Fayetteville's Speech discusses success through Biblical lens

When you sell millions of albums, win two Grammy Awards and appear all over MTV and tour the world by the time you are 25, you can say you’ve had success. When you are a pastor and a founding member of a church, a husband and a father, a fledgling author and you’re still making music, reaching people and touring the world before you are 42, you can say you understand success.

Fayetteville resident Todd Thomas, better known as Speech from hip-hop’s Arrested Development, has penned “What is Success: How to be successful God’s way” and it is starting to find an audience all over the country. The book doesn’t aspire to be like recent releases detailing how God wants His followers to be wealthy. Instead, “What is Success” is about success on a physical, spiritual, mental and financial level.

“Every aspect of true happiness,” said Speech, describing his book. “Achieving what you want to achieve in marriage, school, your career, parenting.”

The book examines these topics and what God thinks of success and how to obtain it from a Biblical standpoint. It also contains a lot of personal experiences from Speech’s career and travels around the world. In one chapter he relates the whirlwind that was going on around him and the band as they made their way to the Grammys, adding that outsiders who got to watch from home enjoyed their success more than they did at the time. The book offers a very thoughtful read for people from all religious backgrounds and the biblical quotations that are used give the reader a lot to consider as well.

When addressing wealth, Speech stated that compared to a large part of the world, all Americans are wealthy. He has spent time on almost every continent and has seen the extreme wealth in places like Dubai and extreme poverty in parts of Africa. What people must consider is the motivation behind their quest for success and what one’s ultimete goal is.

Speech stated that he enjoyed the process of writing the book, which took him between six and seevn months, and added that he is enjoying promoting the book as well. He has already had several weekend long speaking engagements centered around the book in Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, as well as Atlanta. There are plans for more books in the future and possibly even a workbook.

As for Arrested Development, their latest album has already dropped in Japan and the track “World is Changing” has found its way into the top 10 of the J-Wave and Tokio Hot 100 charts. The album will be released in the states in April and Arrested Development will perform in Germany and France this spring.

For more information on Speech, “What is Success?” and Arrested Development, visit www.speechmusic.com.

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