Datin Takes Aim at Rappers Who Emulate Lecrae & Andy Mineo’s Success for the Wrong Reasons

Toward the end of last year, God Over Money artist Datin had a chat with Rapzilla that broke down some of his tracks on The Menace Mixtape including “Bout Dat!”, “I Won’t Bow Down,” and “Do It Again” as well as his upcoming album The New Ark. In part one with Datin, we discuss “Bout Dat!” and his relationship with recent Rapzilla Freshman, Zauntee.

The Menace Mixtape opens hot, with the “Intro,” but then goes into some heavy depths with track no. 2, “Bout Dat!”

“The first verse is just encouraging believers and Christian rappers to be about this,” he said.

I just do it with the doers…we’re moving with the movers, you can never mute us, don’t confuse us with the dudes who do this for the loot we do this for Yeshua.

“I Stand firm on my experience that I’ve seemed to discuss this matter for Jesus and people automatically assume I mean Lecrae and Andy.”

If you ask me about Lecrae and Andy, I’mma say I think it’s brave and manly, to what our Father God has prompted you to do despite what these raging fans be…

“I believe since they are the first of their kind, the trailblazers of the CHH genre, and when I listen to their music I still hear Christ,” explained Datin. “What I see is that they are fishing in another pond. They are not fishing in the Christian hip-hop pond ministering to the church. There’s a bunch of people who do that. We do need people to be on the forefront and out in the world. That’s what they are doing.”

Last year, Datin famously took issue with how Lecrae answered questions about Christian hip-hop in recent interviews at the time. While the video received nearly 100,000 views combined, Lecrae actually responded and the conversation was respectful and fruitful. In this track, Datin gives the major players of Reach their due and then issues his problems with others who try to chase their coattails.

“I already knew that people were going to think that I was shading them, and it’s not normal for me to name drop,” he said. “I said, let me just clean this up on the second verse, and clarified, my beef is not with them. And if it is false [their ministry tactics], the Lord will reveal that eventually, but for now, why don’t we just have hopes that God sent them out there to paint a picture that we can actually see – the lost.”

He continued, “My beef is with the people that want to emulate their success. They’re successful and they dropped the label [CHH] so others do that.”

“That’s fake to me. I’ve seen a couple of brothers be like, ‘Yeah, CHH, we out here repping Jesus’ and all of a sudden Lecrae switches and they switch and say, ‘Nah, CHH is dead. Don’t box me in’.”

One guy who is doing it right in Datin’s eyes is Zauntee. At the time of this interview, Datin was on the road with the young rapper, his dad, and his brother.

“I’m doing life with these guys. I am overjoyed about it,” Datin shared. “He’s such a solid kid and even with him making a worship type song, ‘God Taught Me’, people still make videos exposing him saying it’s really a Satanic worship song.”

Datin says some of the falling away of these Christian artists dodging the Christian hip-hop title is put on Believers who look way too much into nothing.

“Even on my end, I’ve heard all types of stuff like my song ‘Hallelujah All Day.’ Somebody moved their hand a certain way and people are like, ‘See, it’s the Devil’,” said Datin. “You people are nuts. If they can respect something as blatant as these examples, imagine somebody who falls back even a little bit to be more relatable but with a gospel message talking to the world through a Christian lens, of course, that can be easily mistaken.”

Datin and Zauntee seem like unlikely touring buddies because of their age and style difference. However, whatever comes of their friendship and ministry together can be attributed to Datin’s wife.

“When Zauntee dropped ‘God Taught Me’, I put my wife on to it. My wife did a Snapchat of me and her listening to it and tagged Zauntee. He responded that he was a big fan. So I sent some encouragement back for him to keep doing his thing.”

Eventually, Datin reached out to Zauntee on Twitter. He wanted to further encourage him because of his stance to uplift Jesus so boldly.

“He said I was one of the first O.G.’s to show him love,” said Datin. “I believe in what he does and I believe in his gift. Just chopping it up with him, this kid is out here with us just doing ministry, not just rapping. We’re praying with people, we’re weeping with people, and that’s a rarity.”

The two joined forces along with Steven Malcolm to do the track “You Can’t Budge Me.”

Keep it locked to Rapzilla.com for part two with Datin next Tuesday where we break down his track “I Won’t Bow Down.” The emcee dives deep into Illuminati conspiracy theories and shares of his own personal account with someone who was part of it.

Justin Sarachik
Justin Sarachik
Justin is the Editor-in-Chief of Rapzilla.com. He has been a journalist for over a decade and has written or edited for Relevant, Christian Post, BREATHEcast, CCM, Broken Records Magazine, & more. He's written over 10,000 articles, done over 1,000 interviews, and is in post-production for documentaries on Danny "D-Boy" Rodriguez & Mario "Machete" Perez. He's the project manager of the upcoming video game Run the Court and of the media brand Crimefaces. Justin likes to work with indie artists to develop their brands & marketing strategies. Catch him interviewing artists on Survival of the Artist Podcast & creating videos on his social media channels.
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