Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003023134
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID MILLS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Yo, E.T.W., kick it one time:
We're soldiers of the Lord, we're willing and able
Upright before God, all cards on the table
We come before you now with the message of truth
Take it in if you want, but if you don't, it's on you . . .
This is Christian rap, and it's happening.
Just this month in Tulsa, the three young men known as E.T.W. (End-Time Warriors) quit their jobs waiting tables to devote themselves full-time to rap. The group began at Oral Roberts University in 1985, and its self-titled debut album was released last fall.
Then there's P.I.D. (Preachers in Disguise), S.F.C. (Soldiers for Christ), D-Boy, J.C. & the Boyz, DC Talk, Stephen Wiley and others.
With song titles like "Get You a Bible," "Stompin' Satan" and "This Is What He Went Thru," the Christian rappers take the same in-your-face approach to their lyrics as mainstream rappers do (except that mainstream rappers generally are notorious for their, uh, worldliness, as reflected in such tunes as "Big Ole Butt" and "Fat Gold Chain").
Something else the Christian rappers borrow from their secular counterparts is the funky, hip-hop dance beat. "If we don't have that, we can't hope to get to the kids," says Ron Griffin, president of the Nashville-based ForeFront Communications Group.
Griffin last year launched YO!ForeFront, a record label devoted exclusively to Christian rap. It has released albums by DC Talk and E.T.W. and this summer will introduce True M.C. The company is also looking for new talent.
In a way, the emergence of Christian rap shouldn't be too surprising. The "contemporary Christian" record business of the 1980s transcended gospel and inspirational songs to become a microcosm of American popular music.
Most people familiar with the pop style of Christian superstar Amy Grant probably don't know there's a thriving market for Christian rock and even Christian heavy metal.
Only recently has rap, created and cultivated by America's black urban youth, caught on big with young whites across the country. That's largely due to daily exposure on MTV. This crossover success is what's moving the Christian marketplace: Most Christian rap is being pitched to white, Christian-rock radio, not to black-gospel radio.
"We find the audience that's buying rap music is the same audience that's buying heavy metal. That means mostly white teens, 13 to 18," says Tony Shore, a spokesman for Frontline Records of Santa Ana, Calif., which has P.I.D. and D-Boy. "Junior-high-school kids are buying Christian rap like crazy."
"Frankly, I'm a little surprised by it," says John W. Styll, editor and publisher of Contemporary Christian Music, which monitors the trade. "I thought it was really a trendy, faddish sort of thing when it first started. But suddenly we've got rap albums on our (Christian-rock) chart."
So far, it's a big noise in a small room. DC Talk, one of the most popular Christian rap groups, has sold more than 50,000 copies of its debut album, "DC Talk," primarily through Christian bookstores. Today's rap stars routinely sell 10 or 20 times that many.
But proponents of Christian rap say they're ready to make a move on the rap market at large.
"We had a vision that we would go out into the world, go out into coliseums and not just into churches," says 22-year-old Fred Lynch of P.I.D., widely acknowledged to be one of the hardest-hitting Christian rap groups. "They've already got the message in the churches. And half of them are too stiff to jam anyway."
Lynch and his partner Barry Hogan, 20, are youth ministers at their Dallas church, though both admit to having done their share of "hard-core city living," including crime, before their religious awakening.
As P.I.D., they've released two albums, "Here We Are" and "Back to Back." Last year they performed more than 50 Christian-oriented live shows. And this year, says Hogan, "we got 30 gigs booked already," from Canada to Hawaii to Jamaica.
But P.I.D.'s real goal this year is to make a video and get it played on "Yo! MTV Raps." "We're not trying to burst into their world," Hogan says of the secular rappers. "We want to come in like a quiet storm."
Ironically, the first Christian rapper to get national mainstream exposure is a 25-year-old blond-haired white guy who graduated from Liberty University. Toby McKeehan, alias DC Talk, was raised in Tysons Corner, Va., and now lives in Nashville. He performs with two backup singers - one black, one white - whom he met at Liberty. DC Talk is also the name of the trio.
"Heavenbound," DC Talk's first video, was added last month to the playlist of "Rap City" on Black Entertainment Television:
Cold rappin' for the king with a sting in my voice
Not condemnin' men or women but relaying a choice
Higher ground is the sound that I'm talking of
Opportunity knocks through a different love . . .
Alvin Jones, producer of "Rap City," says he didn't know about Christian rap until he saw the "Heavenbound" video. The song is "very refreshing," he says. (Just recently, Jones turned down a video that contained the line, "Step off, girl, or I'll smack you like a gangster.")
Jones also happens to be a Christian. "That doesn't necessarily mean I had to add the video," he says. "If I felt the video wasn't a good video, I wouldn't have aired it."
DC Talk's press kit includes a ringing endorsement from the Rev. Falwell himself: "God has great plans for these three young men and their powerful program." McKeehan recalls that when he started rapping at Liberty University, "we had to sneak around a little bit, because we didn't know what the reaction would be" from administrators and faculty.
As it turned out, DC Talk raised the money to finish its album by selling cassettes on campus, and the group performed two summers in a row at a big outdoor party thrown by Falwell's son Jonathan.
McKeehan doesn't know where the BET exposure will lead. "Sometimes we think that our lyrics are just so bold concerning our faith that it might shoot us down" in the mainstream market, he says. "But lately, I've been thinking that can't be true, because as bold as these (other rappers) are coming with what's on their hearts, why can't we come just as bold?"
Michael Peace, considered one of the pioneers of Christian rap, is frankly pessimistic about its prospects for widespread popularity.
"I don't believe that the Gospel will ever be popular in America. I don't believe that it will ever be fashionable to proclaim what Jesus was all about, to live according to what Jesus says," says Peace, 31. His third album, "Vigilante of Hope," was released last year.
"If there's any [Christian rap] group that will end up making a mark, it will probably be P.I.D. or S.F.C.," says Peace, because those groups have the most hard-edged style. "But I don't think it will happen to any great degree, even in that. Once people understand where these brothers are really coming from, they won't be popular. `Wait, you're telling me to keep my zipper closed?' "
Peace, a minister at a Rochester, N.Y., church, prefers to take his show to "street corners, parking lots, prisons, juvenile detention centers" instead of concert halls. "I did an outreach in front of a crack house. I've seen drug dealers give their lives to Jesus Christ. I've seen people get sober, and all I did was speak Jesus's name. I don't want to be popular. I want to do very unpopular things."
by CNB