Hip Hop Worship Church

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The concepts of bi-musicality and bilingualism, as tools that Christian rappers have developed in negotiating authenticity and used to make space from themselves in two intertwined but distinct cultures have the potential to help us understand the nature of one such ‘spaces’ created: the hip-hop worship church and its’s hip-hop worship experience. At its core, a hip-hop worship and church experience is on that is predominantly or solely driven by hip-hop music, spoken word, slang, dance and dress. More than just a concert or an opportunity of one or two rappers to be displayed in a line-up of other CCM and Gospel artists, the hip-hop worship experience puts both hip-hop and Christianity at the center in new and exciting ways. Therefore, it …show more content…

The congregation space is a large open room that appears to be a slightly renovated empty brick building from Chicago’s factory days. There are pews, a stage, machinery—everything that signalized a normal church. That is until you look back at the sound booth and notice a man in a backwards baseball cap, with giant phones on. The pre-service music, which is loud enough to overlap the various small talk conversations between people there, is playlist complexly composed of Christian rap music and the baseball capped man is DJ (and as it turns out, he is the “resident house DJ and one of the church’s. As the time near for service to start, the volume and the bass increase. Those few in attendance bob their heads, allowing the music and the lyrics to take precedence. Today’s visiting hip-hop group sets up their equipment, while the Pastor Phil circulates to talk to members—at one point a particular song comes on, resonating so well with him that he shouts out “that’s my JAM “, while motioning to the In-House DJ to replay this song when it is done. No one seems the slightest worried about me, the lone black girl who slipped into the second row of pews after introductory handshakes. I am wearing all black (including black faux-leather boots as I sit quietly and take notes in a small black notebook. Their treatment of me …show more content…

The second rap, the testimony rap. follows the lines of what many of the scholars mentioned throughout this essay would refer to as “bragging’ in the lord”. The rapper essentially tells what is going on in his life since he got saved from the Southside streets—but he is careful not to boast about how he did these things on his own, but how God is the center and reason for all of the positive changes in his life. It is at the end of these two pieces that the DJ decides that he loves the beat being played, signaling to his temporary replacement at the sound booth/turntables to put the main hook on a loop. He goes completely off script, entering into what many may deem as an extended testimony mode—taking his already animated body movements “to the next level”—he is jumping, quite literally, for joy. Eventually, the music fades and the church proceeds to have a laid back sermon that, if one did not pay close attention, would sound like the typical youth service or Bible Study. But the word choice (or slang and other hip-hop specific metaphors) roll off Pastor Phil’s tongue. It melds with scriptural references in a way that doesn’t sound

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