Album Review: Tasha Cobbs Leonard’s "Tasha Unscripted" Turns Her Greatest Songs Into a Glorious Gospel Family Reunion

Prime Cuts: "You Know My Name" featuring Le'Andria Johnson, "For Your Glory" featuring Jonathan McReynolds, "Put a Praise on It / Hallelujah" featuring Karen Clark Sheard

Overall Grade: 4/5

Tasha Cobbs Leonard has always sounded most at home when a song escapes its original structure. Give her a congregation, a responsive choir and enough room for worship to overtake the running order, and she becomes more than a commanding vocalist. She becomes a spiritual conductor, sensing when to sing, when to testify and when to step aside so that another voice can carry the moment.

That freedom drives Tasha Unscripted, an enormous 34-track live album recorded before an audience in Atlanta. More than a career retrospective, the project reimagines over a decade of Cobbs Leonard's defining songs through medleys, reprises, prayers and spontaneous exchanges. Its impressive roster-including William Murphy, Jonathan McReynolds, Mickey Guyton, Kierra Sheard, Karen Clark Sheard, Israel Houghton, Le'Andria Johnson and Travis Greene-makes the recording feel like a gospel family reunion in which almost everyone has been handed a microphone.

The album opens with "Break Every Chain," but Cobbs Leonard wisely refuses simply to reproduce the familiar recording. William Murphy brings a seasoned preacher's authority to the song, helping turn one of contemporary gospel's most recognisable anthems into a fresh congregational declaration. Its transition into "Power in the Blood / Jesus, I'll Never Forget" also establishes the album's intergenerational character. Modern worship language meets the songs and testimonies that formed the Black church long before streaming numbers became a measure of success.

That dialogue between past and present continues throughout the record. "Church Hymns," featuring Bishop Paul S. Morton, and "Jesus Is the Only Way / Good Good Good" are not decorative nods to tradition. They locate Cobbs Leonard's contemporary success within a worship culture built upon hymns, call-and-response singing, preaching and testimony. Even when the production sounds thoroughly current, Tasha Unscripted remembers where gospel music learned to breathe.

One of the album's most revealing moments is "The Church I Grew Up In," featuring Mickey Guyton. Guyton's country background may initially make her an unexpected guest, but that difference gives the performance its emotional force. Rather than treating church as an institution to be admired from a distance, the song remembers it as a formative home-a place of music, faith, imperfection and belonging. Guyton brings warmth and vulnerability, while Cobbs Leonard anchors the performance in shared spiritual memory.

Jonathan McReynolds offers an entirely different energy on "For Your Glory." His agile, conversational delivery contrasts beautifully with Cobbs Leonard's vocal power. Instead of competing to see who can produce the largest moment, the two singers listen and respond to one another. The reprise then gives the song room to move beyond performance into prayer. It illustrates one of the album's central strengths: familiar material is not merely extended but reconsidered through another artist's spiritual and musical personality.

"In the Room," featuring Melvin Crispell III, is another standout. Crispell's supple gospel phrasing adds urgency to a song centred upon the transforming presence of God. By the time Pastor Tim Rogers enters during the reprise, the track has crossed the line between a song about divine presence and an enacted experience of it. The repeated phrases may look excessive on a track listing, but within the performance they function as gospel repetition traditionally has-pressing a truth deeper until the congregation begins to inhabit it.

The album's undeniable summit, however, is "You Know My Name" with Le'Andria Johnson. Johnson does not merely decorate the established song with vocal runs; she sounds as though she is wrestling personally with its promise. Against Cobbs Leonard's steady assurance, Johnson brings rawness, unpredictability and emotional danger. The pairing transforms a familiar worship favourite into an intimate testimony about being fully known by God. Its reprise is not an unnecessary appendix but the emotional aftershock of a performance too intense to end neatly.

Kierra Sheard provides another major moment on "Fill Me Up." Her muscular vocal attack pushes the song forward, while "Kierra's Prayer" reveals why the album needs its spoken and spontaneous passages. These interludes show that Tasha Unscripted is not designed simply as a playlist of polished collaborations. It seeks to preserve what happened in the room-including the moments when singing gave way to intercession.

Karen Clark Sheard's appearance on "Put a Praise on It / Hallelujah" delivers precisely the vocal fireworks listeners will expect, yet the performance never becomes an empty diva showcase. Clark Sheard's dazzling improvisation is rooted in the song's theology: praise is the believer's response before circumstances have supplied visible proof of victory. "Jesus in the Morning" then releases that intensity into exuberant, church-rooted celebration.

Not every transition is equally compelling, and 34 tracks demand considerable stamina. Several reprises could have been trimmed for listeners encountering the album outside the atmosphere of the original gathering. The continual succession of guests also occasionally threatens to obscure Cobbs Leonard's own narrative. This is less a conventional album than a captured worship event, and listeners looking for concise individual songs may find its size overwhelming.

Yet that excess is also part of its appeal. Tasha Unscripted refuses to package worship into tidy three-minute units. It allows songs to spill into sermons, prayers to become songs and featured vocalists to redirect familiar material. The "mic toss" concept succeeds because Cobbs Leonard remains generous enough to surrender the spotlight without surrendering the album's spiritual direction.

Closing with "Final Say," the collection arrives at a simple confession after more than two hours of musical abundance: God retains the final word. That conclusion gathers together everything heard before it-the chains broken, grace received, names known, empty lives filled and praise offered in advance.

Tasha Unscripted may be sprawling, but it is gloriously alive. Tasha Cobbs Leonard has not merely revisited her catalogue. She has opened it to a remarkable community of voices and allowed those songs to testify again.