Lecrae at Wonderjam 2012 | Photo by darkelflx via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1rUavzF)
When you hear the phrase “Christian rap,” you might (okay, I might) have some very specific associations. dc Talk comes to mind, and Bible verses recast to rhyme. Black Star may have rapped well about money being the root of all evil, but as soon as you hand the microphone to someone with a message to get across rather than art to make, it seems to turn didactic. Scott Schultz said it well in a 2008 article for Christ and Pop Culture: “Co-opting a genre that bears the mark of a culture basically alien to itself, Christian rap lacks the proper ‘street cred’ necessary to make its testimony convincing.” In less academic terms, it sucks. It borrows from a culture it has no right to borrow from, and makes a Sunday school lesson out of an entire art form. For example:
(Update: This video may be a hoax or a prank. If you have any information, let me know.)
SO, you can imagine my skepticism when I opened this article about Lecrae. A Christian rapper from Houston, I’ve heard Lecrae’s name for years now without doing much digging. His new album, Anomaly, came out earlier this week and is the second-most downloaded album on iTunes, after, of course, preorders for One Direction’s new record. In the song “All I Need Is You,” poised to be a crossover single, Lecrae talks about his love for his wife. “When you see Jay Z and Beyonce, [you think], okay, marriage is cool now,” he told MTV. “They set a trend and I think that’s healthy.”
The lyrics are straightforward, for the most part, and the song is catchy. It’s not trying to preach at you or make you change your mind–at least not overtly–but it is celebrating the goodness of marriage without sacrificing the entertainment or musical value of the song. It’s a low bar, perhaps, but Lecrae is one of the few out there who can step over it. I am, I think, looking forward to seeing more of what he can do.