(ThyBlackMan.com) Did you know that hip-hop is registered as a religion? It was officially recognized in NY as a religion thanks to the so-called “prophet” of hip-hop, KRS One, less than 5 years ago. He didn’t want to just “spit” (rap) lyrics, but be the example of his beliefs.
These “lyrics” released “beliefs” that the founders of hip-hop adapted from mixing ideas of dominant religions to unify, teach, and change their generation. Thus KRS One is right about one thing: hip-hop is no longer just music, but something you live. Even though hip-hop music wasn’t originally created by Christians, it can still be redeemed as music by the Church.
Well what about Christian hip hop? Even though rap is recognized as “hip-hop” music, rap is simply “rhythms and poetry”. Christian rap music can be poetic and set to rhythms that are holy, like the book of Psalms or 
Lamentations. But if rap is hip-hop music, then as a religion, rap would be its “worship music”. Looking at the origin of this culture, it would be hard to mix two religions because Christianity worships the Holy Trinity, but hip-hop proclaims every person as “god” for “self-worship”. Thus the origin and role of hip-hop music in our society should then be questioned and explored.
This all started by one of the founders of hip-hop: Afrika Bambaata. As a Muslim kid growing up in the South Bronx, he led the Black Spades gang post-Civil Rights era into 70s. Meanwhile, disco music was being dethroned by a new street sound where DJs were cutting into climactic beats of music and speaking over it. Always a trendsetter, Bambaata went from wielding guns to scratching records against DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash (other hip-hop founders), gaining respect without using violence.
At this time, Bambaata saw the Michael Caine Zulu film, watching these Black warriors fight the British. This inspired him to visit Africa himself, search them out, and came back embracing their theology, proclaiming himself as a “god”. For example, he was convinced that Christianity (religion of the Most High) was now the “white man’s religion”. But he must have forgotten that it was the Church that spearheaded the Civil Rights movement, taking on racism in the church and beyond.
He also popularized colors of most African nations, with pictures of Pharaoh on his shirts. Pharaoh is also the king of Egypt who released genocide against the Jews who grew in number and worshiped the Most High, when he believed he was “god”. He read about the Five Percenters, who was a group that left the Nation of Islam during the 1960s. Their 10 Tenets help Bambaata clarify these new beliefs, mixed with his own from Islam that he felt would empower the disenfranchised of his region. And he with the other founders started the Universal Zulu Nation. Some of these “tenets” are listed below:
Black people were the original people on Planet Earth That the Black Man is god and his proper name is ALLAH. Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head That the unified black family is the vital building block of the nation.
But how is he going to convince his own generation to accept this new doctrine? Music. Bambaata saw more than music or beats, and that hip hop would be the new and pure Civil Rights movement, better than the last. So he converts the other founders, as the gatekeepers of this music to create a culture for them by them. Even with good intentions to empower their people, they release this false gospel unchallenged, and it is seen as “positive and uplifting”.
It drew in people in the ghetto by its familiar sounds of Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythm and poetry, and converts their region by these beliefs, and it worked. 40 years later, America has become the hip-hop ghetto. Now that the American church has embraced this genre, but it must not embrace its look or image. It needs to recognize that hip-hop is more than just music or beats to spice up worship, but a real culture where people live and breathe the lyrics, fashion, and more. If the church would not mimic the hip-hop world, but establish its own culture being spectacles pursuing God, then Christian rap would need no validation for “keeping it real”.
Our kids are now pursuing hip-hop, and falling in its idolatry of “self-worship”. Jesus will not share his glory with another, rapper or otherwise. We as the church must raise our voice, contend as David did, so that we can truly worship in spirit and in truth (John 3:23-24) against what was established by hip-hop original agenda, and no longer live in compromise or self-worship. And we must not ignore the history, but submit to His will and let this generation redeem it God’s way, not ours.
Written By Nicole Hawkins
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