The Elephant in the Room: Asaun Bynum on His 4X Stellar Nomination and the Story Behind "Jesus I Love You"
- Humilitee®
- 21 hours ago
- 5 min read
Exclusive Daily Praise TV and Magazine coverage of the 41st Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards — plus a companion video that has some fun with the question everyone's asking
There are moments in gospel music that feel bigger than the artist standing in them, and for Asaun Bynum, this is one of those moments. Heading into the 41st Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards, Bynum picked up four nominations — Male Artist of the Year and New Artist of the Year for "True To Him," and Duo/Chorus Group of the Year and Urban Single or Performance of the Year for "Jesus I Love You" featuring LeekGoHard — a breakout run for an artist stepping onto the Stellar ballot for the very first time.
Daily Praise TV sat down with Bynum and his father, gospel veteran Dr. Earl Bynum, ahead of the ceremony, and what came out of that conversation was less a victory lap and more a testimony about faith, family, and the work nobody sees.
"It's kind of like an out-of-body experience," Asaun said, describing the nominations. "Something that you worked for a very long time, growing up watching the greats on TV, winning Stellars, singing on the awards show — and then to know that you're finally in that number, it's an amazing feeling."
Dr. Bynum, whose label El Rey Entertainment partnered with Blockbuster Records to help bring the project home, didn't hold back his pride. "For Asaun to be his first time on the Stellar ballot, and to have four — to get on, then make it to the second round, then become a finalist — that says a whole lot. That is major. That is major. I'm just glad that God thought enough of the label to say yes."
A song built from a whisper to God
The story behind "Jesus I Love You" is where the nomination starts to feel personal. Asaun, a songwriter at heart, said the record began the way most of his songs do — not with a hook, but with a conversation. "I was in the studio and I was just like, 'Lord, I love you.' Which if you know me, you know I love the Lord — I really, really do. So I was like, that's what I want the song to be based around. I literally just started talking to God, and it just turned into something beautiful."
What happened next tested how much that song meant to him. After recording it once and feeling good about it, his producer's hard drive crashed — and the only surviving copy was a rough voice memo on Asaun's phone. Rather than let the song go, he went back into the studio and rebuilt it from scratch. "We went inch by inch, line by line, and I recorded the whole song over again," he said. "This wasn't just a one-time recording. This was double the work." Every background vocal on the track is his own — a detail his father made a point of highlighting: "There are no BGVs from any other vocalist. That's all him. He produced it, wrote it, and did the backgrounds on it himself."
The rebuilt version carries a weight beyond the studio, too. "One thing I'm appreciative of is that my grandfather got to hear the song," Asaun shared. "That was very significant to me. That's one of the reasons I wanted to release this song — it holds a special place for me, with everything that happened, and him leaving us. It's really major to me, so I'm grateful."
Addressing the elephant in the room
Let's name it: four nominations in your very first year on the Stellar ballot is a big number, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. In a genre full of artists who have put in a decade or more chasing this same recognition, Bynum's fast start has stirred real conversation — and, if we're honest, some unfair shots from people who feel it should have gone to someone else first.
It's a fair thing to wonder about. It's not a fair thing to hold against him. Nothing in this interview points to a shortcut — the opposite, actually. This is an artist who wrote his own song, produced it, sang every background vocal himself, and then rebuilt the whole record from a phone voice memo after losing the original session to a hard drive crash. That's not the resume of someone who got here easy. Dr. Bynum's own read on it — "that is major" — wasn't a father being generous. It was a producer who watched the work happen in real time.
Bynum hasn't made this conversation his fight, and that's worth noting too. Nothing here suggests he's spending energy defending himself against the noise. His focus, in his own words, stayed on the people who showed up for him — the ones who believed, supported, and prayed him through it — not the ones who didn't. That's a healthier place to stand than an argument he doesn't need to win. The nominations are earned; the rest is just conversation gospel music will keep having, about him and about whoever's next.
It's also, apparently, funny enough to make a video about. Daily Praise TV's companion piece for this story drops an AI-animated elephant into the middle of a car-ride interview to say the quiet part out loud — "Yo, we need to talk about these four Stellar nominations" — because sometimes the best way to clear the air is to just put the elephant in the passenger seat.
Thank you to the people who believed first
Asked to speak directly to the fans, supporters, and voters who helped get him here, Bynum didn't hesitate. "Thank you for believing in me, believing in the sound that God has allowed me to create, and for supporting me even when it may not have been easy. Thank you to the individuals that have supported me, played my music, listened to my music, that encourage me, that check on me, that pray for me, that tell me I'm on the right path. It really, really means a lot. And those people — they know who they are."
Watch the full pre-Stellar conversation with Asaun and Dr. Earl Bynum above, catch the "Elephant in the Room" video for a lighter take on the same headline, and follow continuing Daily Praise TV coverage of the 41st Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards on dailypraiseradio.com.
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