Martha Munizzi

Martha Munizzi accomplished a rather impressive feat when she released her first three albums as an independent on a church-spun label carrying her own name. She didn't just succeed; she won a Stella Award, a Grammy and kept her sophomore album on or near Billboard's Gospel Top 10 for more than a year. By the time Munizzi signed with her first major label, there was little room left to climb, having already hit major career milestones as an indie artist. The title of major label debut No Limits could have been a commentary on where her ministry and career would go from there. Munizzi's sound is big, and pulls from a grab bag of her church's multi-ethnic gospel roots. Any one album delivers concert-level energy, vocals that would seem to leave her with laryngitis, hypnotizing, free-form worship ballads and samplings of R&B and urban gospel with the occasional nod to hip-hop. She is the U.S. equivalent of Darlene Zschech, but with a little more "urban" in her gospel.