Christianity and Rap, Part V
This is it for me; that one thing that I retreat to whenever things get hard. Not to be considered my dirty little secret, but where I go whenever I feel the need to express myself openly. Maybe yours is bad teen romance movies or early two-thousand pop. Welcome to mine…
Welcome to Christinaity and Rap, part V.
A series of articles that comes back from the dead like Lazarus, I tend to tackle a lot of controversial points in these articles. In the first one, I delved into the specific case study of Chance the Rapper and his third mixtape, Coloring Book. The sequel dived into the inherent uses that this rap can have, from praise to worship. The trilogy was originally going to end with number three, an open and frank discussion on whether the whole thing is good. I was then sucked back in for a fourth one with a whole discussion on the usage of the term ‘’Christian’’ to define the music.
Which leads you and I to our present moment: why is there a part five? Is the RatedR fishing for views like Peter? Looking for controversy like John the Baptist? Clamoring for relevancy like Alex Rodriguez in any given situation? No.
I was inspired to come back to it as I thought to myself the following: what makes for the best christian rap?
What brought me to this? I could neither tell you or explain it to you, but it’s arrival upon your screen became necessary. The words flowed from my head to the page faster than the Jordan River.
To illustrate what a good Chirstian Rap album and song should be and do, allow me to redirect you to the second Christianity and Rap article, that being when I spoke about Sho Baraka’s The Narrative, released five years ago at the time of writing.
While I could review the entire album the same way that Caden does on the Classic Album Reviews, I won’t, as I won’t be the one to encroach on the great things they are doing there. I just want to pick apart the album a bit to present to you an example. Song by song, there should be quantifiable examples of proper bars: wit and retort. Listen to ‘30 & Up, 1986’, where he says “You a Tracee Ellis Ross Queen child of The Supreme”. The bar is insightful and the double-entendre is slick. You need bars like that to survive.
One also needs to balance out what can be considered to be both hype and conscious. Certain tracks on that same album, notably the aforementioned ‘30 & Up, 1986’ and ‘Kanye, 2009’ serve as the hype tracks that carry the album for the singles. They’re great. But they are also balanced out by more conscious elements of the album. ‘Words, 2006’ serves that purpose amongst other tracks. What works here is the fact that the consciousness of Baraka shows, as he contemplates how one is to express their loves and how this feeling is truly beyond words.
Finally, it needs to be a part of the culture and the suture of society, all while acknowledging that it is not, for those of Christ are not of this world (John 15:19). Therefore, look at ‘Foreward, 1619’ that speaks to the racial realities in the United States. Yet, this feels uniform with the final track in the album, ‘Piano Break, 33 A.D.’, which tackles it all through the perspective of a sinner. There needs to be balance in the endeavor.
In truth, I ask for quality in these projects. They don’t need to be soliloquy’s that talk about how great GOD is! In fact, they need to be full stories that present the fall of man - whether it be the writer or humanity as a whole - and how His Son came and made you realize that you can rise again by His might and His truth.
But those are just my thoughts. What are yours?