How Christian Hip-Hop Saved My Life

When I was fourteen years old, I found an older cousin’s iPod nano stashed away in an old basement room: a baby blue, perfectly-square brick of an MP3 player. Pushing the small, circular knob on its bottom to the right, I watched as a black Apple logo lit up on its screen. Utilizing the click wheel, I happened upon a song, curated by a name unfamiliar to me at the time: Lecrae.

“Now all I see is money, cars, jewels, stars / Womanizers, tough guys, guns, knives, and scars / Drug pushers, thugs, strippers, fast girls, fast life / Everything I wanted and everything I could ask life”

Click.

This was my first introduction to Christian hip-hop. Having just committed afresh to Christianity and looking for ways to express my humanity and honor God, I was all caught up in religion. Hearing all that language about sin? No way. I turned it off.

In time, I would return. There was something about the music’s content, its realness, that attracted me — and it would come to spare me my sanity as I grappled between my Blackness and my seemingly counterfeit faith. It is this tension between sacred and secular, between spirituality and culture, that made Christian hip-hop an incisive tool in retaining both my personhood and the purity of my faith.

***

Innovative enslavement disguises as fresh freedom.

As early as sixth grade, I felt the profound emptiness of living according to my own desires, so I chose to give up my life for Jesus. I felt I was spiritually transcending — at the cost of assimilation to white evangelical culture.

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Colo., also known as “a mecca for evangelical Christians,” my newfound Christianity absorbed surrounding evangelicalism. Instead of sermons centering the mistreatment of the oppressed, our politics centered issues of sanctity: opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. The issues I heard about on the news at home misaligned with everyone’s concerns at church.

When I was left on the margins, an alien floating between non-believers and church folk, Christian hip-hop spoke to me:

“I really can’t tell if I’m overdressed or I’m underdressed / If I’m underpaid or just overstressed / If I’m cynical or just over this / Cause I’m tired of tryna get over there, man it’s over there / Party’s over”

***

I’ve been caught up in Christianized double-consciousness.

I’ve lived almost my entire life under the white normative gaze. I’ve had my share of weird experiences — hair petting, scary-calling, athlete-comparing — but tying them to racism? That seemed extreme.

During the summer of 2020’s racial awakening and the Covid-19 scare, I decided to work as a Christian camp counselor in Colorado’s beautiful mountains. I was one of two Black counselors. As we trained, I realized I felt estranged.

No internet service. What was going on with the Black Lives Matter protests downtown, around the United States? Hardly anyone that I was around was talking about race. While the others used their free time to have Bible study, play volleyball, or hang out, I went to the WiFi-equipped common area and looked up news articles and videos. I tried to read up on what was going on in the country. But it was never enough.

This camp, centered around helping children find purpose, find life, find God, seemed to take little concern for the summer’s racial awakening. Even in training, before the children arrived, our Christian practice was centered around character building.

When the news came that the kids would not come because of Covid-19 restrictions, so camp would be canceled, a part of me actually uttered a sigh of relief.

Once again an alien floating between non-believers and church folk, Lecrae’s music spoke to me:

“Aw man, now they actin’ like I’m suddenly political / Told me shut my mouth and get my checks from Evangelicals / Boy my momma raised me on Angela and Eldrigde / Chuck Berry made it, but the credit went to Elvis”

***

I am hesitant to categorize this music that resonates with me. It’s not a genre. Mainstream radio doesn’t play it, and neither does the church on Sunday morning. Christian hip-hop is more than just music; it is a movement. Much like the protests of two summers ago, which parts of the media tried to co-opt for their own political agendas, Christian hip-hop (a name often ascribed to the music, rather than professed by its curators) refuses to be named.

I believe the complexity of Christian hip-hop is a lot like mine at Harvard: learning to love myself, for myself, just as I am. Attempting to glorify the God who calls me son, all without giving up my personality, my unique identity, my cultural background. Christian hip-hop is a golden needle in a haystack, a jewel in a barren field, a forsaken treasure. It is a testament to the potential for a flourishing Black and Christian cultural identity.

When my Christianity — constantly threatened by cultural assimilation and the transgression of someone else’s social norms — is nearly lost, Christian hip-hop acts as a surgical knife, dividing between the beautiful and the ugly, putting me and my faith back together again.

Sterling Bland ’23, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a joint concentrator in Sociology and African and African American Studies in Quincy House.