Yolanda Adams speaks of motherhood, Elektra Records and her early years.

Yolanda Adams

You have a very full life, what with career, a husband and a young child. How do you manage it?

With lots of help! I'm not ashamed to say that. I have band members who help and a caregiver and road manager who are always with me. And (my manager) Sheba is there. I'm surrounded by people, so it's easy for me. It's not like having a child and having no one to help.

What does your husband Tim think of your current lifestyle?

Tim is cool. He understood before we got married that this is definitely what I was called to do and that it would take a special person to hang with it. I'm not saying it's the most perfect marriage in the world, but it works for us.

You seem to be busier than you have ever been.

There's definitely more work involved (in promo tours) and you get a different calibre of engagements because people know who you are and because you are more mainstream as far as appearances are concerned.

It must be a big change for you working with a huge mainstream record company.

What Elektra wanted to do was take the music everywhere they could and they were very determined to do it. I really believe that gospel labels can do more when it comes to promotion and marketing.

Let's go back to your early days. How was it for you back in 1987 when you recorded your first album?

It exposed me to a lot of stuff that goes on in the music business that has nothing to do with God. And (it showed me) how important it is that your relationship with God is so firm and so intact that nothing moves you and that what people say about you does not discourage you. At that time in music, if you were not from California, New York or Detroit, you were just spinning your wheels.

How would you describe your particular musical style?

I don't like to be pigeonholed into one category - contemporary or urban contemporary or gospel. God has given me the ability to sing it all. So in singing it all, I get to reach all people. And I know that that's my mission. When God gives you something and you have that kind of appeal, he intends to use that appeal to reach the masses because the masses need God and the masses need to hear that word."