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A Voice In The Wilderness:

An alternative response to hip-hop

Where We At?

Rap artist KRS-ONE famously said “Rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live’. Hip Hop began as a ‘culture’ that grew from its humble beginnings in New York’s South Bronx. Initially a fun way to express oneself through its various elements (Dj’ing, Breakdancing, rapping, graffiti), hip-hop became a worldwide phenomenon that is loved and ‘lived’ by millions of young people worldwide. It is not unusual to see young people Rapping in the playground, Breakdancing in community centers, Dj’ing in bedrooms or graffin’ in notebooks. It affects the way young people dress, the way they talk and even the movies they watch. However, out of all the hip-hop elements it is rapping that has captured the minds of young people the most. Rap music is everywhere; there is no escaping it.

“I got tha sickest vendetta when it come to tha chedda
And if you play wit my paper, you gotta meet my berretta”

This is probably the type of lyric you might expect to hear from a mainstream hip-hop track blaring out of the local wannabe gangster’s low-rider metro with its 8inch alloys. It is very rare to hear anything from the lips of commercially well-known hip-hop artists, other than how much money they have, how many women they have slept with and that they have Cristal with their cornflakes. In hip-hop’s relatively short lifetime (it is still under 30yrs old) it has been surrounded in negative press as promoting drugs, violence and sexual promiscuity. Events such as the killing of rappers Tu Pac and Biggie Smalls, have led to rap music being associated with gun violence and fear. The ‘bling-bling’ lifestyle of extravagant wealth has also contributed to it being regarded as music for the uneducated thug, with more money than sense.

What’s at the root of this?

‘Why do these rappers feel the need to parade their sexual exploits and endless wealth in their songs and music videos?’ is often the most widely asked question. Perhaps this mentality has grown out of many rappers experiences of being the poor, seemingly insignificant, inner-city youth with the understandable yet dangerously superficial fantasy that esteem and happiness can be found in wealth and power. Education and legitimate business are often not presented to the underprivileged as viable or realistic routes to wealth and power. So alternatively and more instantaneously, the fulfillment of this fantasy is sought out through a lifestyle of violence, greed and misogyny. So when the record deal is finally signed and the platinum records arrive, with real wealth and influence, this only adds fuel to the fire that was already burning. The feeling of power and wealth continues to be sought out through violence, greed and misogyny. Except now the guns are bigger, the money is endless and the girls now willingly perform naked in their music videos.

Perhaps what is most dangerous of all, is not these rappers themselves, but the lifestyle they model as ‘success’ and ‘fulfillment’ to millions of young people worldwide. These rappers declare that having extravagant wealth, women as sexual slaves and carrying a loaded gun are the treasured fruits of success. More poignantly it is declared as ‘cool’, and the media perpetuates this. It is important not to underestimate the power there is in being perceived as ‘cool’ and ‘fashionable’. People will go to great lengths in order to be perceived as cool. It is the key to peer-to-peer acceptance, and it is acceptance that we as people ultimately crave. So much so that people will deny who they are in order to be align them selves with what is ‘cool’.

Keeping It Real?

It is common knowledge that a number of high profile rappers that profess to be gangsters and from the rough streets of the hood are in fact from very privileged middle class backgrounds. They were most likely presented with a lot of positive opportunities to live an alternative lifestyle to that which today’s gangster rappers model out. However, they actively seek to pursue the persona of the thug rapper from the ghetto because that’s what the media says is cool and fundamentally that’s what sells records. So it should come as no surprise that when millions of young kids are faced with the opportunity to be anything they want to be, they choose to be a wannabe gangster rapper. One that mimic’s their hip-hop idols every move, they way they talk, they way they dress, they way they rap and perhaps most tragically the things they do.

Fashion has become truth. We live in a culture where fashion dictates whether people are happy or unhappy, and what is generally held as truth to an individual is that which makes him or her feel happiest and accepted. If fashion tells us that it is fashionable to be slim and you are not slim, you are unhappy. If fashion says blue is this seasons colour and you are wearing blue, you are happy. If fashion says its ‘cool’ to call women bitches and shoot guns, then the impressionable will call women bitches and try and get hold of a gun. However, fashion never remains still and that’s the problem. It never stays true; it is always changing its mind and undermining itself. Whereas truth is constant and can be depended upon, it has a firm foundation that remains the same in happiness and sadness, in good and in bad. That is what is truly keeping it real.

The negative elements of hip-hop are not the real problem; they are merely symptoms of a bigger problem, the problem of identity. Our true identity cannot be found in money and power, yet it is these very two things that people so restlessly strive for and praise. It is also what the commercialised hip-hop lifestyle promises in abundance, and all in a cool and fashionable package. However, people attempting to carve out identity from human praise and material possessions will never find their innate need for authenticity and truth met. Just like fashion, these things never stay true and are constantly changing. It can only come from knowing your identity as a child of God.

Where did it all go wrong?

If you are prepared to look beyond the image thrust onto your screen by the media, you will see that hip-hop music is so much more than ‘gangsta’ and always has been. If we go back to when rapping first started in the early eighties, it was not originally about extravagance and gun violence. It was about being given a voice. It was a way to express yourself, your struggles and your points of view. Even today if you go to your local HMV and look in the hip-hop section you will see many different styles of hip-hop music, with varying messages both positive and negative. However, slowly but surely the negative voice of hip-hop has begun to shout louder than the positive one. It began shouting about its disregard for morality and authority, and everyone listened. Then a few people in a boardroom saw the financial opportunity in this controversy, made it cool, packaged it and put it on MTV and everyone bought it (literally). Before anyone knew it hip-hop turned into a monster and everyone in the church became afraid of it. They did not understand it and they did not know how to deal with it.

Fundamentally hip-hop music was the young person’s medium to express them self and be heard, in a culture that doesn’t listen. Hip-Hop music is for the thug, the student, the teenager, the rich, the poor, and the disaffected. It is music for everyone that has something to say or is facing a struggle. If the church does not get over its fear of this music, it will choke its huge potential to relate to millions of people from various cultures and continents across the world that love this music and who do not yet know Jesus. In a culture where the churches voice to young people is whispered and often ignored, hip-hop music can enable the church to become present and shout with a loud voice. Christian rap artists can be used to give God a voice in a secular wilderness, a voice that speaks of love, identity and truth.

Our Response?

We are called to be the trendsetters, to take God’s word to the four corners of the earth. To be relevant, yet be revolutionary. If anything, hip-hop music must be viewed as an opportunity. It is relevant and has the potential to be revolutionary. People are hard to impress, they want to be given a reason for why they should listen. If you preach to them they will most likely walk away, if you rap to them there’s a good chance they will listen to you and continue to listen to you when you’ve finished rapping. Rapper ‘The Tonic’ from U.S Christian rap group The Crossmovement states in one of his songs ‘We don’t live for hip-hop, hip-hop lives for us’. Our identity is found in Jesus, but our hip-hop skills fused with the Holy Spirit can be used as instruments for God’s glory.

19Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: 20religious, nonreligious, 21meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, 22the defeated, the demoralized--whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. 23I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it! (1Corinthians 9: 19-23 The Message)

Men and women of God dressed in Timberland boots and baggy jeans, with a natural flair for rapping, spitting spirit filled lyrics to a generation full of keen young hip-hop listeners desperately looking for the answers to life, and confused by the world in which they currently find themselves in.

It has been said that hip-hop is about struggle; well if that’s the case then we are caught in the midst of the most important struggle of all, the struggle for our souls and the souls of our generation. In Jesus we have the truth and in hip-hop we have a medium and opportunity to express that truth, a truth that speaks of liberty and freedom to a culture that is handcuffed and lost.

"Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light." (Ephesians 5:14)

KRS One said, “Rap is something you do, Hip-hop is something you live”. Our opportunity is to wake up a sleeping generation to their identity in Christ and tell them, “Hip-hop is something you do and Jesus is what you live”.

Article by: McGladius

Do you have any thoughts or comments?
Please email: mcgladius@29thchapter.org.uk or post them up on the 29th Chapter forum

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