![]() ![]() The album, which departed from straightforward gospel lyrics, was downloaded over 100,000 times in less than 48 hours. In 2012, he released his first mixtape, Church Clothes, his breakthrough into mainstream hip-hop. In 2011, Lecrae performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards. His 2010 album, Rehab, was the peak point for the first stage of his career as a Christian rapper, and also the beginning of his journey into the mainstream. Lecrae was gradually growing more sophisticated musically, lyrically, and conceptually, and beginning to chafe at being defined as a “Christian rapper,” which confined him to a ghetto separated from other musicians, as well as non-Christians. Yet, under the surface, a revolution was developing which would cut new ground in two directions. He challenged his listeners to respond to the Christian message and told stories of the struggles of the spiritual life. Lecrae’s albums were known for a heady mix of aggressive southern hip-hop with lyrics celebrating grace. It became the first Christian hip-hop album to reach No. By the time of his third album, Rebel, in 2008, he was soaring to stardom in the Christian music world. His timing was good, and he seemed to plunge into a Christian world ready for what he was doing. Lecrae began fusing his love of rap and hip-hop with his desire to be an evangelist and soon was a fervent, not to say somewhat strident, young convert peddling Christian hip-hop. The experience shocked him into the religious commitment he had been courting, but not embracing.īetter to have a small role in God’s story than to cast yourself as the lead in your own fiction. Although his glasses were molded into the car, Lecrae himself survived completely unharmed. Soon after, he was in a brutal car accident where the car rolled and the roof and window caved in. He became a serious Christian after he went to a religious conference where, moved by a sermon, he prayed to God to get him out of his dark habits but begged, “Please don’t kill me.” ![]() The spark that ignited the flame and changed his life was the collision of his newfound spirituality with hip-hop.īefore that happened, Lecrae was, at best, nominally religious and still struggling with substance abuse and bad behavior. Drawn in by the humanity and loving kindness of those he met there, he gradually became religious, though he continued to struggle with the hangover from his past for years. Lecrae decided to attend Church, where he met his future wife, Darragh. After being arrested for drug possession, the officer saw the Bible and let Lecrae go, on a promise that he would agree to live by it. Lecrae became a dealer and used the Bible that his grandmother gave him as a good luck charm. If people throw stones at you, pick ’em up and build something.īy his teen years, Lecrae had embraced drugs and womanizing (he says he tried everything but heroin and crack) and was headed for a downward spiral of desperation, brutality, and self-medication-by-street-drug like so many of the men he had grown up with. Fine, the men of this culture said, men impoverished by a toxic brew of trauma, systemic discrimination and the deprivation of education and opportunity- call us thugs, then we’ll be in your face thugs. LECRAE REBEL ALBUM SKINLecrae was abandoned by his father as a child and grew up a member of a people who had been largely rejected by America because of their skin color.īy the time he was a teenager, Lecrae was a survivor of sexual abuse, poverty, and a culture that had embraced the stigma hoisted onto them by the mainstream, one that claimed that they were all junkies, gangstas and thugs- irresponsible men who had chosen crime instead of work. “If you live for people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection,” is an oft-repeated phrase of Lecrae Moore, the hip-hop artist known simply by his first name. I’m what happens when Outkast meets the writings of Moses. They are people- Musicians, artists, politicians, activists, designers- who don’t run away from the failures of their communities, but instead transform the culture in which they find themselves, in order to serve a larger vision. LECRAE REBEL ALBUM SERIESTransformers is a new series that will look at people who are re-making their context from within.
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