Hey family, this is the first post of the exploration of religion and spirituality within Rap and Hip-Hop - as the one before was obviously the introduction.
I feel that to understand the role of religion and spirituality in Rap it would be clever to look at the music itself. You may be thinking why, or even how, does this billion dollar industry have anything to do with religion?
Let me kick it to you...
Rap music has more to owe to
religious music than anything else, arguably. Just like Jazz and Soul, this art
form sprang from the religious gospel music like a flower blossoms from a seed.
This is both seen not only in the instrumentals but also the vocals. Gospel and
Spiritual music often reflected words of hardships and oppression but finding a
heaven in religious concepts such as ‘Zion’, for instance if you peep
the well known song ‘The Gospel Train’ by the Fisk Jubilee Singers the
lyrics are follows ‘Crowds at the station stand, with passport in their
hand, To start for Zion’s land, be in time, be in time’. Although Zion
could denote Jerusalem, for the Black oppressed people it could mean a place of
toleration and freedom.
This is where the uncanny links of rap music comes from. Where back in the day the people would sing about their pain through music and finding salvation through God - the oppressed youth of black America of the 1980s and 1990s would turn to music for exploration and in turn salvation or even in some cases they, again, turn to Jesus...
In 2004 Kanye West released probably one of his biggest songs to date, Jesus Walks. Not only is this probably the biggest gospel rap song like ever, but it was also voted on the Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time"...and for a gospel song that is quite profound I'd say.
The music itself from the song is taken from an older record called ‘Walk with Me’ by the ARC Choir, where several times the choir is singing ‘Jesus walks with me’. Kanye explores many themes throughout the song, one is just speaking how Jesus walks with all, even all the sinners, he says ‘to the hustlers, killers, drug dealers even the strippers – Jesus walks for them.’ He goes on to say how even the people on welfare are walking with Jesus, whom he thinks are getting ripped off because of where they live, ‘to the victims of welfare for we living in Hell here, hell yeah – Jesus Walks for them.'
For me, what was the most important part of the song in regards to preparing this blog was where he says how record label executives and radio bosses don’t want a song about God – they want songs about sex and violence – peep what he says,
‘so here go my single dog, radio needs this, they say you can rap about anything except for Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, videotape but if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?'
The irony of this is that, I feel, even though this rap music itself owes something towards Black Gospel music, now it's become a billion dollar industry, the powers that be don't want anything to do with 'talks-of-God' - they're happy just to make more and more money.
Even beyond the lyrics, you can just take a look at the music instrumentation and you’ll see resemblances. Traditional gospel music was very simple, the music would be based around a drum kit, piano, bass (double bass), tambourine and vocals – if you look at rap music in its early form it was very simple – the music would be based around drum kit, bass, piano (aswell as other sampled melody) and vocals. If you look DJ Premier’s music, who is arguably the greatest Hip-Hop producer of all time, he himself based his early music from the 16 bar blues. This structure of music was too seen in the early black gospel music.
This is where the uncanny links of rap music comes from. Where back in the day the people would sing about their pain through music and finding salvation through God - the oppressed youth of black America of the 1980s and 1990s would turn to music for exploration and in turn salvation or even in some cases they, again, turn to Jesus...
In 2004 Kanye West released probably one of his biggest songs to date, Jesus Walks. Not only is this probably the biggest gospel rap song like ever, but it was also voted on the Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time"...and for a gospel song that is quite profound I'd say.
The music itself from the song is taken from an older record called ‘Walk with Me’ by the ARC Choir, where several times the choir is singing ‘Jesus walks with me’. Kanye explores many themes throughout the song, one is just speaking how Jesus walks with all, even all the sinners, he says ‘to the hustlers, killers, drug dealers even the strippers – Jesus walks for them.’ He goes on to say how even the people on welfare are walking with Jesus, whom he thinks are getting ripped off because of where they live, ‘to the victims of welfare for we living in Hell here, hell yeah – Jesus Walks for them.'
For me, what was the most important part of the song in regards to preparing this blog was where he says how record label executives and radio bosses don’t want a song about God – they want songs about sex and violence – peep what he says,
‘so here go my single dog, radio needs this, they say you can rap about anything except for Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, videotape but if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?'
The irony of this is that, I feel, even though this rap music itself owes something towards Black Gospel music, now it's become a billion dollar industry, the powers that be don't want anything to do with 'talks-of-God' - they're happy just to make more and more money.
Even beyond the lyrics, you can just take a look at the music instrumentation and you’ll see resemblances. Traditional gospel music was very simple, the music would be based around a drum kit, piano, bass (double bass), tambourine and vocals – if you look at rap music in its early form it was very simple – the music would be based around drum kit, bass, piano (aswell as other sampled melody) and vocals. If you look DJ Premier’s music, who is arguably the greatest Hip-Hop producer of all time, he himself based his early music from the 16 bar blues. This structure of music was too seen in the early black gospel music.
So coming to the end of his blog, the link between Black Gospel and Rap can be seen. Not only the lyrics of hardships was seen in both music but also the choice of music instrumentation – both forms of music were often very simple.
To be honest, I could go on to show more how these two link
but I think it’s time to begin to explore faith and rap through the whole 5%
Nation of Islam movement and see what that brought out for the art.
Until then, peace!
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