Daddy’s Little Girl: Crystal Aikin’s Journey to the Main Stage

gospel | Nov 28, 2008 | Comments 0

Crystal Aikin said, “As a young person I kind of knew I loved music but I didnt know it was gonna go anywhere“.

Crystal Aikin’s ministry blessed me.

It was a cool September evening at the regional Unity Fest Conference hosted by Pastor Joseph Brinson at New Jerusalem Revival Center in Niagara Falls, NY. I sat in the audience—well, stood mostly—enjoying the most colorful, vibrant, anointed performance I’ve seen in a long time.

A phenomenal local group, Malcolm F. Wilson and Joshua’s Generation sang back up for the powerhouse while Andre Brinson—my favorite
keyboardist— tickled the keys.

You would have thought Crystal Aikin had been travelling with the singers and musicians for years. She had one rehearsal. I was there. And you would have never known it.

The wonderfully ferocious voice of the 33 year old BET’s Sunday Best Winner and former emergency room nurse is even more powerful and transcendent live. With a black tee, jeans, adorable silver flats and those signature locks swept up into a funky ponytail, Crystal Aikin ministered from her soul. Uninhibited, unrestricted, and unscripted, she took the audience on an uplifting journey from the spoken word, to the word ministered through song in her sassy signature style.

After interviewing the witty, charming PLU graduate and first season winner of Sunday Best, the Gospel Industries version to American Idol, that attracted almost a million viewers each week, I found that behind the smile, mesmerizing vocals and infectious personality, is a woman who has seen more than her fair share of lows.

Though God has been good to Crystal, life hasn’t been easy. One of her most poignant memories is also one of the most tragic.

The year was 2002.

It was a night like any other. Crystal Aikin had been to church and returned home late. As usual, Dad Aikin was in bed asleep. “He was typically the early bird,” Crystal says, so she chatted up her mom, Shirley for a while and then turned in for the evening. But not long after Crystal had dropped off to sleep, she was abruptly awakened. “My mom woke me up and said, ‘There’s something wrong with your dad.’” Thethen 28-year-old Crystal didn’t quite know what to think.

Things quickly took a downward spiral.

“Of course there was the immediate panic when he stopped breathing,” she recounts. “And they (the paramedics) were trying to do CPR and I wasn’t a nurse at the time, so I was like, ‘Oh my God! What’s going on?’”

The attempts to revive her dad were fruitless. “He just never woke up,” Crystal says softly, remembering the earth-shattering experience of
watching her father and hero, die of a sudden heart attack in her family’s home.

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Orignal Source: EEW Magazine