"For me, it's all about encouragement and inspiration," said Yolanda Adams, one of gospel's leading ladies.
"I think a lot of music, whether its R&B, hip-hop, or rock, it's been so dogged and down. There's a real hunger for an uplifting message."
Adams, who performs Sunday at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, has built a career on the power of positivity.
"I have joy in my life every day," she said.
But that doesn't mean the four-time Grammy winner hasn't had her share of ups and downs. In a four-year period alone, Adams went through a divorce, was investigated by the IRS and lost her mother to colon cancer. But as the saying goes, it's all about perspective.
"I think we take for granted that joy is just something people possess," she said. "I have joy because of the choices I make. A lot of people don't do the necessary work to ensure that no matter how they feel, they're still joyful about something in their lives. We're so used to looking at what we don't have or assuming that what someone else has is so much better. Let's take a look at what we do have."
The 51-year-old singer won't get any arguments from fellow gospel superstar Erica Campbell of the sister-duo act Mary Mary.
"We concur with Yolanda 100 percent," she said during a recent interview.
"The way you think will determine how you live. Yes, life is hard sometimes, but you have to choose to be happy."
The Mary Mary sisters, who perform at Hampton Coliseum on Friday, say the subject is especially timely.
"It's so interesting to talk about perspective, because we literally just wrote a song about it," said Tina Campbell. "The lyrics go 'bad news came in this morning and I had to decide, even though these tears are flowing, that I choose to be all right.' You're basically confessing to yourself that no matter what the circumstance, my perspective is going to elevate me."
A shared outlook isn't the only thing Adams and Mary Mary have in common. They are also both masters of other media.
The second season of Mary Mary's reality show - aptly called "Mary Mary" - kicks off in December on cable TV's WE network. Meanwhile, Adams' syndicated radio show can be heard locally on Star 1310 (WGH-AM) on weekday mornings.
Both acts have also helped broaden the fan base of contemporary gospel music by introducing elements of soul, jazz and hip-hop.
"It's a wonderful thing to see how our genre has grown," Adams said. The singer's 2011 release, "Becoming," had no shortage of dance floor anthems.
"Too many times we are put in a box by musical labels," the singer noted. But make no mistake, while the music may have evolved, the Christian message remains the same.
"I don't think being a follower of Jesus dictates having a certain kind of instrumentation," Erica Campbell said.
Perhaps more than any other group, Mary Mary has redefined gospel music.
The platinum-selling sister act is a crossover sensation. The duo's latest release, "Go Get It," charted on Billboard's gospel, R&B and hip-hop charts. "It blows our hair back," Tina Campbell said of the duo's success.
Even so, there's more work to be done. "I like to think there's a science to the numbers when we play a concert," Erica Campbell said. "Fifty percent of the people in the room love Mary Mary, but the other percent came just because someone invited them. Those are the people we're trying to reach."
