In this article I may use the word rap and hip hop interchangeably being that they are very close in meaning in my opinion. So, first let me begin with my definition of a Christian rapper. A Christian rapper is a rapper that happens to be a Christian but may not necessarily rap about God. A Christian rapper may rap about their personal life experiences or anything that they feel led to speak about. Some Christian rappers may rhyme or speak about the things of God, while some may not speak about God at all in their songs. On the other hand, I believe a Gospel rapper to be a rapper that typically rhymes about God or the things of God. Gospel rappers tend to lean more towards using their music for ministry.
However, both the Christian rapper and the Gospel rapper roles are very similar. They usually do not use any profanity or speak about things that go against God. You can probably consider Christian rap as a clean alternative to secular rap that you hear on mainstream radio and TV. The same goes with Gospel rap; you get a clean version of rap, but with Gospel rap you may get an extra spiritual bonus. You get to hear about God and His word, even sometimes learning about scriptures in the bible. I also read a great article on rapzilla explaining the difference between Christian rap and Gospel rap, and I agree 100% with how they break it down and explain it as well.
FROM A SECULAR RAPPER, TO A CHRISTIAN RAPPER, TO A GOSPEL RAPPER
I was a fan of hip hop rap music since it first appeared on the scene back in the 70’s. I was so much a fan of hip hop and rap music that I became a rapper myself. I used to rap to instrumentals way before the computer came on the scene. I had my 4-track tape recorder and I went to work producing my first hip hop cassette tapes. I then later stepped up my game a little bit and brought a Yamaha 4-track midi disc recorder. I continued to produce rap album after rap album, with a rap style I referred to as hardcore. I rapped about all the things that you hear about today on the radio, guns, drugs, money, girls, etc. As time went on, and when my relationship with God grew, my raps became cleaner and cleaner. I eventually got to a point where I was incorporating hidden bible principles and messages, but I was still using profanity in my raps.
HOW I WAS ABLE TO STOP CURSING
I would like to share this brief story real quickly about how I was able to stop cussing and using foul language through music. I figured this to be sort of an important piece to bring up about my background, especially if you are considering becoming a Christian rapper. My goal is to maybe help someone else who may want to know “how to stop cursing?” I had a terrible potty mouth growing up simply because I didn’t know any better. Essentially, that’s all I knew based on how my friends and everyone around me spoke. And I must admit that it is tough to stop cursing when you have been accustomed to speaking a particular way for years. However, I’m going to share my brief testimony on how I was able to overcome cursing through music without even realizing it. As I continued to rap and my flow got better over time, I decided to challenge myself to write raps without curse words going forward. Once I sat down to write my first rap, I was at a loss. I did not realize how much of a filler, curse words were. In many cases, one curse word was equivalent to 3 to 4 words. I looked at a previous verse I wrote, stripped it from the curse words, and was left with about 2 to 3 words in that verse. It was a very difficult task in the beginning because I had to replace curse words with actual words that made sense. Then, I realized how much of a cop-out it was to write lyrics with a bunch of curse words because it made the writing process easy. However, as a rhyme writer, I was up for the challenge. After the first couple of raps, it became easier and easier. It became the norm for me to write raps without curse words and I never looked back. I haven’t written a curse word in a rap ever since. So, how was I able to stop cursing? Essentially, when I stop cursing in my raps, it transitioned over to my speech organically, without me even trying. I’m not saying that I never said a curse word after that, but my speech had taken a major turn for the better. It became easy to speak without cursing. To this day, I actually get a weird feeling even if I curse by accident, such as stomping my toe unexpectedly or missing that winning shot in a basketball game.
BECOMING A CHRISTIAN RAPPER
I was on my way from a secular rapper to a Gospel rapper. It was a process that took stages of growth. I took curse words out of my raps, but I was still saying things that really didn’t line up with the word of God. However, I was a lot further than I was before. Over time I cleaned up my lyrical content and became more of a conscious type of rapper. I had hidden messages in my raps pointing towards God, but you had to read between the lines to really get the message. I continued to grow in the things of God and eventually was led near the realm of the Christian rapper status. However, I was on the fence for a while before I finally embraced the title “Christian rapper”. I basically came to terms that I’m just going to go all in and stop being on the sidelines. So, in 2010, I decided to use my passion for rap music to glorify God.
BECOMING A GOSPEL RAPPER
I felt like I was finally home being considered a Christian rapper. I get to do what I enjoy and glorify God through my music at the same time. So, why did I go from a Christian rapper to a Gospel rapper? Well, it wasn’t intentionally, simply based on the distinct small differences and meanings between a Christian rapper and a Gospel rapper, I sort of fell in the category of a Gospel rapper by default. My Christian rap style went into the direction that leans heavily on spiritual messages and bible scriptures. This way of spiritual type rap came out of necessity for me to create music as a form of ministry for myself. However, in many cases, you are not the only one who may be in the need of something or facing particular a challenge. My goal is to make music that ministers to the listener’s soul; my own in particular. Not saying that it’s anything wrong with Christian rap, essentially for me personally, music is a good tool for me to hear the word of God while enjoying the sound of hip hop. It opens up more opportunities for me to hear the word of God, when I’m listening to music, such as, while working out at the gym or going for a morning run in my neighborhood. Therefore, being a Gospel rapper and a listener or follower of Gospel rap artists; I tend to make the type of music I want to hear. I don’t know if this is the case for other rappers, but I must admit, I do listen to my own music for inspiration. Sometimes, we have to minister to ourselves from time to time.
FEEDING YOUR SPIRIT WITH THE WORD OF GOD
I consider myself a Gospel rapper now being that a lot of my recent music heavily lean on scriptures and feeding your spirit. These days, when I look for music to listen to, I’m prowling social media and the internet for Gospel rap artists that can feed my spirit with the word of God. What I mean by “feeding your spirit”; is listening to lyrics that speaks about the word of God. It can be similar to a pastor’s sermon except the phrases and the words rhyme and flow together with music in the background. Sometimes you may hear scriptures in the verses or in the chorus of the song. Listening to Gospel rap can increase your knowledge about God even your faith. Gospel rap or Gospel hip hop can lift your spirits when you are feeling down and have the potential to grow you spiritually.
BENEFITS OF PUTTING MESSAGES IN SONGS
Have you ever noticed how young kids tend to memorize lyrics? If you have kids, you may have had a situation where your kid may have struggled to remember certain study material for their school work, but they can remember ever lyric or verse in their favorite song. You can be riding in the car with your kids with the radio playing, and it seems like every song that comes on the radio, they know the words. Take yourself for example, can you remember a verse from a popular song back in the 80’s, 90’s, or early 2000’s? You may not have heard the song in over 10 years, but you can still remember a verse or the chorus. It may have been a verse from Nas, Tupac, KRS One, Public Enemy, or from Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock’s “It takes two to make a thing go right” song. This is probably because we have heard the song so much that, particular verses that stood out to us get planted in our subconscious memory. This is how powerful music is. Now, imagine if they have used a bible scripture in their verse or in the chorus of the song. That bible scripture would have the potential to be planted into memories that we can use to help us in our spiritual walk today.
HOW THIS ONE CHRISTIAN RAP SONG IMPACTED MY LIFE
One of my favorite songs is by a Christian rapper name Lecrae called “Truth”. I believe it’s track number 7 off his album called “Rebel” released in 2008. The reason why this is one of my favorite songs is because of the powerful biblical messages and the fact that I like the beat and how it sounds. And when you can listen to something that sounds good to your ears and receive a good word at the same time, it’s like a win, win situation. In the song, he actually answer’s the question, “why do bad things happen to good people”. This is a prime example of a song that really feeds me spiritually. This one song called “Truth”, among others grew me spiritually because it answered many questions, I did not have the answers to at the time. One question in particular was “why do bad things happened to good people?” About 10 years ago, still being a Christian, I had someone ask me, “why do bad things happen to good people?” This question came up after casually conversating about tragic events happening in the news. And at the time, I couldn’t give him an answer because I didn’t know the answer myself. Moreover, being much younger in age, I wasn’t reading my bible like I supposed to and my current Pastor during that time wasn’t preaching much about those type of questions.
CHRISTIAN RAP THEN & NOW
At that time, I didn’t listen to Christian rap simply because the audio production quality just really could not compete with the secular music audio production. Moreover, not just the production quality, but a lot of the lyrics were too “churchy” or over the top “preachy”. Young Christians like myself at the time didn’t have many options as far as Christian rap music; at least that I knew of at the time. You would have to sacrifice production quality to hear clean music. We were mainly faced with, secular rap or no rap at all. There were always the traditional soulful Gospel type of music with singing, praising, and worshipping God. But as a young Christian, traditional Gospel music wasn’t my cup of tea at the time. It was something about the sound of hip hop, with the hard-hitting beats, rhymes, and rhythm to bop your head and groove too. Then a friend of mine, introduced me to Christian rapper named Lecrae. I was very skeptical about his buying CD, based on my previous perception of Christian rap. However, I gave it a try and I was blown away when I heard it. The production quality was superior. The beats were banging and hitting hard. The quick-witted rap flow was astonishing. Essentially, if you didn’t listen closely to the lyrical content, you wouldn’t even have known it was a Christian rap song. The entire CD was entertaining and carried a spiritual punch at the same time! I was hooked after that!
About a month later, I listened to a song by Lecrae called “Truth”, which answered the question, “why do bad things happen to good people?”. I then went back to the guy who originally asked me that question and gave him the Lecrae CD Rebel and told him to listen to track 7. I apologized to him for not being able to answer his question. I apologized because as Christians we should be able to evangelize to non-believers, or at least be able to answer basic questions pertaining to our faith. Our knowledge and wisdom in God, can make or break whether someone becomes a believer or not. After a few weeks or so, the guy came back to me in an amazement; how Lecrae album Rebel been in his car CD player the whole time since I first gave him the CD on repeat, specifically on track 7. It was funny when he told me his girlfriend said to him, “can you please play something else, we have been listening to the same song for weeks”. He was surprised at the quality of the music as well, being that this is not your typical Christian rap type of sound. I felt happy at the time, being that I was able to present him with an answer to his question, and possibly opened up a whole new field of opportunities for him to hear the word of God. And the icing on the cake was the fact that it was entertaining to listen to as well. It opened up the flood gates to God for him because that entire album is flooded with spiritual messages and bible principles. After I was exposed to the possibility of Christian rap, I went on a mission to dig up and find more Christian artists, and boy, I discovered some amazing artists. I went back and brought all Lecrae music CDs at the time, starting with the first one he dropped. Then, that led me to all the other Christian artists on the Reach Records label, such as Trip Lee and Andy Mineo. Then, I ventured out to other labels and artists through social media and streaming services like iTunes and ended up with a massive amount of Christian artists such as Derek Minor, Canon, Flame, Eshon Burgundy, and Bizzle. Now, secular rap for me is a thing of the past, and all I listen to now is Christian hip hop. My favorite rappers consist mainly of Christian rappers. It takes talent to be able to rap, incorporated the word of God, have wisdom and know the things of God, have a good beat and production, and have it all flow together to create a complete song that sounds good musically.
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRISTIAN HIP HOP AND HIP HOP?
The only difference between Christian hip hop and hip hop is what the artists is saying. The beats are the same, the flow is the same, the lyrical content actually separates the two. For example, if one rapper raps about how many girls, cars, jewelry, and money they have and another rapper raps about how God blessed them; does that qualify for each rapper to be in a separate genre? Even though, many hip hop rappers rap about the same thing these days, if you look back to the early 2000’s, the 90’s and the 80’s, rappers then had different styles and things they rapped about. You had to be creative and different in those days to stand apart from the next guy. You had the smooth rappers like Big Daddy Kane & Slick Rick. You had the political rappers like Public Enemy. You had the gangsta rappers like NWA. You had the “kicking knowledge” type rappers like common. Afrocentic style type rappers like Arrested Development. EPMD were like the hardcore rappers. Those are just a few of the many styles of rappers back in the day, and all their lyrics were different. However, all of them are still considered hip hop. Therefore, why is Christian hip hop excluded form hip hop into it’s own genre?
GOSPEL BEATS VERSUS SECULAR BEATS
If you are wondering if there is a difference between Gospel beats versus secular beats, I would vaguely argue that there isn’t a difference. However, I believe there is a small grey area when it comes to using vocal type samples in your beat, that may use vulgar language, such as curse words or DJ drops with woman making moaning type sounds. I would try to avoid those type of samples on Christian hip hop type beats because it could conflict with what you are saying and send the wrong signals to the listener. Then there are cases when producers or beat makers intentionally use certain samples or melodies in the beat that resembles church sounds such as organ and pianos. Other than those 2 scenarios, it’s really no difference at all. However, for the most part, a Gospel beat can be a hard-hitting kick and snare drum, bass booming 808, with a trap type melody type beat. It’s nothing wrong nor is there a concern with the music; it’s mainly what you say verbally.
Matthew 15:11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
Ultimately, it’s what you say on the track is what makes it secular rap or Christian rap.
I created some free Gospel beats for you to listen to. I purposely made the effort to create a Gospel type style beat. Well, how did I pull it off? I used church organ type instruments or melodies to make it sound “churchy”, if that’s a word. Take a listen and let me know what you think in the comments if available or through our social media links. Also, feel free to download and use these Gospel beats for your own projects, as a thank you for coming to the Gospel Beats website and reading this article. I left some head-room so the beat came be mixed down with your vocals and later mastered.
WHY IS IT THAT CHRISTIAN HIP HOP AND HIP HOP ARE IN 2 SEPARATE GENRES?
What does hip hop really mean? I have my personal definition and understanding being that I have been a fan of hip hop since it originated back in the early 80s. Think to yourself for a second about what is hip hop, and hold that thought for a moment. If you were to look up the definition of hip hop in Google, some sites refer to the definition as a cultural movement associated with rapping and rhyming. Some definitions refer to hip hop as rhyming together with music. I must say that I agree with all the meanings mentioned above. You may agree as well or able to elaborate further on the meaning as for me. Whatever the case, notice how the meaning doesn’t mention anything about what the lyrical content is saying. How about your meaning of hip hop, does it include what the rapper is saying in the lyrics? If I were to guess, I would say the answer is no.
WHY IS IT THAT CHRISTIAN RAP DOESN’T HAVE IT’S OWN GENRE?
If you still are not convinced that Christian hip hop should be in the hip hop genre, why doesn’t Christian rap have it’s own genre? I would say at minimum, it should be a sub-genre of hip hop. Here is the challenge though, Gospel radio stations don’t want to play Christian rap because they don’t consider it to be Gospel music, even though they may be rapping about God. And hip hop radio stations don’t want to play Christian hip hop because they believed it’s considered Gospel based on the lyrical content. Therefore, the Christian hip hop genre get overlooked without mainstream exposure in many cases. Many people don’t know that Christian hip hop even exist, or their impression of Christian hip hop is still the old school, low quality production, heavily churchy lyrics with no rhythm. Thanks to social media, we are now able to be heard and exposed to the world that we exist and that we are here to change lives and uplift God’s kingdom.
WHY IS RAP THAT PROMOTE SIN IS CONSIDERED MAINSTREAM BUT POSITIVE CHRISTIAN RAP IS NOT?
According to a quick search on Google, 70 percent of Americans are Christians. Wouldn’t it make sense, if the majority of Americans are Christians, that Christian hip hop or rap would be part of mainstream hip hop, or at least be more popular than it is now? There are still millions of people out there who don’t even know Christian rap exist or if there is such a thing as Christian rap. There are many people who don’t listen to rap music at all simply because of the vulgar lyrics and the negativity it promotes. A caucasian friend of mine who told me about Lecrae for the first time before I was aware of the whole Christian rap scene, said that initially, he didn’t listen to rap music because he assumed what he heard on the radio was all rap music. But when he heard Lecrae music through social media, he became a fan; and came to the realization that he did like hip hop, he just didn’t like the lyrics on mainstream secular rap music.
Now, I know that all rap is not considered the same and there are rappers that don’t use sinful type of lyrics, but those type of songs usually do not make it on the radio. Therefore, people come to the notion that all rap music is the same, promoting negativity and un-Godly behavior. Some may even argue that they’re just telling their story about the life they had, which I understand. However, sinful lifestyles should not be glorified or promoted as in; this is the way to be. We should be striving to do better and help the next person listening so that they don’t make the same mistakes. Just wanted to try and make an attempt to clear that up a little bit before I continue. Do you think it’s a coincidence that music that mainly promotes negativity get pushed to the radio and other mainstream media outlets? Why is it that you rarely hear positive hip hop songs on mainstream media? Is it because there aren’t any positive songs being made anymore? I highly doubt it, especially with the ever-growing Christian rap scene. Is it a bigger picture here that we are overlooking? It’s Something to think about. It’s not just with music, but it’s the same case for the entertainment industry as a whole. This is the case when it comes to mainstream secular movies and Christian movies as well. However, without going deep into that rabbit hole, there are a few Christian rappers that are in the mainstream spotlight. So, we have made some head way, with many talented Christians not far behind. I’m actually waiting on the day that Christian rap break through to mainstream either by carving it’s way in or by creating it’s own lane.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For those of you who are like me and grew up as a huge hip hop fan, we really enjoy the sound of hip hop. It’s something about how the words flow together over hard-hitting beats. The rhythm of hip hop get our heads bobbing and our bodies moving. But many of us who became Christians had to let hip hop go once we became saved due to the amount of sin glorified in today’s hip hop music. Here is where Christian hip hop comes to the rescue! Christian hip hop for me was like a blessing from God because now I’m able to enjoy listening to hip hop without subjecting myself to sinful type lyrics. And if I want to take it a step further, Gospel hip hop music actually glorifies God in ways that can actually feed your spirit, while enjoying the sound of hip hop. Yup, if you haven’t picked up on it by now, I’m a huge fan and supporter of Christian and Gospel rap, as an artist and a listener. It gives the younger generation an alternative to explicit songs out in the world today, but most importantly an opportunity to get to know Jesus. Some may argue that your Pastor at your local church should be providing you with spiritual food. And while that’s true, the days that go by between Sunday service, Wednesday bible study, and your personal praying times, why not include more of God’s word in your life; the more the better. The enemy doesn’t take a day off with feeding you negative, unhealthy content; why not exchange it for the word of God.
