Rap gets religious, but is it gospel?

By Natalie Kopkinson of The Washington Post

“We at war with terrorism, racism, but most of all we at war with ourselves.”
—Kanye West, “Jesus Walks”

It seemed at long last that commercial rap had finally come to Jesus.

Thanks to “Jesus Walks,” a hit single by hip-hop superproducer-turned-artist Kanye West, His name has been blasting over car stereos, moving taut bodies in the clubs and racing up the mainstream hip-hop charts all summer.

“I’m just trying to say,” West raps, “The way school need teachers/ The way Kathie Lee needed Regis/ That’s the way y’all need Jesus/ So here go my single, dog/ Radio needs this.”

The single vaulted onto Billboard’s Hot 100 and has stayed there for 21 weeks running, and three versions of the “Jesus Walks” video are spinning heavily on MTV and on BET’s rap and gospel programs.

And when West’s debut album, “The College Dropout,” was selected for a spot on the ballot for best rap/hip-hop album by gospel’s prestigious Stellar Awards last month—right next to God’s Little Soldiers, the Christian boys choir—it seemed a new day in gospel had arrived.

There have been crossovers—usually religious artists such as Kirk Franklin and Amy Grant moving into the pop charts—but mainstream hip-hop had never infiltrated the gospel world to this extent.

Not everyone was pleased. The Stellar Committee got nearly 100 letters and e-mails expressing outrage.

Several threatened to boycott the Jan. 15 awards, said Erma Gray Davis, president of Central City Productions, which produces the awards.

Last week, the Stellar Committee announced it was sending out 4,000 new ballots—minus West—to its voting academy. “It was a mistake,” Davis said. “Even though that song was wonderful, that was not a gospel album. Kanye, we love you darling; don’t be upset with us. It’s not personal.”

The flap has got some folks asking age-old questions, such as: What is gospel?

Is it supposed to reach sinners or the converted?

The choir or the street?

It’s also presented new ones: Can one walk with Jesus and still do unmentionables with Lil’ Kim, as West fantasizes in another song?

Would Jesus bling? (He will in West’s new religious-themed jewelry line produced in partnership with Jacob “The Jeweler” Arabo, baublemaker to the rap stars.)

Would the Savior wear a crown of diamond-set thorns?

West isn’t offering any answers.

Several calls to his publicist, Gabe Tesoriero, were not returned this week.

There are those who believe West did belong on the Stellar ballot. “I think it is gospel,” said Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor of black popular culture at Duke University and author of several books about black music.

“I think we have to think more broadly about what gospel is.”

Neal says black popular music has always had a spiritual foundation, and hip-hop is no different. Everyone from Run-DMC to Tupac to Nas has openly celebrated and debated religion. Religion and spirituality are themes throughout “The College Dropout,” he says.

Several songs, such as “2 Words,” featuring the Boys Choir of Harlem, are even more overtly religious than “Jesus Walks”: “So I live by two words/ (Expletive), pay me/Screamin’ Jesus save me/ You know how the game be/ I can’t let ’em change me/ Cuz on Judgment Day/You gon’ blame me/ Look God, it’s the same me.”

To reach beyond church audiences, Neal says, many contemporary gospel artists avoid the words “God” or “Jesus,” opting to sing about, say, relationships.

But when West, a mainstream rapper, explicitly—sometimes expletively—grapples with his religion, his work is dismissed, says Neal.

“It’s shortsighted of the folks at Stellar Awards not to affirm an artist trying to do that,” he said.

The Rev. Matthew Watley, youth minister at Reid Temple AME Church in suburban Washington, disagrees.

“It probably never should have been on the ballot,” he said. “I think that Kanye’s offering is sort of like a Hostess snack. It’s a good quick something to ingest, but probably not enough to make a full diet for a person seriously committed to their faithful orientation.”