One of the most amazing ways to connect to God is through music and to praise his name and to worship him with lyrics. Some of the most popular Christian artists that a lot of people know are Hillsong United with wonderful songs such as Oceans, and Matt Maher who does a lot of blues and rock and roll music for God. Everyone has their different taste of music when it comes to connecting with Christ, but my personal favorite is perhaps one of the most underrated forms to connect with God, Christian Rap.
Christian Rap is somewhat new when it comes to connecting with God, but the lyrics are just as powerful for people who cannot only relate to what the artist is saying but also connect with God. In Lecrae’s popular song, Prayin’ For You, Lecrae raps, “Father God, I’m prayin’ to you for somebody right now who knows you lord but just hasn’t been seeing you in the right view lately […] and matter fact there’s somethin’ he’s concealin’ see, the person that I’ve been prayin’ for is really me.” Lecrae is arguably the most popular Christian rapper currently; however, like any other genre, he is not the only one who is gifted at his craft and charism of music.
Another more less popular Christian rapper who also has the crafts of Christian rap like Lecrae is Phanatik in his song “Love Does” which is my personal all-time favorite Christian rap song. In the song Phanatik raps, “We hear a lot about what love is, you don’t hear too much about what it does though, love gives and looks out for the next person and gives out your best, even when they deserve your worst and, some have a little, some have a lot, it’s not about how much you got, the point of the plot, is that if you have any love at all you need to share that with the have-nots.”
The reason why this song is my all time favorite is because it truly describes not what love is but what it does for the people in the relationship, which a lot of people do look over or take for granted a lot of times and how we need to share our love with everybody even if “they deserve your worst” because this song states how it’s not about worrying it’s all about sharing the love equally no matter what.
For a quite long time, I could easily connect with most of the music at church but there wasn’t really anything I could personally connect with until I started to hear Christian rap because I primarily listened to rap music and most of the artists weren’t really interesting me, talking about their own self pride and how they were the best, and then when I started to listen to Christian rap that was when I found a newfound respect for the music that I already loved in a new way.
Listening to Christian rap really opened up my personal way to connect with God with stories told and how these people also grew up in a tough area but how they also had a positive outlook like I did. In no way shape or form am I trying to disrespect any kind of music, I think all music can be connected to personally and it is the most beautiful way to connect to each aspect of a person because a lot of my inspirations came from hip hop like Nas and his song, “I Can,” and also Tupac’s song, “Dear Mama”. I found it personally amazing and wonderful that people like Lecrae and Phanatik would take hip hop and use it for it’s original meaning, to uplift people in hard times and to also help people connect to God using hip hop.
My kids always liked Christian Rap when they were growing up. There is a lot of good stuff out there. Thanks for writing about this. 🙂 I like this guy too. I like his song, “Church Clothes.” 🙂 Also love Trip Lee.
Nice job, Zach. Now I want to check out some new music.