Gospel artist makes Billboard history…
[Video][Website]
[4.50]
Josh Langhoff: At their best, the rappers on Reach Records have been audacious, funny, and insanely catchy. I’ve never heard Lecrae hit those heights; maybe because he also runs the label, and is thus responsible for winning souls the world over, his music just seems dogged. “[W]hen I’m on the battlefield, I’m not worried about trying to have a good time, I’m trying to fight, I’m trying to stay alive,” he told BET in 2012. Nonetheless, my Facebook feed indicates he’s far and away the most popular rapper among Christians who lean evangelical — Mat Kearney doesn’t count, right? — and “Messengers” sounds like it could’ve graced Hot AC radio in its rap-free last decade, before “Empire State of Mind” swept in and the format essentially turned into Top 40 plus the Matt Nathanson catalog. “We never been qualified to do it,” Lecrae humblebrags at one point, “I ain’t earned it, I was loved into it.” But if you’re gonna be taken seriously as a rapper, don’t you have to believe you’re qualified? With bashful clarity he sums up the gulf Christian pop stars continually renegotiate — between ego and humility, money and souls, fun and responsibility, wanting it all and signing up to die — though only rarely do both sides get the respect they deserve.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: The easy comparison is to dc Talk, the late-’90s gospel hip-hop crew who also mixed their sound with pop-rock — and it’s also pretty accurate. Lecrae, the first gospel artist to top the Billboard 200, brings the rap, and his buddies For King & Country sweeten things with a chugging Triple A radio-esque backing track and sing-along chorus full of “oh-oh-oh”s. It all goes down smoothly.
[6]
Alfred Soto: A marketing exercise for my students: to whom and how do you sell Black Eyed Peas going Mumford?
[2]
W.B. Swygart: Well, if we hadn’t already reached Peak Dudes Hollering “HOOAHH” In The Background Of Music Played During Insurance Commercials, we have now.
[2]
Will Adams: The pleasant jangle of BEP’s “Where Is the Love?” had me hooked for a long time until I noticed that the chorus actually has this lyric: “people killing, people dyin’/Children hurt and you hear ’em cryin’.” Lecrae’s distillation of that song with Bon Iver-y warbles from For King and Country is less tone-deaf, but like “Where Is the Love” — antithetical to their intent — its good vibes stem more from its crossover-friendly, MOR music than the lyrics.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Look, I’m all spun around from research. For King & Country is two brothers of Rebecca St. James, who is married to the bassist for Foster the People. CCM’s a bigger world than even I imagined, I guess. FK&C completely dominate this cut, making chants all over a lovely over-orchestrated figure cos that’s how they were raised. Lecrae sounds like he wandered in off a B.o.B cut onto an Essential Records remix album.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: I never knew what a Christian Tinie Tempah song might sound like.
[2]
Ashley Ellerson: I used to be a member of this Christian group in college called Campus Outreach, and they loved some Lecrae. He’s like the Drake of Christian hip hop the way people squeal when his song comes on the radio or at a Jesus party. A crossover hit in hip hop terms, “Messengers” doesn’t stray too far from what you’d expect to hear in a Christian song, but it has commercial apppeal. Calling on messengers of Jesus, talking about what’s wrong with the world, how to make things right — your typical recipe for Christian pop. Is this going to be a Sunday school hit? Meh. Lecrae is no Hillsong, but he’s inspiring the youth regardless.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I like when the collective message of Christianity is one of mutual work and collective responsibility instead of reinforcing hierarchy. This delicate, almost sublime, trembling work about how we are messengers to the divine love of God has the earnest effort of effort paid out and tasks left undone, but without the slick stench of the prosperity gospel. I love this, theologically and personally.
[9]
Jonathan Bogart: The only way I know how to respond to Christian pop is by feeling it hard, every beat and moment and belief; so all my appreciation for Christian pop dates from the years when thanks to details of biography and education I felt beliefs hard, roughly 1988-2001. If this had pulsed through my headphones at any point when I felt that Matthew 28:19 had direct and insistent relevance to my future, it would probably bring me to tears today. As it is,
[4]