Shout-outs to
the Creator
Carey E. Walsh
Peace God, You gave me the voice to speak God.
Speak God ... my words came as a revelation.
Wyclef Jean
See, I place my words in your mouth!
This day I set you over nations and kingdoms.
Jer 1:10
Cultural studies encourages the kind of juxtaposition I have set above, between a rap lyric and a biblical text, and by doing so, offers biblical scholarship the scary chance to revisit its foundations, such as what a text even is. This is one time, props to us, when biblical studies is not the last kid on the block to experiment with a new method however. For Syro-Palestinian archaeology early on forced the question of cultural texts. Pottery was after all “read,” inscriptions revealed a fluid use of script forms, and tell strata spoke even through the absences of occupation. For the theoretically prone archaeologist not overwhelmed by site data management, the notion of text changed forever. Material culture-the artifactual finds-was culture and it stood opposite the text culture we knew, the Bible. The theoretical excitement came in relating them, in letting each influence our understandings of the other and of interpretation itself. Was a pottery shard, for example, any less of a text than the scroll of Isaiah? Its broken edges mattered as much as the piece itself, so assumptions about the linguistic province of meaning shifted. A biblical reading influenced by archaeology, then, might be like looking at a tear in the Isaiah scroll not to see what graphemes were missing, but to read the rupture itself as meaningful. Such cultural study exploded the notion of text, for those who heard it, forever.
The notion that a rap lyric is a text too is encouraged by cultural studies today, since all cultural expressions are seen as texts to be read. But an archaeologist might concede it too, for it requires only a large leap over millennia of strata and continents. The principle is the same, namely, that all cultural artifacts are texts requiring translation. Is there much of a difference between the literary testimonies of divine calling above? They begin with some fashion of inspiration, attribute the impulse to God, and convey them via the recipient’s own faith. In fact, Wyclef Jean does view himself and other rappers as called, even to the point of coercion, much like Jeremiah. His lyrics burst out of him and he is compelled to rap.
The perspective of cultural studies collapses the distinction between so-called high and popular culture and remains critical of academic elitism. It also expands the notion of texts to include music, film, TV commercials, cartoons, etc. With such restraints gone, I can examine rap for its affinities to biblical production. Rap makes us rethink what we mean by texts and their production, and that can influence our understanding of the Bible’s production. While the present essay explores mainly the use of biblical themes in rap lyrics, biblical cultural studies is not limited to finding biblical representation in various cultural forms, such as painting, sculpture, opera, Hollywood films, etc.[1] If it were, then cultural study would be merely an extension of source criticism, where biblical scholars could search art, music, and film for various biblical threads. By interpreting all sorts of new texts, cultural studies can offer biblical studies the hermeneutic gains from shifting, multiple perspectives.
Rap then is full of texts, or text fragments of social experience and configured meanings. The Bible, before it was a canon, was a host of oral and written pieces too of social experience and configurations of meanings within it. The raps come fast and fluid, ever generating new texts on the spot. The fragmentary nature of rap is not seen as incomplete of some assumed whole¾say, a rap canon¾but is testimony to the condition of splintered worldviews, postmodern shards of insight. Before turning our attention to the presence of biblical themes in rap, let me first describe briefly what rap is.
Rap music’s poetic conventions, raging creativity, and omnivorous “sampling” (borrowing) of previous sound works-be these verses, beats, speeches, commercial jingles etc.,-betray an urgent expressive culture wrestling with the very meanings of life played out in the street. It flows forth with bullet speed, bypassing musical conventions such as harmony, melody, and traditional instruments, preferring instead rapid-fire lyrics, and turning turntables into primary instruments to be scratch-played. Other musicians’ records get scratched and spliced onto other bits of recorded sound to offer new musical products. Musical culture gets recycled into new forms, where the “break,” that is, the rupture of the previous sound becomes all-important. With rap poetry, images are woven from the Bible, sociology, Zora Neale Hurston, etc., all without attribution. The listener is challenged to know his/her culture through rap’s collages. We are privy to a complex, multivalent, oral tradition in the making. The ghetto is the reality for the birth of this poetry and is portrayed with unflinching candor. Rappers speak of drug deals gone bad, pimping, unwanted pregnancies, rape, incest, and gangbanging.
In fact, the lyrics themselves – the flow – are described as bullets, and so transform the gun violence of the streets into poetic violence. Rap has a vital impulse, a lively energy that tries to capture what street life is. Amidst the rich detail of urban scenes and linguistic free-styling, rap evinces, what George Tate simply termed, the “life force.”[2] Rap is so urgent that its lyrics sound impatient; they strain against the limits of language and voice to hurl towards potent expression.
Rap offers grim, graphic accounts of the way life just is in one of its toughest contexts, and does so in a poetic vein that is hard to hear, yet nevertheless, or especially, truth-telling. It creates out of a palpable nothing, the nihilism that, according to Cornel West, poses a lethal threat for every ghetto dweller.[3] This nihilism is relished in rap depictions of shootout scenes, complete with automatic gun spray and knives, as the rapper becomes the “postmodern cowboy,”[4] his tongue the weapon of choice. Yet, the same nihilism is also decried in the communal mourning of a shooting’s aftermath, hence Wyclef Jean’s plaintive, “Someone call 911” or Tupac Shakur wondering “if heaven got a ghetto,” soon before he was to find out through his assassination. Spiritual yearning comes through these songs as nihilism’s opponent, for it fights for life’s meaning amidst squalor. Tupac’s hope in heaven is for a better world, and his realism is poignant. But simply through representin’ this gritty world, rap is a generous lyrical offering to those within and outside the ghetto. In fact, for it to qualify as “dope” (good) rap, rather than “wack” (bad), it must speak to both worlds.
Nihilism in the current age, of course, abounds and not just in the ghetto. A postmodern age insists that we befriend it, but not get burned, or, worse, not care if we are burned. Nihilism snuffs out souls, and this should alarm us at least as much as the urban body counts do. Regardless of social status, anyone’s hopes and dreams can be snuffed out by life.[5] Rap knows this and responds with all it’s got. For the soul, this truly is a street fight, ugly and to the death, so some of the niceties, like rational discourse, nuanced emotion, so-called standard English, melody, etc., are just gonna have to wait, or better, they are no longer useful.
Besides its existential passion, rap is also filled with religious images and illusions, appropriating stock biblical themes such as creation, exodus, crucifixion, redemption, forgiveness, resurrection, etc., for street life today. The lyrics, then, are often aggressive freestyle biblical interpretation. The free use of the Bible illustrates a basic principle of rap, namely, that it sample anything it needs. Curiously, it turns out that rap, even Gangsta rap, needs religious themes to a surprising degree. God is in the details, whether they be rap’s or the Bible’s or one’s life, and so the hermeneutic enterprise is to search and illuminate these sites of meaning.
Rap music¾in particular “message” or “conscious rap,” in contrast to hard-core and pop rap[6]¾ offers a spiritual testimony with staying power, even as the life spans of its artists can often be productively (and even literally) quite short. Message rap is fraught with social and theological reflexivity missing in other forms of commercial rap. By contrast, the focus of much commercial rap is given over to bragging skills and material gain, as the lyrics pay homage to “bling bling,” the sparkling, expensive jewelry of large crosses, earrings, watches, and even automobiles, which become wardrobe accessories. The gorging excess is a symptom of late capitalism’s consumerism and is seen as American entitlement.[7] The aims of commercial artists are quick cash (e.g.., “dead presidents,” “All about the Benjamins, baby”) and lots of it.
The rap industry, for its bling-bling adherents, then, exists simply to despoil white capitalist America as fiercely as the Israelites had the Egyptians. The orgy of spending, and singing of spending¾disposable income now a ritual and right¾stands as indictment against American society itself. Such rappers expose American excesses and thus become scapegoats for political discussion and censorship. Biblical imagery is used only superficially in commercialized rap. Jay-Z, for example, the biggest-selling rap artist today, gleaned his moniker from the first letter of, what he mistakenly took to be the biblical God’s name, JeHoVaH. He does not reference God or any part of his biblical history; instead, he self-deifies. Eminem, another dominator of “the game,” aims lower, using his initials, M.M. to remind us all of candy. And when he speaks of God, it is rage-filled, a Job on crack, surely.
Message rap, by contrast, tries to educate its home ‘hoods and a deaf America. The lyrics of message rappers contain hip-hop spiritual content frequently laced with biblical imagery. Message rappers, such as Tupac Shakur, Nas, Wyclef Jean, Mos Def, and Krs-One, in fact, offer what the biblical prophets had, namely, a means of social critique and moral challenge by asserting God’s presence in the mix of concrete daily, and unjust life. The lyrics express the material conditions and spiritual malaise of American culture, from the ghetto to the capitalist gorge of the music industry, which itself becomes another kind of cellblock for the artist.[8] A bling-bling perspective worries only about the interior design of that cellblock. The potential for liberation lies only in ostentatious decoration, i.e., in being “ghetto fabulous.”
Message rappers transcend those limitations (and market shares) and challenge the contemporary soul to a communal love in society, against a solipsism of disregard. The message is indeed similar to the biblical prophets—to remember those at risk in society, those who are disadvantaged. Amos, for example, can represent the prophetic rally for the spiritual integrity of loving God and neighbor at once:
I know how terrible your sins are and
how many crimes you have committed;
You persecute good people, take bribes
and prevent the poor from getting
justice in the courts.
Amos 5:12
The message rappers sing for justice for themselves and for their community. They bear testimony to what the ghetto does to the spirit of a people, and decry it. Because rap articulates a justifiable rage at dehumanizing social conditions, it offers an antidote against despair, when rage has seeped inward. Paradoxically, the voiced rage preserves and strengthens the soul; by offering a gritty hope, it keeps the soul afloat from despair. Rap becomes more than racial or socio-economic critique precisely in its fight against despair. Despair for Jesus signaled the gravest sin, because it went against the Holy Spirit. By fighting so hard to preserve the integrity of people’s souls¾their sense of who they truly are despite their living conditions¾rap’s voiced rage becomes ontological commitment.
There is nothing orthodox about hip-hop’s expression of spirituality, to be sure, but its sentiments energetically and stylistically best a resigned worldview, by exhibiting a creation theology that includes, God, ghetto, and the talents evident in rap poetry.[9] Biblical themes resound through short bursts of faith amidst rap’s harsh street lyrics. There can be no sustained expression of hip-hop spirituality, because it comes spliced in with the staccato images of daily living. Hope isn’t dead in the inner city; it is scratching its way through in lyrical creation. Biblical imagery is invoked as part of the message. It is “sampled” to create something new, conjured rather than cited, since it has “transformative and therapeutic intent.”[10]
This conjuring power is a strong facet of black cultural heritage. Slave songs, Negro Spirituals, and the blues, all invoke the salvific threads of biblical faith to minister to their audiences. So too does Reggae, which enlists the powerful themes of Exodus to encourage its listeners in the dream of a black return to Africa. Black music has often been about nourishing the soul as a form of resistance and social cohesion. It has always been a means to survive; it used biblical traditions to sustain and strengthen communities under oppression.[11] The presence of the Bible, then, in black music is certainly not new. What is new is the manner of its delivery in rap, where biblical images are chopped into pieces that then collide with contemporary metaphors of gangs, lockdown, sex, projects, and the rap industry. I want to ask here if this heavy fragmentation and shifting images can be seen as a kind of postmodern exegesis. In other words, can rap’s use of the Bible be the practice, rather than the theory, of what we would expect postmodern exegesis to be?
To root up and to tear down,
To destroy and to demolish,
To build and to plant.
Jer 1:10
Biblical imagery is spattered within the pastiches of urban life. Like graffiti artists, the rappers “bomb” statements onto the urban landscape, using poetry instead of spray paint. A rapper’s poetic skill is called “spitting,” so the aggression is rhetorically purposeful; to forcefully awaken the audience that receives the raps. Raps give voice to a people’s rage, and it challenges the hegemonic order with its disruption. Jeremiah similarly created a poetic collage of images, his “oracle of judgment” surely a “bomb” to Jerusalem’s shekeled urban set. Poetry in the urban venue is disruption to the market and the exercise of power. Biblical prophecy is resistance language, but it aims higher than survival. Like Jeremiah’s prophecy, rap functions to “root up” and “plant” the changing expressions of meaning in urban experience.
Rap enacts, over and over again, Jesus’ stark gospel challenge to consider the poor. It does this all CD long, and when we turn away, we become racists and hypocrites. Rap indicts us, and maybe that has something to do with its rejection in certain demographic pools. Rap prods the modern soul to remember again the greatest commandment, to love our distressed neighbors along with God. If the neighbors of the ghetto have been forgotten, then God too has been abandoned. Rap testifies to the resilience of the human spirit, and affirms the spirit’s value through its indignation over squalid conditions. That such earnest spirituality comes from an unexpected source only adds to its power. For it is smuggled into the ears of ghetto and suburban kids who listen in perhaps the only way they can tolerate spiritual sentiments, via the angry, counter-cultural music they play. In delicious irony, the Bible ¾the iconic text of Western culture¾becomes now desired contraband in rap. This devious theft begets a new life for the Bible, a resurrection in creating worldviews anew.
While the Bible is sampled in a myriad of ways in the rap world, message rap uses four key biblical themes to construct its streetwise spirituality. They are: redemption; incarnation; Imago Dei; and resurrection.
a. Redemption
The spiritual notion of redemption in the Bible has a dual aspect of freedom and restoration.[12] The redeemed soul is freed from restraints that hinder it, and it is restored to its original self. The most vital aid on this journey is truth, for redemption is possible only when the soul can honestly assess its condition. Message rappers, therefore, put a premium on telling the truth. As the self-proclaimed Doggfather of Gangster rap, Snoop Dogg describes his purpose most succinctly:
In every rap I ever recorded, in the
mad flow of every street-corner freestyle
I ever represented, there was only one
thing I wanted to get across: the way
it is … the way it really is, on the streets
of the ’hoods of America, where life is
lived out one day at a time, up against it,
with no guarantees.[13]
Rap, in fact, does share elements with biblical writing. The truth-telling, the skillful use of metaphor, especially synecdoche, whose elements are drawn from precise attention to pedestrian life, the creating of such expression out of virtually nothing but spirit and emotion, and the existential stance of living life out one day at a time, courageously and “with no guarantees” are all features of both rap and biblical material. Rap starts with truth, as bald as it is, and holds nothing back. Other message rappers share Snoop’s commitment to the truth, and it is clear from the lyrics that they spare nothing in telling that truth. Chuck D of Public Enemy once famously noted that rap was the black community’s CNN, the news source it trusted.[14]
Rap is a spirited reaction to life as it is, and offers forceful surges, sometimes rage-filled and understandably so, against nihilism and towards a thriving creative impulse. Its spiritual affirmation can brook no platitude or sentimentality. Instead, it is more akin to the prophetic strain in the Bible. The prophets are such a vital part of biblical spirituality because they safeguarded the truth, especially when it was resisted by a people’s denial and complacency. The truth, as Jesus said, will set you free (John 8:32), but coming to know that truth was sheer ordeal, and that is what he and the prophets before him taught.
A prophetic spirituality is, then, by its nature, uncomfortable, painful, offensive, and often unheeded. No bystander wants to listen to theological rants about how distanced God is from our lives. But this moral challenge is what the prophets and message rappers provide, a searing critique of social injustice. In fact, our protestations of simply not liking the music may conceal a denial of economic and racial inequity. Prophets play a critical, yet often neglected role in our spiritual growth because they scour the conscience. Prophecy acts as a goad for reflection in the midst of socio-political complex systems, whether these be the cities of ancient Israel or the inner cities of modern America. If the human spirit can soar in this present-day culture, it must encounter real life, not make do with pleasant facsimile, virtual reality, or cordoned-off comfort zones of worship.
b. Incarnation
The rappers’ legitimacy as social critic has a spiritual foundation, namely, that God is present in the ghetto. Rap is a jarring musical form, and much of it glorifies violence and consumerism. But what the singers proclaim is that God is in this world, regardless of how “all fucked up now”[15] it is. The rapper searches, finds, and shouts to him. This initiative is spiritual in essence, and demonstrates a very biblical trust in providential dynamism. In other words, rappers aren’t troubled by philosophical reflection about God, as religion scholars might be: hardship and leisure yield vastly different theological agendas. Instead, they see God in the street and herald his presence to those listening. They become true “street preachas.”[16] A hip-hop faith, then, proclaims incarnation. For where God is first glimpsed and felt is in the souls of each other: mom, pops, “peeps” (friends), and the hollowed-out druggie on the corner. The spiritual boon of incarnation is to feel God’s presence as immediate and as a bond of community with all these diverse souls. The music itself becomes incarnation as when Krs-One raps “these are God’s lyrics, I’m just saying them out.”[17]
The rapper’s first principle¾ “to keep it real” ¾preserves truth, fleshed out in its gritty detail. As Talib Kweli raps in “Ghetto Afterlife,” “My words are flesh like Jesus the Aquarian.”[18] There is a faith in God’s presence in the concrete details of life, even in the ghetto and with that goes a conviction that life need not be cleaned up or edited before it is religiously appropriate. The spiritual endeavor must work in the world we know, not the one we have imagined for the future. Rap takes Jesus’ prayer to the urban ghettoes, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Tupac Shakur had even bolder spiritual dreams, namely, to redeem hell while he was at it too:
We probably in Hell already, our dumb asses not knowin’
Everybody kissin’ ass to go to heaven – ain’t going.’
Put my soul on it. [19]
The street poetry bespeaks in its own way, a mystical awakening of consciousness, with “dumb ass” serving as hip-hop’s metonym for “soul.”[20] The language cannot be softened; this kind of spiritual vision is both blunt and brutal at times. It has to shock and startle in order to stir the soul away from despair. Rappers are like the prophet Jeremiah, creative souls in extremis who have been pressed one too many times beyond heartbreak, yet must speak. Note the strain apparent in the words of Jeremiah and Tupac:
My heart is crushed within me,
all my bones shakes; I have become
like a drunkard, like one overcome
with wine, because of the Lord.
Jer 23:9
I’m fed up. We gotta start teaching
children that they can be all that
they wanna be; there’s so much
more to life than just poverty.
Tupac, “Words of Wisdom”
The spirit of rappers can be easily devoured by the inner city, and many undoubtedly are every day. The remaining rappers rise up, speak out, shout out, and testify to their world and all its victims. They are the defiant, pissed ministers against the death-dealing conditions of the urban jungle; they subdue nihilism and create something with it. Their honest realism establishes their credibility as rappers, to be sure, but it also provides the firm basis for spiritual faith. For, it is when we are “keeping it real” or truly banking our lives on the premise that the truth makes us free, that we see spiritual struggle in earnest.
The soul must draw on inner reserves, which are viewed as God-given, to sustain its realness. Those reserves, like everything else, are described concretely and here rappers use explicitly biblical images. Mos Def, for example, proclaims, “God makes you valuable, and whether or not you recognize that value is one thing.”[21] He celebrates that we all have “God complexes,” not the systems of government that pretend they do. Power is fought and reclaimed through remembering God’s creation of us. Mos Def’s is a muscled, lean spiritual vision:
The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked.
But God is sufficient in disposing of affairs.
Gunmen and stockholders try to merit my fear.
But God is sufficient over plans they prepare.[22]
Tupac goes further into the Christian incarnation, by proclaiming that he is God’s beloved son; one of them, anyway. He cries out to Jesus’ mother Mary with a boyish urgency: “Come with me, Hail Mary, run quick see.”[23] You can almost envision a small Tupac pulling his mother by the hand to share one of his discoveries. His faith is not blasphemy at all; it is claiming the spiritual gift to which all children of God are privy. Tupac is humble, lost, and beseeching Mary’s company.
Krs-One, who sees himself as the professor of message rappers¾“the first to teach at Yale”¾captures the divine legacy of incarnation perhaps most clearly:
Instead of reading the word of Christ,
Be the word of Christ,
Instead of following God’s word,
Be God’s word.
That’s the consciousness of hip hop.[24]
His incarnational message goes further than, say, such commonplace spiritual aids as WWJD bracelets, because it forgoes reflection for embodiment. Asserting a divine right to a fully personified faith, rappers certainly champion a spiritual cause. Their message creates space for incarnated faith in the street, and by so doing, steals those sites from nihilism. This is sly, spiritual recycling of the inner city, bit by patient bit. Rap’s critical stance itself offers the listener “salvation,” i.e., the privilege of seeing through the traps and dead ends, the futility of shootouts, and the urgency to stand for something more, for creation. Redemption comes within the ghetto, not by escape from it. The messages, then, are about restoring what has been stolen, namely one’s spirit.
The “boasting” in rap and black expressive culture in general is, in fact, more properly understood as a love of one’s spirit, rather than runaway egoism. Rappers will often demonstrate self-pride in their lyrics, and specifically through “signifying,” which confers one’s poetic authority over other rappers. Signifying is often assumed to be mere braggadocio, a verbal strut that is no more than another display of masculine prowess. But it is not; it is much more. It is testimony to self-empowerment, to be sure, but this gets voiced from a context of socio-economic powerlessness. The context of boasting, namely the inner city, distinguishes it from simple ego maintenance. When the odds are stacked high against one, boasting reflects spiritual assertion. Self-pride is an article of faith in the ghetto, for no one is handing it out. Signifying favorably compares one rapper to his competition, but in playful celebration of himself.[25] His demonstration of self-love inspires the crowd to own its power. The competition, far from being shamed, is energized to return a boast, and the audience, having witnessed these displays of self-love, is encouraged to follow suit with its own celebration.
Self-empowerment, then, is a vital and often misunderstood feature of rap, precisely because it is needed in a society largely indifferent to some “underclass’s” suffering. Boasting celebrates a voice no longer silent, but loud and proud. Aceyalone stresses the liberating effect of boasting by drawing on Black Nationalism:
Aceyalone ain’t no phoney not by any means
And by any means necessary be supreme
I am the poet to flow and get lyrical.[26]
Boasting is self-assertion, laced with anger. He forges an identity by invoking Malcolm X’s clarion call for black freedom, “by any means necessary.” A black man’s life is at risk in the inner city. His conditions include: too many stories of violence; an active emotional spectrum from rage, to joy, and despair; and an enemy that is American society. Hence, articulated self-love is spiritual and political antidote to how an urban black man is otherwise treated in America. It is praise for the God’s ongoing incarnation.
c. Imago Dei
The rapper’s conversion of evil for good through words is viewed as a calling, a means of expressing a truly God-given creativity:
We snatched raps out of they mouths when they were biting
There was nothing more exciting than to serve and perform,
On Crenshaw and Exposition God was born
He said “please pass the mic to whomever is tight.[27]
The mic (rophone) is power and a calling, with the “tight” poet serving his community. Aceyalone, perhaps unwitting, invokes here the God of Genesis, who spoke the world into being. Speech can create worlds, and it is left to humans, made in God’s image, to believe through creating. In other words, creative action is the practice of a creation faith, as Imago Dei is never static. So, for example, Snoop Dogg’s commitment to rap is avowedly religious, when he asserts: “I’m a child of God. Doing God’s work.”[28]
Spontaneity is held at a premium, because these artists view themselves as inspired. The rappers trust their talent and feel called to share it uncensored. Hence, Busta Rhymes describes his work, “I’m about to Picasso a new picture for you muthafuckas.”[29] He can no more stop his creativity than Picasso could, and so a new verb is born, “to Picasso.” The thriving oral culture of rap is a fine example of the poetic process, for it is often done freestyle or in quick response to another’s lyrics. If we recall that biblical traditions were originally oral, created within community, and straight from a people’s quotidian lives, then we can see an analogy with rap’s spiritual efforts, as both depict God’s presence. For the most part, the Bible arose first from nameless village storytellers, parents, and social gadflies; nobodies who made themselves somebodies through their expressive culture. It is comprised, then, of numerous, eclectic traditions. Like biblical production, rap is prolific and varied. Hence for the Bible and for rap, life-difficult life, full of uncertainties-was the catalyst for poetic creation. These are both cultures of revelation.
In the sense of inspired productions, the religious impulse in rap has similarities to the pre-canonical period of the Bible, when fluidity, creativity, and experimentations were undoubtedly at a premium. The poetic exuberance of rap, its scavenging hunger for the meanings in life, and its narrative truth-telling qualify rap as a living faith production and testify to an ever-open, ever-changing canon of faith.
d. Resurrection
The spiritual yearning in rap, then, makes for God-given creations of meaning. Another key spiritual element in rap poetry is a heightened appreciation for life when surrounded by so much death. Since death is a constant, intrusive presence, rappers become makeshift existentialists simply through trying to understand the whys of all the violence. The question of death has always ignited theological and philosophical inquiry and this is a constant as well in rap lyrics. The rappers do not cite Heidegger’s being-towards-death, Christian doctrines of Atonement, or anything quite so abstract. Instead, they endure and make poetry of this very hard and human condition, viz., that we all die and know that we will. Even as they reckon with this, they try to wrest meaning from the human condition.
Life is affirmed over and over, and dead ones are remembered in rituals that celebrate friendship and symbolically include the dead “homey” (friend) by pouring his portion on the ground. And plaintive prayers for dead friends are found in the lyrics, like Tupac’s “God Bless the Dead.”[30] Gratitude is the spiritual expression for choosing life over death; meaning over nihilism; poetry over shootouts. It is a spirituality based in resurrection faith. It is to cast oneself with life over and against death. To sing about life as it really is, to depict it with loving precision, is to thank an unnamed Creator–to “give shout-outs,” which is rap’s expression for gratitude. Almost all the CDs of message rappers thank God (or Allah) first and foremost, for the talent and the friends whom God made. Gratitude is the spiritual response to creation, a way for the human to take notice and marvel. In fact, hip hop’s ubiquitous phrase “its all good” is truly, in black tradition, “response” to God’s repeated “call” of “it is good” in the beginning of Creation (Genesis 1).
It is all good, amidst the horror and treacheries and injustices. Rap artists depict those relentlessly, a horror montage of social ills, designed often to awaken the person caught in them. Paradoxically, the harshness of lives often generates polished spiritual insights; good is often forged in evil, life does emerge out of death. For rap, it is the racism that produces ghettoes. For the Hebrew Bible, it was the exile, and for the New Testament period, it was persecution under Roman Imperial rule. In one song about rap, Common asks, “how many did this art form resurrect?”[31] The answer is an obvious and hopeful one: many. We can extend that hope to include the many more who can have spirit breathed back into them by rap’s message.
The messages themselves are daily street resurrections, the wresting of meaning, the moral codes, and the kept memory of those lone gone. Tupac Shakur’s death has had the biggest impact and stands as a central tragedy in the hip-hop world. He was gunned down in Las Vegas and his killer was never caught. Yet, his death unified many to reconcile particularly a felt West Coast/East Coast divide that had strained the rap community. There are even people who claim that he is not really dead, and followers who gather to remember him. Many of his lyrics are still being released posthumously, so he “is” very much alive to his listeners.
Hope
in the Postmodern World
Message rap, as we have seen, uses traditional biblical themes ¾redemption, incarnation, Imago Dei, and resurrection¾to shape its streetwise spirituality. It has as well the potential to inspire all people in American society, though this has not yet happened. In speaking from their own conditions, truths emerge that help us all. Rap exposes the lie of capitalism, whose underbelly is full of inhumane grit and brutal violation of the human spirit. It also daringly suggests that we all live in a spiritual ghetto in our meek despairing cynicism.
With its supreme valorization of creativity, rap has found a way to thrust a traditional belief in the Creator into a postmodern, postindustrial world, and renders spirituality viable in such harsh and confusing times. Our cultural predicament as narcissistic and postmodern would seem to eclipse any spiritual impulse toward God. The chaos is social and philosophical, for the world is contradictory. It has become a place where too many opportunities exist, yet not enough for the needy; the self is de-centered as if it doesn’t count; opulence exists next to waste; death is frequent; and in a democracy, enslavement to socio-economic conditions is beyond the rapper’s control (until he makes it in the recording industry). Paradoxically, there is too much out there and our expectations are lowered.
Children are not vouchsafed a better life than their parents, and what were givens-justice, truth, meritocracy-are no longer so. Master narratives, such as the notion of historical progress or of Christian salvation, are now contested, unstable, rather than assumed. In addition, our confidence in human reason, secure since the Enlightenment, has been shaken. New ideas, technologies, cultural influences, and events bombard us with regularity. The sheer assault summons from us either a playful eclectic adaptation or paralyzing cynicism. Postmodernism has both aspects to it. Despite all that, or rather, because of it, street poetry flourishes as means of resistance, survival, and testimony. Rap lands clearly on the side of playful creativity in this postmodern dilemma, and constructs spaces of real hope with it.
Realistic hope means navigating through power enough to believe that change is possible and not just fantasy. To show this potential, I draw on Michel Foucault’s important work on power. For him, resistance occurs within operative structures of societal powers, and not as outside protest. Foucault argues that the institutional structures of power in society are themselves arbitrary. Therefore, it is possible through resistance to open spaces of freedom for our enjoyment. Resistance is, for him, an integral facet of societal power. Rap, as a form of resistance art, in Foucault’s view, would participate in this power, alter it, and galvanize further displays of resistance as well.[32] Power, for Foucault, is a force potentially accessible to all, rather than inherent in any fixed institution or order. Rappers, then, are truly raiding the power store with their aggressive lyrical creations. No wonder they have been met with censorship and senate hearings![33]
The potential to access power means that change can happen with voices of resistance. And it does. Graffiti art, another form of hip-hop, nicely illustrates the power of resistance itself. This art, complete with the creators’ names tagged, is now an established part of New York City, because it travels on the mass transit system for widest exposure and has even enjoyed gallery time in its cultivated art circles. The status of graffiti art is further secured, as its cleanup is now part of the mayor’s annual budget. In Foucault’s understanding, this impact is even more powerful than, say, getting a meeting with the mayor, since that happens at a fixed moment in time and may not get heard. As Nas raps,
I wanna talk to the mayor, to the governor,
To the motherfucking president.
I wanna talk to the FBI and the CIA
And the motherfucking congressmen.[34]
He is both powerful and joking, for he knows that those meetings are pointless. His lyrics, then, expose the impotence of the government.
In Foucault’s terms, Nas is more effective as a rapper, where his lyrics will penetrate social order, just not in government centers. In this way, Nas says he is “stepping up to the establishment,” rather than being written off by it. The graffiti artists actively disrupt the city’s governance structure, and even best it, since all that the expensive cleanup does is give them more canvas to work with. Hence, they have transformed hostile city officials into patrons of their art! The cycle of their continued painting, erasure, and re-painting nicely illustrates the persistence of the human spirit and the fluid, changing reality of a postmodern city.
A realistic hope, then, intuits power and how spaces are created within it. It must also understand the self it would inspire, and here again Foucault is insightful.[35] He argues that the formation of the self is a contested site, a social construction in which an individual participates. There is no notion of an essential self in Foucault or postmodern thought in general. Instead, the self is understood to be de-centered or fragmented in discourses of knowledge. In other words, it has trouble finding and understanding itself, because there is no object there to discover. The creative, even spiritual, power emerges in how individuals come to know and speak about themselves. Identity is a process and always fluid.
Rap artists are creating themselves in the lyrics and always changing up. These shifts illustrate precisely identity construction in several ways. First, rappers assume different aliases that emphasize a personal viewpoint or strength: e.g., “Blackalicious”; “Niggers With Attitude”; “Nasty”; “LL Cool J” (Ladies love Cool James); and “Everlast” (like the battery). Second, they pose as the characters in narrative lyrics, and so can be pimp, drug dealer, loving son, cowboy, all in one CD, yet remain curiously unknown. Facets of their personalities may come through, but as individuals, rappers are elusive and contradictory in their interviews and autobiographies. Our inability to pinpoint them in the lyrics testifies to their true talent as postmodern poets. The sites of meaning are infinite and always retreating anyway, so rappers nimbly step in synch with the times and train us to let turmoil hone our intuitive love. They often use a historical perspective on their lives and confess freely the mistakes they have made, even proclaiming that they are new beings now. In addition, some rappers assume Muslim names or identify as God’s chosen one, prophet, or even only begotten son. The identity shifts, if well done, deceive the listeners, and so the rapper has “played” them and exposed the instability of knowing any artist or individual. Rappers create themselves as eclectic, complex sites of meaning,[36] as their packed lyrics create a space for the self to play freely, and hide.
Identity, as we have seen, is radically fluid in rap, as it is created through time and experience, and even through the poetry itself. In other words, rap enables participants to discover who they are, only to witness it change in mid-verse. And this can be heartening, for it becomes an ongoing project for each rapper, regardless of whether they get a record contract or not. Through this notion of representing, rap accents the self-consciousness always present in social interactions. Instead of having a self, we are an ever-emerging collage of ourselves, and this is pointless to label, impossible to share, always being recast. Such dynamism may be unnerving, but it is also freeing. For rap does not simply de-center the self and leave it insecure and vulnerable, as much postmodern thought can. Instead, it comes back and rallies for the human creative impulse as the source of one’s power. The individual, rather than alienated, becomes artistically productive in the ongoing process of his or her making.
Message rappers share at least these general convictions: a belief in the creative process; a belief that all people have this creativity within them and that it is God-given; and a belief that expression is a powerful way to “represent” yourself to the world and by so doing, change it. This is spiritually uplifting for those who want fiercely to survive and then thrive. Books on theology are tame by comparison; nice Ivory Tower tries. Rap believes in giving creativity free reign, and so supports the human spirit within postmodern conditions, and the result is a vital array of prophets and bards for our time.
Since rap is so searing and honest, it is biblical, religious, but not hamstrung by orthodoxy. Instead, the human spirit is fighting back, fighting out of blighted conditions past fear, towards something new; something not yet rapped. All of this passion is hope in motion. Rap’s creativity has a flamboyant disregard for authority, consistency, pedigree, and academics. Instead, it kind of snorts and shouts, raw, fierce, and to the heart. Good rap is as unsettling as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus undoubtedly were when they were on their streets.
Rap’s flamboyance, nevertheless, contains the seeds of true hope for the wider society of America. It tears through despair and offers salvific pointers; beatitudes that have the power to alter perspective. They sample and critique our culture with ravishing efficiency and poetic flair. Through giving voice to rage as the natural response to injustices piled too high for the human spirit, rap yields new realities or potentialities in the poetry itself. For rap is the place where rage is turned to fuel for expression and then converted to hope. That hope can come through lyrical content or through the flash of spirit evident in the creativity itself. So, for example, Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek offer serpent-wise wisdom for the soul caught by the ghetto:
Persistence dedication
Consistent motivation
Resistance to stagnation
The information distributed free to
The entire population
No hesitation
Making it public no privatization from corporations
Today in order to be sane
You gotta go crazy but remain
On top of the game. [37]
Ostensibly, the lyrics are about rapping, yet they are offered too as wisdom, applicable to all sorts of life situations. Rap wisdoms burst like fireflies, only bigger and they’re packing. Kweli and Hi-Tek are voices to and for the people, and hope surges too in the sheer rich and prodigious display of their creativity. As is clear from the following lyrics, rap is a mighty, spiritual force, indeed:
My style survived slave ships, whips, chains, hardships,
Still through all this the praise roll off my lips …
We went from pyramids to the ghetto
Still my sounds make devils tumble like the walls of Jericho …
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord
In the sanctuary of your caves white kids press record
As my mystic music spread from sea to galaxy
It’s inevitable, you can’t stop me
Try to carbon copy, but it always comes out sloppy.[38]
This raw spiritual expression is happening in the streets and against the odds. The message rappers deliver traditional, enduring themes of biblical spirituality to inspire their ‘hood, and blast a hopeful path through the spiritual malaise that infects us all. Their “joyful noise unto the Lord” is strong enough to make the “devils tumble like the walls of Jericho” and that is a spirituality strong enough for this world. Poetry of the soul’s yearnings has come from the squalor of the inner city. And, its voices lay the spiritual ground for a realistic hope in the world.
[1] Stephen Moore’s introduction essay helpfully traces the trends in cultural studies and its skittish appropriation by biblical studies. In Search of the Present: The Bible Through Cultural Studies, ed. Stephen D. Moore. Semeia 82 (1998). Roland Boer robustly juxtaposes biblical texts with popular culture texts like gay fiction, adventure film, pornography, etc. Juxtaposition, he argues, provides mutual illumination into the production of literary meaning in cultural products. Roland Boer, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: The Bible and Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). For essays dedicated to the broader question of religion, see Religion and Cultural Studies, ed. Susan L. Mizruchi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
[2] Gregory Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) 63.
[3] Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Random House, 1994), 27-28.
[4] Gates, Thirteen Ways, xxv.
[5] Even without hardship, this age of narcissism saddles us with a “resigned worldview.” Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1979).
[6] There are many different kinds of rap, with hybrids emerging constantly, as the form itself puts such a premium on creativity. Examples include Gangsta, Pop, West Coast, East Coast, Dirty Southern, St. Louis, Trip-Hop, etc. For a helpful analysis of the music, see, Alex Ogg with David Upshal, The Hip Hop Years (London: Channel 4 Books, 1999).
[7] Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (London and New York: Verso, 1998), 17-20.
[8] Mos Def, “Hip Hop,” on Black on Both Sides.
[9] The term hip-hop originally referred to three art forms: rap; graffiti art; and breakdancing. Now it can mean a general attitude and style. Sometimes it is also used to mean purist rap, that coming only from the street. Context and speaker typically dictate which meaning is intended.
[10] Theophus H. Smith, Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
[11] For an excellent discussion of the role of music in black resistance, see Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1999).
[12] Gerhard von Rad, Theology of the Old Testament, I. Translated by D. M.G. Stalker. (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 177.
[13] Snoop Dogg with Davin Seay, Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials, and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg (New York: William Morrow 1999), 2.
[14] Chuck D, with Yusuf Jah, Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality (New York: Delta Book, 1997),
[15] Puff Daddy, “Victory,” No Way Out.
[16] T-Bone, “Last Street Preacha,” on The Last Street Preacha.
[17] Krs One, “Krush Them,” on The Sneak Attack.
[18] I have no idea what “Aquarian” adds to this lyric, except possibly to stress the humanity of Jesus.
[19] Tupac Shakur, “Blasphemy” on The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory.
[20] Evelyn Underhill’ s notion of the awakening of the soul as. Her study incorporates cultural expressions of mysticism. The urge to connect with god. Mysticism. Is certainly something Tupac shared with the mystics. In fact, he was obsessed with God, and tried even to push the deity into a “thug theology.” See Michael Eric Dyson’s Holer if you Hear Me.
[21] Mos Def, “Fear Not of Man,” on Black on Both Sides.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Tupac Shakur, “Hail Mary,” on The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory.
[24] Krs-One, “I Will Make it,” on The Sneak Attack.
[25] The masculine pronouns are intentional. Rap is overwhelmingly male, with important exceptions, e.g., Lauryn Hill, Salt-n-Pepa, TLC, and Eve.
[26] Aceyalone, “I Got to Have it Too,” on Accepted Eclectic.
[27] Aceyalone, “Project Blowed,” on Accepted Eclectic.
[28] Snoop Dogg, Tha Doggfather, 1.
[29] Busta Rhymes, “Everybody Rise Again,” on Genesis. Note the biblical title of his CD.
[30] Tupac Shakur, “God Bless the Dead,” on 2Pac Greatest Hits (Death Row Records, 1998).
[31] Common, “The 6th Sense,” from Like Water for Chocolate (Universal City, Calif.: MCA Records, 2000).
[32] Foucault died in France in 1984, and so did not actually discuss rap music.
[33] Tipper Gore, for one, might be rethinking her stance against assuring that everyone has their right to voice opinions.
[34] Nas, “I Want to Talk to You,” I Am (New York: Sony Music, 1999). Note the illusion in the CD title to Yahweh of the Exodus, who shares with Moses the divine name, meaning, “I am who I am.”
[35] See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970), where his discussion is most extensive.
[36] And at least two CD titles manifest this intent: Wyclef Jean, The Ecleftic and Aceyalone’s Accepted Eclectic.
[37] Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek,” The Name of the Game,” Reflection Eternal (Los Angeles: Rawkus Records, 2000).
[38] Jeru the Damaja, “Jungle Music,” The Sun Rises in the East (New York: FFRR, 1993).