Rapping for Christ

Daniel Radosh described in his highly entertaining 2008 book Rapture Ready Christian pop culture as a parallel universe where basically everything one can find in the secular world exists as a Christian mirror version. This is particularly true when it comes to music. For almost every genre you can think of there is a Christian version of it sometimes there is even a list of what secular band their Christian counterpart sounds like. So it is no surprise that there is a fair amount of Christian hip hop as well. A clear example of this is the Houston based rapper II Crunk 4 Christ whose message is quite unmistakable.

I first saw II Crunk 4 Jesus when he performed at Lakewood church in Houston, Texas last year in March. The song he performed was called “Trust in God” and with lyrics like; “Trust in, trust in, trust in God” we were hardly dealing with any subtlety. Listening to his album Struggle Muzik one can summarize that this is the basic message in all of the songs. Like with most Christian contemporary musicians there is a fear for subtlety and ambiguity. This makes one wonder how well suited II Crunk 4 Jesus music is to reach people beyond the evangelical subculture he is a part of. Now, he is not a bad rapper and the music is well produced, also II Crunk comes from a rather troubled background and spends a lot of energy to work with at risk youth in areas like the Fifth Ward. So we are not dealing with an outsider who tries to talk to young people “in their language”, at times with disastrous results like Carmans 1993 “Who's in the house?” (the answer is JC). Still I wonder how many secular people will ever listen to him or contemplate his message. Compare this with another Houston rapper, Bun B, who is also a Christian but whose songs contain no explicit religious references. Still in interviews Bun B has repeatedly stated that his Christian faith plays a significant part in his lyrics. As Bun B also runs a course on hip hop and religion at Rice University, one can wonder if his music might not be in the end more effective to create thought and discussions about faith, morals and existential issues. But for those who would like some Jesus with their rap here is II Crunk performing two of his greatest hits: