‘I fell in love with the city’: How a Grammy winning artist is influencing Rock Hill
K.J. Scriven sat in his Detroit hotel room and waited. He knew he had been nominated for a Grammy Award, but he was traveling for a performance, so he couldn’t go to the award show.
Scriven’s friend, the bass player in a band performing at the Grammys that night in 2014, texted him.
“Your category is coming up next,” his friend wrote. “I’ll let you know what happens.”
Scriven put his phone down and took a deep breath.
A few minutes later, Scriven’s friend texted him again.
“Oh my god!” his friend wrote. “You just won!”
Scriven started running around his hotel room.
“I was calling my wife,” he said. “I was calling my mom like, ‘Oh my god. I can’t believe it!’”
He had started his music career in 2009. At the time, he was a few credit hours away from finishing his business degree at his hometown’s Fayetteville State University in North Carolina when he decided to go a different path.
“My family thought I lost my mind,” Scriven recently told The Herald. “I had this sense that I was supposed to go toward music.”
Now, in 2022, Scriven, who moved to Rock Hill, S.C., in September with his family, is nominated for his second Grammy. He’s never pursued music for the awards, he said. Those have come through fate-like circumstances, Scriven said.
In 2012, Scriven performed at a youth conference in Sanford, N.C, and gospel music singer Tye Tribbett, the headliner of the event, happened to sit in the crowd as Scriven sang. He caught Tribbett’s attention.
“He ran backstage and he was like, ‘That was incredible!’” Scriven said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God! For real?’”
Tribbett wanted to collaborate with the new artist, and a year later, one of the songs Scriven performed at the conference, titled “What Can I Do,” ended up on Tribbett’s album. And in 2014, the album, “Greater Than,” won best gospel album, earning Scriven his first Grammy.
The song, which Scriven was featured on, has been listened to over 13 million times on Spotify.
Despite his growing success and notoriety, Scriven, 35, who’s lived in various cities across the Carolinas, including Charlotte and Lancaster, S.C., hasn’t had a desire to call any other place home, he said.
Just like he was drawn to music, Scriven was drawn to Rock Hill, he said.
“With some of the things I’ve been able to accomplish with music, people have asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you want go to like a big market or wouldn’t you want to do something like in the core of Charlotte or something like that?’” Scriven said. “Rock Hill has a character about it. Everybody knows everybody. I like that small town charm and more than anything, I feel like God called me here.”
’People really want this’
Within a few months, Scriven has already made an impact on the city. As he walked into Knowledge Perk last week, several staff members behind the coffee shop’s wood-paneled counter smiled and waved at Scriven.
He flashed his large grin and bellowed, “How are you?” He’s more than a regular at the coffee shop on White Street.
The fourth Friday of each month, Scriven hosts Worship: Unplugged, which is what he calls unscripted worship, at Knowledge Perk.
“I thought it would be cool if we had a space and a moment where we could just sing and let our hair down,” he said. “That’s part of why I call it, ‘Unplugged.’ You can just come and unplug — let it out, sing, enjoy yourself, forget everything else, and focus on the things that matter, enjoy people. That’s the genesis of why I wanted to do it.”
The coffee shop in the city’s downtown played a big role in Scriven’s decision to come to Rock Hill.
Scriven came up with the idea for the event a few months into the pandemic. He looked at dozens of coffee shops in and around the Charlotte area. As soon as he walked into Knowledge Perk, he knew it was the right fit, he said.
“This coffee shop was by and large, the most welcoming, the most excited,” he said. “They were like, ‘We would love to host something like that.’ They were the most receptive to the event. ... That’s what started that process and then, I just fell in love with the city.”
Scriven held his first Worship: Unplugged event in July, and the coffee shop has been filled every fourth Friday since.
“I think people really want this and I want this,” he said. “That’s what I kept hearing over and over. People were telling me like, ‘Thank you so much for doing this.’”
Scriven’s plans for Rock Hill don’t stop there.
On Jan. 11, Scriven started hosting Plugged In, which is what he calls unscripted Bible study, every second Tuesday each month at the same location. He hopes to play a role in connecting the city’s faith and creative community, he said. And down the road, Scriven, who has been a creative and worship pastor for over a decade, wants to open a church, he said.
“Right now, I’m in this space of like, I need to learn first,” he said. “I need to know who are these people in this city? Until you know who the people are, and you have empathy and compassion for where they are, then you can’t lead them.”
He hopes to make the church more than a Sunday service, Scriven said. He wants the church to address several initiatives for the community, including access to medical care, after-school programs and financial planning.
“What I found out is for every single one of those pieces that I wanted to do, there was already somebody in Rock Hill doing it,” he said. “We don’t have to always recreate the wheel. Sometimes, all you need to do is collaborate with people who are already doing it.”
‘It really took a village’
This year, Scriven is nominated for best contemporary Christian music performance. Just like his 2014 Grammy nomination, the opportunity just happened.
He learned the words to the nominated song, “Man of Your Word,” minutes before he first performed it with Maverick City Music, a contemporary worship music collective, in 2020.
Scriven wasn’t supposed to be on the Atlanta-based music collective’s newest album, but he was in Atlanta for vacation with his family when the group was recording, Scriven said. Over the weekend, Scriven stopped by the studio to listen and Christian music singer Chandler Moore asked Scriven to join in on the last song.
“He teaches me the words ... and I’m like, ‘OK I’ll figure out the rest as we’re going,’ ” Scriven said. “Then, we go out there and sing the song. It just turned into such a powerful moment. That song ended up becoming a single, getting played on a radio and then, getting nominated.”
As he reflected on his career, Scriven thought about the people who’ve helped him. He started to list dozens of names. He said he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what he has without them — a big reason he’s doing what he’s doing in Rock Hill.
“I did it independently in the sense that I had no record label or anything like that, but it really took a village to help build things for me,” he said. “When I talk to people now, I’m always looking for an opportunity to pay it forward because I know if it wasn’t for those people, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 8:18 AM.
