Toni Rackard ”UNCONDITIONAL LOVE” BIO Passionate Praise is one way to describe the inspiring, contemporary gospel grooves of Tampa, Florida’s rising gospel star, Toni Rackard. For the last dozen years, she’s quietly built a following on the Florida music scene and even toured Europe with the renowned Harlem Gospel Choir. As her first national radio single “You Pulled Me Through” (a sizzling duet with Marvin Winans Jr.) is gaining momentum at gospel radio stations around the country, buzz is now building for the release of Rackard’s forthcoming debut CD Unconditional Love (Behind The Veil Records). The eldest of four kids born to a kindergarten teacher (Yvonne Stokes) and a heavy machine operator with Closet Maid (Edward Stokes), Rackard’s Ocala, Florida childhood was filled with music. “Everybody on my mom’s side sings and my dad plays trombone,” she recalls. “I wanted to sing like my mom who has a beautiful soprano voice.” In fact, when she was five years old, Rackard was in her mother’s Sunday class singing along as her mother led the class in worship. “One of her assistants was like Toni is singing right with you and I was so excited that someone would say that,” she recalls. From that day forward, Rackard focused on singing. She joined the church’s children’s choir. “You had to be baptized in order to sing in the choir but I didn’t know what it meant to be baptized,” she recalls. “But I did it just to get into the choir.” By the age of ten, Rackard was studying the styles of singers ranging from Whitney Houston to CeCe Winans and Yolanda Adams.” Rackard then joined two different R&B groups and they patterned themselves after hit groups such as SWV or En Vogue. “I was in two groups,” she confesses. “I just wanted to sing. it didn’t matter if it was gospel or secular. When I got to college under the ministry I’m in now, I realized I couldn’t effectively perform without ministry being involved and decided to leave secular music.” “I knew I wanted to sing but didn’t know how to go about it,” Rackard recalls of graduating from the University of South Florida in 2002. “So, while I was trying to figure out who I was, I took a degree in business.” After college, she married her high school sweetheart Derrick Rackard who worked his way up the corporate latter and is currently a residential loan executive with Sun Trust Bank. Their two minds became one as they focused on launching Rackard’s recording career. “We held off on having children, we started up businesses, did real estate ventures and other things to generate revenue to finance Toni’s career,” Derrick adds. Then, the economic market crashed, “And so did our resources,” Derrick says. “Then, doors started opening in other ways.” One door that opened was that the couple befriended Marvin Winans Jr., son of gospel superstars Vickie Winans and Marvin Winans Sr. “We were at the Good Luck Café in Tampa and Marvin was there. Marcus Turner (Behind the Veil’s Promotions Director] thought it would be nice to have Marvin on the CD. So we talked to him and he agreed to do a song with me.” Rackard’s producer Lewis T. Bryant Jr. (who has collaborated with R&B veteran Freddie Jackson) then went to work on what became “You Pulled Me Through.” The mid-tempo tune opens to the familiar echo of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” before transforming into an inspiring song about God’s ability to pull mankind through life’s trials and tribulations. The majority of the album was already finished by the time that Winans and Rackard hit the studio. It’s a broad spread of contemporary songs ranging from Rackard’s smooth jazzy take on Bill Withers’ 1977 chestnut “Lovely Day” to the Christian line-dance, “The Kingdom Slide.” Rackard, often with her husband Derrick, had a hand in writing or re-arranging every song on the project and crafted it for the 25 to 45 crowd. “You don’t have to be a in a box because you’re saved,” she says. “We are to have fun and rejoice but also spread the importance of intimacy with God.” Rackard is the praise and worship leader at Jesus People Family Worship Center in Tampa, FL.