THE COOL CHRISTIAN
biggest and oldest stops on the
Christian music festival circuit,
“It’s such an uphill battle.”
THE MORNING AFTER Graham’s
birthday bash, Lecrae flew to Las
Vegas to attend the Soul Train
Awards. “That was completely different worlds,” he said.
He has been spending an increasing amount of time in the
mainstream hip-hop world. He
first burst the Christian bubble in
the fall of 2011 when he performed
in a freestyle showcase as part of
BET’s annual awards show — “Hey,
this what happen when hip-hop
lets the saints in,” he quipped then
— and the network has continued
to promote Lecrae heavily.
“I will equate that feeling I got
when we identified Kanye West,”
Kelly Griffin, director of music programming at BET, said of the first
time he heard Lecrae. “Like, ‘Wow,
we want to take a chance on him.’”
In October, Lecrae found himself inside a cramped New York
sound booth next to Sway Calloway, the 43-year-old MTV personality, rapper and journalist
whose daily radio show, Sway
in the Morning, is broadcast nationally on SiriusXM.
“We got a hybrid artist here,”
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
Calloway told listeners. “Now,
even I used to say he’s a Christian
rapper. But he’s a rapper — who
is a Christian.”
A quiet grin spread across Lecrae’s face. That’s a distinction
he likes to make often. The way
he explains it is you don’t call
it Christian architecture, or a
Christian pharmacy, or Christian
pottery, when it is simply done
SOME OF LECRAE’S FANS
HAVE ALREADY ACCUSED HIM
OF SELLING OUT, BECAUSE
HE APPEARS ON STAGE
WITH OTHER RAPPERS WHO
ARE NON-CHRISTIANS, OR
RECORDS SONGS WITH THEM.
by a Christian person. Rather,
to be a Christian and also be an
architect, or pharmacist, or potter, is supposed to mean that an
individual performs those professions to the best of their ability,
and with passion and excellence.
And as Lecrae points out, hiphop is full of rappers who practice
Islam or incorporate messages of
the Five Percent Nation, such as
some members of Wu-Tang Clan.