APR. 9, 2007

MUSIC

Hiphop meets religion and soars

First hiphop permeated American culture; now it’s dancing its way through religious culture. Hiphop churches, religious recordings, concerts, festivals and ministries are drawing a robust multicultural mix of youth and young adults. The hiphop religious movement is dominated by evangelicals but increasingly speaks the language of other faiths, including Islam and Judaism. It includes DJing, rapping, emceeing, dance, art and graffiti.

The linking of faith with music known for misogyny, homophobia, materialism and violence has its critics, but rappers respond that not all hiphop music promotes these values. Advocates point to hiphop ministries’ success at engaging young people.

Mostly, houses of worship give a nod to hiphop in services and programs as they try to reach out to youth. On the street, for example, phat means cool, but at New Hope Assembly of God Church in Lancaster, Ohio, it stands for Purposeful, Humble, Available, Teachable. Mainstream urban churches may include a hiphop song in worship or host a Christian rap concert.

But around the country, more churches are using hiphop as a serious tool of ministry and outreach. About 50 churches now define their mission and worship style through hiphop music and culture, says Tommy Kyllonen, the Christian rapper and minister who started the country’s first hiphop church 15 years ago in Tampa. The Crossover Community Church campus is dominated by TV screens, graffiti murals, basketball courts, and an 8,000-square-foot skate park. Services include rapping, DJing, poetry writing and art-making.

Why it matters

Music reflects and shapes culture; it's also one of the primary ways people worship and express faith.

Click the map for interview sources in your state and region

SCHOLARS AND CULTURAL CRITICS
• Michael Eric Dyson is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a member of the religious studies faculty. He is an expert on race, the black church and on crises now before the African-American community. His many books include Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture (Oxford University Press, 1997) and Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Plexus Publishing, 2002). Contact 215-746-7790, mdyson@sas.upenn.edu.
• Writer, lecturer and cultural critic Bakari Kitwana speaks widely about hiphop culture. Formerly editor of The Source magazine, which covers hiphop music, culture and politics, Kitwana is the author of The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture (Basic Civitas Books, 2003) and Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Realities of Race in America (Basic Civitas Books, 2005). He is currently writing a book with Jeff Johnson, Get Your Soul Right: Ministering to the Hiphop Generation. Kitwana directs the hiphop discussion tour RapSessions.org, which brings town-hall-style meetings on difficult dialogues facing the hiphop community to cities across the U.S. This year the theme is “Does hiphop hate women?” Next year: “Hiphop and the 2008 Presidential Election.” He is based in the Cleveland area. Contact 440-779-9893, Bakari@bakarikitwana.com.
• Jeff Johnson is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is a political activist and media personality. His Washington, D.C., nonprofit, Truth Is Power, is a strategy, leadership training and curriculum-development company focused on hiphop and politics. Johnson produces and hosts Black Entertainment Television’s documentary miniseries The Jeff Johnson Chronicles; hosts BET’s weekly newsmagazine, The Chop Up; and offers commentary on BET’s Rap City. He’s been a music-industry consultant, deputy director for People for the American Way, national youth director for the NAACP and vice president of Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. He is co-writing (with Bakari Kitwana) a book, Get Your Soul Right: Ministering to the Hiphop Generation. Contact 202-248-8366, info@truthispower.net.
• Marcyliena Morgan is an associate professor of communication at Stanford University and author of Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2006). She founded the Hiphop Archive at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University while on the faculty there. She now directs the Hiphop Archive@Stanford University and is working on a book about hiphop culture. She teaches classes on hiphop, the ethnography of communications, representation in the media, language and identity, race, class and gender. Contact 650-723-5448, mmorgan2@stanford.edu.
• Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies at Rice University in Houston. He co-chairs the American Academy of Religion’s Black Theology Group and is executive director of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. His books include, as editor, Noise and Spirit: The Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities of Rap Music (New York University Press, 2003) and, as author, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Augsburg Fortress, 2003). He teaches courses about African-American religions, including one on religion and hiphop. Contact 713-348-2710, Pinn@rice.edu.
• Martha Simmons is publisher of the nondenominational preaching and ministry journal The African American Pulpit. She is an associate minister at Rush Memorial United Church of Christ in Atlanta. The magazine’s winter 2006-07 issue is devoted to hiphop. Simmons has a wealth of contacts and ideas on the subject. Contact 800-509-8227, info@theafricanamericanpulpit.com.
• Michael G. Datcher, visiting assistant professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, co-edited Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur (BlackWords Inc., 1996). He can discuss criticism of rap music and of the hiphop ethos. Contact 310-338-3715, mdatcher@lmu.edu.
• Dancer Jessica Ralph, a member of the National Baptist Convention USA, directs workshops using hiphop, liturgical dance and other art forms in a religious context. She is a member of the World Council of Churches’ transformation team, a group with varied backgrounds and talents who lead classes and workshops. Contact jessynycole@aol.com.
• Ted Swedenburg is a cultural anthropologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. His interests in Middle East culture, world music and transnational identities include Islamic African-American rap. He’s written about Islamic hiphop. Contact 479-575-6624, tsweden@uark.edu.

MUSICIANS AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS
• Tommy Kyllonen, aka Urban D, was youth pastor at Crossover Community Church in Tampa, Fla., when the dwindling adult membership of about 50 was overwhelmed by hundreds of youth responding to Kyllonen’s hiphop ministry. In 2002, the church went totally hiphop, installing Kyllonen as pastor. Now he is patron to a national movement of hiphop churches. He hosts the Fla.vor Fest hiphop series on INSP television network, and Crossover sponsors the annual Fla.vor Fest conference to showcase and train youth evangelists in hiphop ministry. Kyllonen’s book, Unorthodox: Church.Hip-Hop.Culture (Zondervan, April 2007) will be released with a double disc CD and documentary DVD of the Crossover story. Contact 813-935-8887 or 813-880-0538, urband@crossoverchurch.org.
• Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Moss is known for his ability to speak to young people, extensive theological education and preaching. A poet, he wrote Redemption in a Red Light District: Messages of Hope, Healing and Empowerment (FOUR-G Publishers, 2000). Contact 773-962-5650.
• Benjamin Chavis Muhammad and Russell Simmons lead the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a nonprofit founded in 2001 to use hiphop as a catalyst for improving society and addressing poverty and injustice. Contact through Jody L. Miller at 212-431-5227 (office) or 917-770-3970 (cell), jody@jlmpr.com, or through Pamela Lipshitz at 212-431-5227 (office) or 917-859-6852 (cell), lip@jlmpr.com; both are with JLM PR in New York.
• Cameron Strang is president of Relevant Media Group, an Orlando magazine publisher and marketer of music and other media aimed at savvy young Christians. Contact 407-660-1411, cameron@relevantmediagroup.com.
• Larry Acosta is president of the Hispanic Ministry Center and the evangelical Urban Youth Workers Institute in Buena Park, Calif. He can discuss the organization’s use of Christian rap and the response of youngsters to it. Contact 800-734-8994, info@uywi.org.
• Aaron Bisman is president of the 5-year-old, not-for-profit record and event production company JDub Records in New York City. The company works with Jewish hiphop musicians whose music is focused on issues of faith and Jewish culture. Like its religion, Jewish hiphop does not evangelize, making the genre quite different from its Christian counterpart, he says. The scene is small, with only five or six commercially viable recording artists who employ rap as just one of numerous elements. Typical is Balkan Beat Box, a collective whose work fuses folk music of the Middle East and Balkans with hiphop and electronica, and uses lyrics in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The Israeli hiphop industry is larger, though albums are less about religion than Israeli cultural, political and spiritual issues. Bisman can help reporters contact musicians for interviews. Contact 212-998-4112, aaron@jdubrecords.org.
• David Hawa manages the Muslim trio Native Deen and other Muslim musicians through his entertainment marketing company Daze Studios in Sterling, Va. He can discuss the Muslim music scene and connect reporters with musicians, including Native Deen. Contact Hawa, 703-229-8300, dhawa@dazestudios.com.
• The Rev. Timothy Holder, aka Poppa T, is rector of Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania in New York’s South Bronx. His background is in politics, organizational development and evangelizing in diverse communities. He founded the Trinity Hip Hop Mass, now called HipHopEMass, at the church and is nationally known Contact 718-542-1309, trinity.bronx@verizon.net.

Web resources

• The Hiphop Portal is a door into the hiphop world.
• HipHopEMass is maintained by Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania in New York’s South Bronx.

CHRISTIAN
• Many churches host hiphop services or hiphop ministries. The nondenominational Crossover Community Church in Tampa, Fla., is known as the first hiphop church. Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion in New York contains the Harlem Hiphop Church of rap pioneer Kurtis Blow.
• Feed magazine in Ajax, Ontario, covers Christian hiphop.
• Hype and Glory is a new show that features hiphop and rap-gospel videos on the Gospel Music Channel.
• The Gospel Hip Hop Association, founded in 2005 and based in Long Beach, Calif., uses a board of elders to screen and certify music for biblical consistency, accuracy, morals and holiness.

CHRISTIAN HIPHOP RADIO STATIONS
• KHDZ radio in Los Angeles plays holy hiphop.
• Philadelphia’s Holy Culture Radio and digital download store uses the streaming Internet format. Access it through its MySpace site.
• Altared Lives is a Lakeland, Fla., urban gospel radio station.
• Holy WHLE 106.3 FM radio in Atlanta was the first station to air the holy hiphop format, beginning in 1999. It also produces a two-hour weekly syndicated program called Holy Hiphop, hosted by Donna Verne and minister eDDie Velez, “Da Preachin’ Puerto Rican.” The site’s list of industry news releases gives a look at and links to the industry.

RAP FESTIVALS
• Holy Hiphop Week 2007 was held in Atlanta, including the Fellowship of Holy Hiphop’s seventh annual Artist Showcase and Music Awards. The events were kicked off with a welcome from the mayor and were covered by such Christian media as Trinity Broadcasting Network and Christian Television Network. Read a recap at the Holy Hiphop site.
• RapFest is held annually in August in New York City.
• Fla.vor Fest, a concert-and-conference event, is held annually in November at Crossover Community Church in Tampa, Fla. Participating acts are subjected to rigorous screening for both artistic ability and religious content, says director and pastor Tommy Kyllonen.

AWARDS
• In 2007, the Grammies included rap along with Christian rock among its Christian and gospel music categories. Thegospelzone.com points out that hiphop accounts for 25 percent of gospel music sales.
• The GMA Dove Awards are Christian music’s Grammies.
• The Stellar Awards include rap and hiphop categories.
• Texas Holy Hiphop Achievement Awards have been held in Houston in June since 2002.

MUSLIM
• Muslim rap is a small but growing movement, thanks to Native Deen, a pioneering group of three young African-American men who were reared in Islam and brought together through a youth music outreach program of Muslim Youth of North America (affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America). Native Deen lyrics gently urge youth to choose God, respect women, love peace and prayer, and reject violence, cigarettes, alcohol and materialism. The group is wildly popular among Muslim youth the world over, drawing concert audiences of thousands. One member, Joshua Salaam, was an imam at an Air Force base while enlisted in military service. The program MYNA Raps is being revived from dormancy in hopes of encouraging and promoting young Muslim musicians.

JEWISH
• Jewish rap is a very small scene. Wikipedia lists Jewish and Israeli hiphop and rap groups. Typically, Jewish artists deal more with cultural Jewishness than with religion. The best-known exception is the commercially successful recording artist Matisyahu, whose reggae work includes the occasional rap. Matisyahu belongs to the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community. JDub Records is a New York City record and promotion company built around contemporary Jewish music, both cultural and religious. See the company’s MySpace site for a calendar of upcoming performances around the country.

Background

Rap – the musical expression of hiphop culture – is informed by the same deep questions as religion, says Anthony Pinn, a Rice University expert on black religion. These are questions like: What does it mean for us to be? To be happy? Who put us here? Why are we here? Early rappers critiqued mainstream Christianity, and some made references to the Nation of Islam (Public Enemy), Sunni Islam (Mos Def) and The Five Percent Nation (Eric B. and Rakim). Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was the first religious leader to embrace rap as a contemporary expression of classic questions of faith, Pinn says. Later, Christian evangelists adopted street culture and music as a means of enlivening Christianity and making it responsive and relevant to youth. Protestant Christianity is the dominant voice in both religious rap today.

SURVEYS
• The Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago surveyed 1,590 African-Americans, whites and Latinos aged 15 to 25 in several Midwest cities on subjects including rap music, premarital sex, politics and the “color-blind” society. Read a news release summarizing results released Feb. 1, 2007, including these: 58 percent of black youth listen to rap music daily, compared with 45 percent of Latinos and 23 percent of whites; and black youngsters express more concern about the content of rap CDs and videos than whites or Latinos, with 72 of blacks agreeing that rap videos have too many sexual references.

ARTICLES
• According to The Boston Globe’s Dec. 3, 2006, article “The music industry takes sales as gospel,” Christian and gospel music is the one growing music category; sales last year were up 11.6 percent. That popularity is recognized at conferences and music award ceremonies, where Christian rap or hiphop is increasingly included as a category.
• Read “Bringing Hip Hop to the Church in the Bronx,” a Feb. 16, 2006, article at Associated Content.
• Read “Holy Hip Hop genre brings gospel to urban America,” a February 2005 article in the Christian Examiner online.
• Read “Shouting hip-hop’s praises,” a Nov. 28, 2005, USA Today article posted by Crossover Community Church in Tampa about its minister, Tommy Kyllonen.
• A breakthrough moment of synergy between mainstream and Christian rap was Kanye West’s 2004 hit Jesus Walks, in which the Billboard-topping rapper showcased his faith. Read the Sept. 24, 2004, Washington Post article “Rap Gets Religion, But Is It Gospel?”.
• Charisma magazine’s August 2002 article “Get Ready for the Hip-Hop Revolution” takes hiphop from its party music origins in the 1970s Bronx to the current growth of hiphop churches. Charisma says hiphop churches are likely to be multicultural, to include a DJ and turntables in worship services, and perhaps to include break-dancing in praise and worship.
• Read “Some of That Hard-Time Religion,” a Beliefnet review of Christian hiphop album Universal Concussion by J.E. Cooper, aka B.B. Jay.
• Read Beliefnet’s “Top 10 Muslim Hiphop Lyrics” and note the accompanying criticism (on the right side of the page) from Muslim readers.
• Read “Michael Eric Dyson: A Scholar and Hip-Hop Preacher” from the spring 2000 Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, online at The Scholarly Journal Archive.
• Violent and misogynistic rap music reflects corporate values, not authentic hiphop culture, says writer and commentator Bakari Kitwana. See a list of (secular) hiphop values, “What we want,” at the site of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a nonprofit that brings artists and others together to work for societal change.