing,” he says.
“Closer” is, in many ways, his response to that burnout. A soundtrack for slowing down, reconnecting, and asking better questions.
Not “What’s next?”
But “Who am I?”
Beyond the stage
Offstage, he lives out this educator mindset as a professor at Virginia Union University. “If I could turn every stage into a classroom, I would,” he admitted.
That commitment to pouring into the next generation is something he lives. On “Closer,” he collaborates with Jamal Roberts, the newest American Idol winner, in a moment that feels less like a feature and more like a full-circle connection.
McReynolds first met Roberts years ago when he served as a judge on BET’s Sunday Best. Roberts didn’t win that season, but McReynolds saw something in him early.
“I told him even then that he had great promise,” McReynolds recalled. “He just needed to keep growing… and now I look up, and he’s on American Idol, and dominates.”
Today, the two share a Grammy-nominated track in “Still,” a collaboration rooted in mutual respect and growth.
“I’m really blessed that he always saw me as not one of the judges that didn’t allow him to win,” McReynolds said. “He saw me as one of the judges that wanted him to ultimately win at life.”
Whether he is mentoring artists through his Life Room Label or teaching spiritual development, he is focused on helping people re-establish their identity.
As “Closer” prepares to drop, McReynolds hopes it serves as a soundtrack for somebody to finally stop climbing and simply start being. “You don’t got to do all that,” he concluded. “Why? Because you are already that”.
