Deep

Deep is a set of measurements. Four verses, four questions, and each one measures in a different direction: how deep, how far, how low, how high. That is not an accident of writing. Ephesians 3:18 asks whether anyone can grasp the breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height of the love of Christ, and the song simply takes the verse at its word and tries each dimension in turn.

It is the passage Yemi was taught by Pastor Gloria Olujobi, and the one the whole song is built on. The verse ends by conceding that the love in question passes knowledge — so the questions are asked, and none of them is answered. The nearest the song comes to a conclusion is an admission: eyes haven’t seen, heart cannot fathom.

The title comes from somewhere else. Psalm 42 has the line deep calleth unto deep, and the same psalm promises that in the night his song shall be with me — which is a reasonable description of what a worship record is for.

The chorus is in Yoruba. Ifè is love; Oluwa tofémi is the God who loves me. By the second chorus it has picked up Spanish as well, mi amor, exactly as Padre did twenty-four years earlier. Between those two songs sit four musical genres and most of his adult life, and both of them reach for three languages to say one word.

The English line in that chorus is borrowed too. Closer than a brother is Proverbs 18:24 — the same verse he opened an essay about loneliness with, years before this record existed.

And underneath all of it is a second address. Deep encodes his daughter’s name and a promise to love her without conditions, which means the questions are being asked in both directions at once: what the love of God measures, and what he intends his own to.