Anthony Bradley, as well as a guest author Matt Parker have written two excellent pieces on Hip Hop and evangelicalism. I would encourage you all to read them.
Bradley’s piece on the reactions Mark Driscoll has received for praising Jay-Z yet condemning the movie Avatar as demonic, I think, is on key!
“If Driscoll had praised Nirvana or Johny Cash or the Beattles or Led Zepplin none of his followers would have said a word in critique. Why Jay-Z? Is it because he’s a negro? (think about it).”
Meanwhile, Matt Parker’s criticism of the arrogance of the “us versus them” mentality of Holy Hip Hoppers I believe taps into the essential difference between Christian music and pop music in general.
For my two cents, these articles only affirm studies that have shown that 70% Hip Hop’s consumption comes from white Americans, and so the reason why the Holy Hip Hop genre has this “holier than thou” attitude is not because it is anti-Hip Hop, but because it is geared towards young white Evangelicals as an “alternative” to that other stuff. This would explain the prominence of Calvinist theology in Holy Hip Hop circles. It would also explain the utterly bizarre silence that Christian rappers maintain when it comes to issues of racial and economic oppression, which once served as the primary source of the hip hop culture.
What if a more Christian form of hip-hop actually sounds like the Black Eyed Peas more than what you can buy at Mardels, Lifeway, or Cokesbury?
Really, the Black Eyed Peas? Ummm they arent hip hop. Sorry.
first line from Black Eyed Peas wikipedia:
“The Black Eyed Peas are an American hip hop group”
BEP and Wiki are lame.
Black Eyed Peas are to hip hop as Beyonce is to opera.
it appears that I don’t understand what qualifies as hip hop. Does anyone, who is not me, want to step in and inform me? I am not offended, mind you. Even if I knew what hip hop was, I still wouldn’t like it, so I don’t have a horse in this fight. But I would like to know how to define the terms in order to be a part of this non-Black-Eyed-Peas-related convo.
That would call for a post, which I shall gladly do.