by Francis Jones

Created on: September 24, 2010

In today's society, once the word "rap" is uttered, images of scantily clad women, drugs, violence, and money come to mind. Good character and moral consciousness is absent from most of today's mainstream music but with hip hop, such principles are treated as if they are blasphemous. According to Forbes.com's Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, five of the top earning rappers of 2010 year are: Dr. Dre, Lil' Wayne, Akon, Diddy and in first place, Jay-Z. The list in its entirety consists of twenty rappers, who combined earned $300 million dollars. It is disheartening that the self-indulgent, violence glorifying lyrics of mainstream rappers continue to sell millions of albums every year. What is especially appalling is that this music is consistently marketed to young children through various media (television, internet, movies,etc.) which makes keeping children's minds "pure" a harder tasks for today's parent. Fortunately enough, there is an alternative to mainstream rap that will please parents and children alike.

Gospel rap. Yes, Gospel rap (commonly referred to as Christian rap and "Holy" hip-hop) does exist. In fact, Gospel rap was birthed through Stephen Wiley's release of Bible Break in 1985. In the 90s, groups like Cross Movement and DC Talk began to garner an intimate but passionate amount of followers, helping pave the way for Christian rap today, which is currently having the most success it has ever had since it has come into being. Current popular Christian rappers include Lecrae, Trip Lee, and FLAME. Lecrae's most recent release, Rebel (2008) managed to reach number eight on the billboard charts and sold 15,000 copies in its first two weeks. His song, "Go Hard" was also played at Orlando Magic games. Lecrae's next release (Rehab) comes out September 28 and is currently the most anticipated album of the year. Trip Lee's third album, Between Two Worlds charted at #1on the Billboard Gospel charts and #10 on the Billboard Rap charts. FLAME's first album, FLAME (2004) managed to sell over 98,000 copies and Albert Pujols bats to one of the interludes off the album. FLAME has since released three other albums (Rewind, Our World:Fallen, and Our World Redeemed) and has started his record label, ClearSightMusic to continue to spread positivity through music.

Needless to say, Gospel rap is a growing genre. Believers and unbelievers unlike take a liking to it because the lyrics face something that mainstream rap lyrics don't: reality. No, most people don't know what it's like to drive a Lamborghini, shoot someone, or blow money on women. Average people drive Hondas, stay away from violence and penny pinch to avoid going further in to debt. Gospel rap is a growing genre because of its positivity and its message of humility, displaying that everyone has struggles but accepting defeat is never an option.

* Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_hip_hop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecrae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAME

Learn more about this author, Francis Jones.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.