He’s been crowned the “new hip-hop king” and
his newest album, “Anomaly,” topped iTunes and
Amazon charts the day of its Sept. 9 release. He’s
been invited to birthday parties for both Billy
Graham and Michael Jordan and riffed on NBC’s
“Tonight Show” with host Jimmy Fallon.
It’s the kind of mainstream success that has
eluded most Christian rappers. Then again, some
people are still trying to decide if hip-hop star
Lecrae is a Christian rapper, or a rapper who
happens to be Christian.
It depends who you ask, including Lecrae himself.
“God has also raised up lowly, kind of
insignificant individuals to do miraculous and
incredible things,” Lecrae, 34, said in an interview.
“We’re the Gideons, we’re the Davids. Even Jesus
himself made himself of no reputation. It’s when
you can link it back to God doing it, I think that’s
what he loves. He’s not a megalomaniac, he’s
deserving of glory and honor, and to use
individuals that demonstrate that it was him, and
him alone, it accomplishes his mission and that’s
success.”
While most Christian artists have struggled to
break out of the Christian music subculture,
Lecrae has found early crossover success — and a
significant following among white evangelical
elites. He navigates the tricky waters between
rapping explicitly about Christianity while reaching
a mainstream audience.
According to Billboard, he’s sold 1.4 million
albums and 2.9 million track downloads.
“Anomaly” hit Billboard’s No. 1 last week — a
first for a gospel album and only the fifth for a
Christian album. His acting debut in “Believe Me,”
a film about a group of four men who try to con
money out of churchgoers, received a short,
positive nod from The New York Times.
Some of Lecrae’s fans are worried the success
could ruin him or at least soften his lyrics. But
when Christian artists like U2′s Bono or
Switchfoot find mainstream success, many
Christian fans often latch on for good.
In fact, while once shunning mainstream and
creating its own music and entertainment
subculture, American evangelicalism now values
recognition and engagement in mainstream
culture.
“Lecrae is probably the hottest Christian artist
alive right now,” said Atlanta megachurch pastor
Louie Giglio in his sermon on Sunday (Sept. 21)
at his Passion City Church.
Giglio recently ran into Lecrae in their hometown
airport in Atlanta, praising the artist for his recent
success. “It’s only hors d’oeuvres for heaven,”
Lecrae responded.
No ‘Christian spy’
In a recent piece for ESPN’s Grantland, Rembert
Browne compares Lecrae to filmmaker Tyler Perry,
who successfully reached black and Christian
audiences.
“Because, in ‘Anomaly,’ like some of Perry’s films,
the Christianity sneaks up on you,” Browne wrote,
linking “Believe Me” to a string of other recent
successful Christian-themed films. “It’s clear
there is a market for Christian-themed pop
culture.”
Lecrae, who attends the start-up Renovation
Church in Atlanta, isn’t sure what to make of the
“sneak up” language.
“Obviously, to the conservative evangelical, or the
Christian, they hear ‘sneak’ and they think, ‘Why
do we have to sneak?’” he said. “But when we
hear that from somebody outside of the Christian
culture, in many ways they mean that as a
compliment.”
“What they’re trying to say is that they didn’t feel
like they were berated, or beat over the head, or
made to feel like they were being patronized, or
condescending. By no means am I trying to hide
my faith, or disguise myself as a Christian spy.”
If Lecrae is “sneaking up” with Christian themes,
then his lyrics will slap listeners in the face as he
regularly raps with explicit themes on faith.
Anomaly’s song “Fear,” for example, includes
lyrics from Psalm 23 and repetitive mentions of
Jesus.
I’mma tell that truth till it kill me
And I’m chillin’ with my Creator
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
To all of my haters
For the ones that think I forgot Him
And the ones who won’t let me say
I ain’t scared no mo’
“Without saying it — because it wouldn’t be very
Christian of him — the ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus’ is a cleverly devout middle finger to
all of his haters,” Browne wrote in Grantland.
“He’s directing it toward everyone who’s
criticized him — for being too spiritual and for not
being spiritual enough. This is what happens
when you’re caught between genres. It’s this
middle ground that makes Lecrae different. And
that feeling different — not Christianity — is what
this album is truly about.”
‘Dear Hip Hop’
Lecrae has received favorable attention in recent
years from white evangelicals, particularly the
neo-Calvinist Reformed crowd that is influenced
by John Calvin, the 16th-century French
theologian. Lecrae’s 2008 song, “Don’t Waste
Your Life,” is the same title as a book from retired
megachurch pastor John Piper, the high priest of
Reformed evangelicals.
“I think a lot of us became Christians in a
hodgepodge, because doctrine was not a thing;
we weren’t considering theology,” Lecrae said.
“We were just like, ‘Hey, we love Jesus, let’s go.’
I’ll read this Piper book, and go to this T.D.
Jakes conference, we just absorbed everything. I
think the Reformed doctrine just presented a lot
more organized, drawn-out theology. I could wrap
my mind around it, and it wasn’t as mystical.”
Just as Lecrae is building bridges between
secular and Christian audiences, leading
evangelicals say hip-hop can bridge the divide
between largely white churches and the changing
world around them.
“Maybe it’s about building a bridge in the other
direction: a bridge of empathy for a largely white,
middle-class church to a fatherless, economically
forgotten, and sometimes angry youth culture,”
wrote Russell Moore, president of the Southern
Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,
in a cover story for Christianity Today last year.
“If so, maybe it can help pull American
Christianity out of its white middle-class ghetto
and into the vastness of the kingdom of God — a
kingdom that has room for both Jonathan
Edwards and Jay-Z.”
Lecrae can name-drop influential theologians with
the best of them, including Piper, Randy Alcorn,
Francis Schaeffer, Abraham Kuyper and Charles
Spurgeon. It wasn’t until the end of his thought
that he mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr., whom
he references in his music.
“I love looking back and being able to understand
that nothing we are dealing with is necessarily
new, just understanding how people wrestle with
things historically and how I can apply that to the
present,” Lecrae said.
He’s also probably the only rap artist to drop the
name of New York megachurch pastor Tim Keller,
or Christianity Today executive editor Andy
Crouch, into his lyrics. Both men, he said,
“influenced me to think about how I get involved
in culture, and how do I become a culture creator
and not just copy it or condemn it or critique it
all the time.”
He has been praised for calling out the rap
industry for being self-contradictory when
speaking on racial issues like the recent uprisings
in Ferguson, Mo. “Dear Hip Hop, we can’t scream
‘murder, misogyny, lawlessness’ in our music &
then turn around and ask for equality & justice, ”
he told Billboard.
Racial reconciliation, he said, is grounded in
theology.
“I think racial reconciliation is really rooted in the
reconciliation that we see in Scripture,” Lecrae
said. “I think you begin to find yourself being
reconciled to people all over the place, and just
wanting to empathize with people from all walks
of life, specifically as a Christian, to demonstrate
the love of Jesus.”
‘A courageous message in a safe package’
Like many rappers, Lecrae, now a married father
of three, had a rocky start. Abused and later
abandoned by his father, his song “Good, Bad,
Ugly,” raps about hooking up with a woman and
helping her get an abortion.
He said a police officer pulled him over, saw
drugs in his car but let him go when he also
spotted a Bible in his car, telling him to read it.
Lecrae decided to mend his ways after he
survived a crash where his car had flipped over,
he said.
In his recent album, Lecrae indicts the spoils of
Western excess, American exceptionalism and
Christian hypocrisy. One of his friendly critics,
Bradford William Davis, called his latest album “a
courageous message in a safe package.”
“They’re good, necessary subjects for the hip hop
community to wrestle with, but nothing that the
cut-rate ‘conscious’ rappers haven’t tackled
before,” Davis wrote in his review for the Christ
and Pop Culture website. “His presentation is
clean, mostly safe, occasionally dated, and a little
too predictable.”
Lecrae isn’t bothered by his critics.
“Talking about social issues, talking about love,
talking about marriage, child rearing, those are all
things that are explicit to who I am as a
believer,” Lecrae said. “It’s not just the topics,
necessarily, of salvation or sanctification.”
Courtesy: Religion News Service
Photo Courtesy: Religion News Service
Publication date: September 29, 2014
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