SXSW Video Interview: Selah the Corner reflects on dissing Bizzle before signing with him

In 2013, Bizzle announced that he had signed an artist to his record label God Over Money that — three years prior — had dissed him for “dissing” Jay Z.

In 2010, Bizzle released the viral response track “Explaining to Do (Jay-Z Expos’e),” calling the Roc Nation rapper out for “dissing Jesus.” Selah the Corner, a professing Christian and aspiring rapper at the time, didn’t know Bizzle when he heard the song. And he hated it.

“Now, everybody who does Christian hip hop and wants to be taken seriously is going to have to diss one of these secular cats in order to feel like they belong,” Selah said. “This is a wrong example to set.”

Selah’s reaction: To diss Bizzle.

His response to Bizzle’s response also made its way around the internet.

Weeks later at a concert of his, he met a Christian rapper associated with Bizzle, Lavoisier, who proceeded to debate Selah about the songs.

“We just, as men, disagreed … loudly, in Brooklyn,” Selah said. “But even though we agreed to disagree, what I had to agree with was, I chose to correct a brother in Christ using the exact method I was telling him was wrong.”

Selah only backed off his initial stance a tad. But that would change after Lavoisier, who told Bizzle about their discussion, called Selah after Bizzle had heard his mixtape Hoodie Season.

“Yo, Bizz is interested,” Selah remembers Lavoisier saying.

They ended the conflict over the phone. And in 2014, when Bizzle released a response to Macklemore’s gay marriage anthem “Same Love,” the newest God Over Money member found himself taking heat (death threats, to be specific) for almost the same reason he verbally attacked Bizzle four years earlier. And he took it willingly.

“I dissected that record,” Selah told Rapzilla.com at SXSW 2015. “I’m telling you, I sat with that record. I told Bizz, ‘I’ma tell you if you’re wrong. I’ma tell you if you’re wrong, bro,’ … There was nothing wrong with that. That joint was done in love.”

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.
RELATED ARTICLES

Most Popular