Holy Hip Hop is a term used to describe a genre of music that is also sometimes called Christian Rap, Urban Gospel, Jesus Musik, Contemporary Christian, etc. It is a form of Hip Hop or Rap music, whose main focal point is Jesus Christ & the message of the Gospel.

While the style is not new, it has only just recently begun to take on new proportions, as the content, talent, & production reaches new levels of excellence. There are concerts, conferences, & award shows hosted throughout the U.S. regularly, & some artists have even received the esteemed “Stellar Award” which testifies to the growth & impact that this genre has in our world.

Successful artists include: Cross Movement, 116 Clique, JR, Phanatik, Lecrae, Trip Lee, Tedashii, Sho Baraka, Flame, Da T.R.U.T.H, C.O.F.A.T. Ministries, Blaze Ministries, Canton Jones, Mr. Del, KJ-52, & many, many others. Just do a search for the words: “Christian Rap” or “Holy Hip Hop” at Myspace.com, & you’ll be given a bevy of artists to choose from.

More information on the beginnings, History, & progression of Holy Hip Hop can be found HERE

—-WHO CARES!??!!—-

Personally, I don’t care if He was green, as long as that red blood is freely available to me, ya dig?! I think its pointless for people to debate such issues, because it changes nothing. Whether He was of African descent (not likely) or not, He was God’s son.

We all come from the same Adam & Eve anyway, whose direct Father was God Himself, so regardless of what shade, tint, color, or hue our flesh is…we’re all family.

I believe time & conversation could be much better spent on things like His teachings & the way He lived. So get your mind on those things that will build you up in the faith; because the color of His skin matters not… You’ll find out soon enough anyway!

When God created man, He gave all earthly authority to him. But when Adam sinned, he forfeited that authority over to satan. As a result, mankind lived under a curse for thousands of years…Until Jesus came & led a perfect life & had NO sin. He poured himself out as a sacrifice, & paid the debt we all owe. All we have to do is believe it & receive His forgiveness. See, God is a perfect & pure God & so He HAS to punish sin. But He loves us so much, He was willing to let His son take on all the punishment of all the sin of the world, so that He could redeem us to Himself.

He had a son, but He wanted a family. But the family that He created for Himself turned from Him & chased after their own pleasures. He could no longer fellowship with His family due to their sin. The only way He could fix our mess was to come to earth
Himself, & live the pure life that He intended us to live, & then take on all the punishment Himself, & suffer the death that we deserve.

See, the wages of sin is death, but since Jesus had no sin in Him, His death was illegal. Therefore, the grave was forced to spit Him back out. He looked death in the face & asked; “Where is your sting?” And He took back the authority over the world that satan had conned his way into; so now He’s King of Kings, & Lord of Lords! On top of that, His greatest desire is for you to do the same thing! All you have to do is believe that what he did & said is true, & He’ll delegate that power over to you. He has anointed us as Kings & Priests to the Nations, it is our obligation, & joy to tell others about His Victory.

The question for you now is “If”. If you want to accept Him, all you have to do is tell Him. He formed your mouth, He will hear! Just tell Him something like: “Jesus, I believe your are God’s son, & that you died for MY sins, & rose again. Come into my life, be my Lord, & my Saviour, in Jesus’ name, Amen”

-Welcome to the family!

Whats your motivation for being a “Christian”?

It really comes down to just two different reasons:
1) The right one- Because you are eternally grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice, & you know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that without His death & resurrection, you would be damned to spend eternity in hell because of your sinful nature. Consequently, you want to spend the rest of your natural life serving & pleasing Him.

OR

2) The wrong motive- Because you know that God is capable of making your life better, & giving you the desires of your heart, & you need a new car right about now, & some extra cash for gas money cuz the prices are crazy high, & a new boyfriend or girlfriend wouldn’t hurt, & maybe a new job that pays more…etc ,etc.

The point is: Are you a Christian that seeks to serve, or that seeks to receive? What is your motivation?

To all the “thugs”:

Imagine u & ya daddy were separated at birth, & he’d been relentlessly searching 4 you. Turns out, he’s a supreme court judge, & yall finally meet cuz u got caught up. Now he’s so happy to have you in front of him…finally; & u got all these incredible feelings rushing over your body cuz u get to meet your dad, who never actually abandoned u like you’d thought.

But, being who he is, he’s forced to send u to prison for what u did. He’s sad, your sad, but worst of all, you’re in prison for life now, & you’ll never get to build that relationship with your father. Turns out, he’d been trying to reach you all your life, but since you never truly set out to find him, all his efforts failed. In fact, your own mailbox was full of his letters, but you never opened any; you were too busy gettin ready to hit the club, or the mall, or rollin another blunt. You didn’t have the time to open one & read it.

God is your Father. And He’s been diligently seeking a relationship with you; he even had his first born son die in your place, so if you did come to Him, He could accept you…your punishment was already paid for. You have Bibles all around you, everywhere you go. A Bible is God’s love letter to you, but you never read it to find out what He’s saying. And now, since you never built that relationship to where He could pull some strings for you, when you finally do meet Him in Court, He’ll be forced to sentence you to death, not life, but eternal death; a separation from Him, set in the lake of fire. If only you would’ve taken some time to read those letters & seek Him!

Open your mailbox. Seek & you shall find.

So far, you’ve come up with your ministry’s purpose, & what it will look like when that purpose is fulfilled, but how do you move from one to the other? How do you see your mission & goals reached, & how will you reach the vision? Strategy.

Strategy is not a simple plan, but a system of actions & tasks that will result in the overall mission being completed. Your strategy is a process. First, you should articulate your mission statement; break it down into separate areas & how you will get to each. Blaze’s Mission statement is: “To Ignite The Urban Culture Towards Full Devotion To Christ”. How do I get there? More »

Proverbs 29:18
A Vision Statement answers the “Why” question. Why does your ministry exist? To see what? What will come from your ministry & why should anyone join or support it? Since Vision Statements are longer & more precise, I’m not going to post mine here, but it is available HERE.

Your Vision for your ministry is the future of that ministry. It should be a clear picture; challenging, yet obtainable, not too long but not too short- 2-3 solid paragraphs is a good size. Also, you must persuade others why your vision must be obtained. Your passion fuels the vision. You should expand your mission statement & describe what you see. Write it down & elaborate. What will your ministry, the people, the city etc. look like when your mission begins to be fulfilled? A good example is More »

Are you in some sort of Ministry, or is God dealing with you in this area? I’ve got a few foundational processes that will greatly boost your momentum. By answering a few of the 5 W Questions (& one H) from elementary school: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, & How?, you will come out with a Mission, a Vision, & a Strategy for achieving both.

First off, do you have a Mission Statement? If so, what is it? Is it short & broad, or is it longer & precise? Generally speaking, a Mission Statement should be one solid sentence; short & to the point, yet still broad enough to allow for growth in certain areas. I’ll give Blaze’s Mission Statement as an example: More »

Taken from Disciple’s Creed:

“…It’s the Great Commission/
But its gon’ take persistence/
To make Disciples of all nations & take ‘em fishin’/
We gotta make ‘em listen/
They don’t know what they missin’/
Remove the scales from our eyes & consecrate our vision…/

In Acts 9 (the conversion of saul), verse 18 says: “Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, & he received his sight at once…” I believe this is a picture of how our spiritual eyes are opened when we receive the Holy Spirit.

Lately, I’ve been “seeing” a whole lot of activity in the Body. God continues to strategically place certain people within my “circle” or path, & I sense things are really about to bubble. I see it happening all over, & hear stories about it in other’s lives as well.

It’s like the world is a great big chess board, & God is on the move; bringing all the necessary pieces together to prepare his final “checkmate”. The enemy is so shook. But again, it makes me fall back & just wonder at the sovereignty of the Lord. He is just completely in control; preparing his troops for battle, & his reapers for the harvest.

My eyes are open. I’m continuously seeing God move in my life & I give Him all Praise & Glory & Honor.

Are your eyes open? Can you see Him clearly?

There are 3 steps to any recording session: Basic Tracking, Overdubs, & Mixing.
How’s it work? Let’s assume our beat is done, & we’re working on vocals. Basic tracking would be your lead vocals, whether a verse or hook, its your lead. This is the “foundation of the song, the meat of what is being said.

Overdubs then, would be when you come back to emphasize certain words, shout in the back ground, etc. It’s all that extra stuff that happens behind the actual lead vocals. We’ll go over this more in the Mixing article.

When you think you’ve captured all the best takes on each individual verse, hook, intro, or whatever…you’re ready to begin mixing. This is what separates a quality production from the stuff that sounds like you rapped into the computer mic. (please don’t do that!)

We’ll be touching on all of these issues in greater detail later. But at least now you can sound a little more professional when you get to talking about!

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