Why Reach Records re-signing Sho Baraka would make sense

Trip Lee shared a photograph of himself, Lecrae, Tedashii and Sho Baraka on Thursday with the caption, “Big things happening right now. New music on the way.”

A photo posted by Trip Lee (@triplee116) on


This all could mean one of 116 different things.

Trip simply could have been recording new solo music when his friends stopped in to say hi. After all, what do true friends do? They pose for pictures together.

Or a new 116 Clique compilation could be in the works. The collective released singles, “Come Alive” and “Now They Know”, in 2012 and 2013 but haven’t dropped a project since Man Up in 2011. And Reach’s original four artists are Trip, Lecrae, Tedashii and Sho.

But instead, this seems like a swell time to break down how much sense it would make for Reach to re-sign Sho, who released two solo albums, Turn My Life Up and Lions and Liars, under the label in 2007 and 2010. The two parties announced their separation in 2011, and Sho explained why he left months later on his podcast.

“That’s never been my desire, to be successful in Christian markets,” he said. “My desire was to always communicate to people that I felt were broken outside of the church, or even people in the church who felt like Christian music didn’t communicate to them. And so I felt like I would never ever sail unless I left the nest.”

That nest soon adopted this same philosophy (see: Unashamed) and has seemingly been making the type of music (i.e. Lecrae’s “Freedom”, “Gangland”, “Welcome to America”) that Sho left Reach to make.

Signing Sho would also be safe.

Lecrae told Rapzilla in 2014 that he recently had interest in signing particular artists, but they kept signing elsewhere. He didn’t regret this, though, because, “I think there’s just people we hadn’t even gotten a chance to get to know,” he said. “We hadn’t even gotten a chance to check their stuff out, check them out a little more thoroughly.”

Reach cares about avoiding headcases. The consequence of not caring, and signing every talented artist who emerges, is that one of those talented artists could lack the maturity to handle Reach’s enormous platform.

Reach already knows Sho’s character, though. Signing artists who are practically family like him — like GAWVI — decreases the odds that Reach’s PR department will need to exercise crisis management.

Update: Reach just shared the same picture as Trip with the caption: “Still Unashamed. To be continued…”

Okay. That’s not much of a hint either. But if Reach signs Sho, the move couldn’t make more sense.

David Daniels
David Daniels
David Daniels is a columnist at Rapzilla.com and the managing editor of LegacyDisciple.org. He has been published at Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, CCM Magazine, Bleacher Report, The Washington Times and HipHopDX.
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