From “Non-Fiction” to “Deconstruction”
Hip-hop is more than art. It offers the listener rhythms of lived experience and soundscapes of artistic tradition, and it samples entire worlds of ideas compacted into short poetic prose. Hip-hop is knowledge. Within this musical genre, the world of art collides with the world of ideas. This intersection of art and thought often points to terrible, truthful, and provocative realities.
The production of knowledge through hip-hop usually includes some instances of sampling. Sampling is the method of incorporating well-known tunes, famous audio clips, or references to literature in modern hip-hop songs. This practice provides a means to export, engage, and even challenge broad ideas and perceptions about society, faith, and the world.
CHH in general includes its own use of sampling, and Lecrae in specific has a history of sampling literature and unique authorship. For instance, in 2017, Lecrae referenced Timothy Keller’s writings in his single titled “Non-Fiction.” These author references are always intriguing. Immediately after hearing the song, I picked up a copy of The Reason for God.
In his long-awaited and highly praised album Church Clothes 4, Lecrae references other literary giants such as James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates in his song “Deconstruction.” His references are never wasted. I have The Water Dancer by Coates on my reading list for this year. But I digress.
Lecrae’s literary references or preferences are striking. In 2014 he’s sampling Keller; in 2022 he’s citing Baldwin. I think this pivot in literary taste models Lecrae’s theological commitments, or they at least challenge the church’s literary and theological limitations. This progression of literary and lyrical diversity also tells a story of its own. From “Non-Fiction” to “Deconstruction,” we find a complex story that is only recently unraveling. And from Timothy Keller to James Baldwin, we locate a theological nexus representative of Biblical realities in the epistles of Timothy and James. And somewhere in-between white evangelicalism and Black radicalism, we find Lecrae, the thought-provoking anomaly.
The Story
My patience nearly waned in eagerness for Church Clothes 4. When the first single finally dropped, my weekly playlist consisted of three minutes. “Spread the Opps” was an absolute banger. Then came “Fear Not.” The production, the lyrics, the tone—utter perfection. And then finally the album. Listening through, I found myself repeating “Deconstruction” over and over again. Like many listeners, I was struck by Lecrae’s honesty about evangelical leaders, especially his open reference to Voddie Baucham, the author of Fault Lines. He raps,
And Voddie was a hero of mine, met with him plenty times
This time, when he spoke, it cut me deeper than I realized
Doubled-down spoke about my pain, I was met with blame
“Shame on you, ‘Crae, stop crying, get back to Jesus’ name
But Lecrae does not merely talk about his relationships with leaders, he also references his intake of literature on the same song,
I’m vulnerable and cautious, I’m reading Baldwin
Ta-Nehisi got me thinking, now I’m going all in
This dual reference to Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi removed from Lecrae’s own context is fitting. Ta-Nehisi is especially known for his 2015 work titled Between the World and Me. The work is written in the language and style of personal letters to his teenage son regarding his own musings and experiences on issues of race in America. Baldwin produced a very similar-in-styler essay to his teenage nephew titled “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” which is published in his 1963 work titled The Fire Next Time.
These literary references in his 2022 music complicate the narrative development from earlier tracks. His literature references appear dramatically different from his earlier music. In his 2014 song “Non-Fiction,” Lecrae raps:
Shortly after I got a hold of Tim Keller’s books,
Man, I promise you it’s like my whole life changed
Andy Crouch wrote a book about culture-makin’
and after that I had to make a slight change
This is likely around the time when Lecrae increasingly engaged the white evangelical community. HuffPost News produced an insightful article exploring Lecrae’s own interaction with evangelical leadership back in 2014. By no means am I suggesting that he is in unfavorable standing with all or even most individuals in positions of influence. But whatever the case, Lecrae clearly did not fit (or did not want to fit) into the mold or model previously constructed.
In some cases, this community of believers was an imagined reality drawn with racial limitations. Lecrae’s “Non-Fiction” proved to be a brutal reality, and he partially tells the story two years later in his song “Can’t Stop Me Now.”
In “Can’t Stop Me Now,” Lecrae explains one of the most difficult times in his Christian walk. As he raps:
And I was so depressed, I was such a mess
I couldn’t shake it off
Another murder on the television
Man, somebody go turn it off
I spoke my mind, I got attacked for it
Thought these people had my back boy
Then they tellin’ me I asked for it
I guess I’m just another black boy
And then they killed Tamir Rice
And they just go on with they life
They tellin’ me shut up talking ’bout it
Like, I should just talk about Christ
“Can’t Stop Me Now” was Lecrae’s first musical release nearly two years after “Non-Fiction.” The intermediary time was 2015. Lecrae fills in the details on “Deconstruction”:
Right before the fall of 2015, I was all off
It involved killing Michael Brown, had me feeling down
Tweeted ’bout it, Christians call me clown, I was losing ground
From “Non-Fiction” to “Deconstruction,” Lecrae experienced the acceptance and the eventual rejection of the white evangelical community. The point of departure, which Lecrae so vividly details in his music, centers on his concern over racial injustice. The narrative arch from “Non-Fiction” to “Deconstruction” is one filled with pain, but Lecrae never loses sight of Jesus.
The Literature
Lecrae’s story narrated throughout his music is a telling drama, but his reference to literary figures like Baldwin opens a broader reality of mounting frustration. Baldwin experienced his own disappointments and hurts from the Christian faith, and he readily details some of them in his 1963 essay “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind.”
(All references below are located in James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Vintage Books, 1963).
James Arthur Baldwin (1924 – 1987) was a prolific Black American author during the twentieth century. His literary output includes novels, plays, poetry, and pointed essays. His writing is striking. Within his literary corpus, one finds brutal honesty and measured prose dealing with topics addressing racism, sexism, nationalism, and even religion. “Down at the Cross” includes Baldwin’s own hurtful experience with the church.
Baldwin was raised in a Christian home. His own father served as a preacher, and he soon took to the life of a minister. But his experience in the church was marred by others’ self-righteousness, and his own Christian experience included ethnic limitations. He details a defining moment with his own father. As a young man living at home, he invited over his best friend at the time, a young Jewish man. He writes:
“My best friend in high school was a Jew. He came to our house once, and afterward, my father asked, as he asked about everyone, ‘Is he a Christian?’—by which he meant ‘Is he saved?’ I really do not know whether my answer came out of innocence or venom, but I said coldly, ‘No. He’s Jewish.’ My father slammed me across the face with his great palm” (36).
In addition to a compromised relationship with his father, a preaching minister of the gospel, Baldwin also realized the racial limitations of American Christianity. He asserts that Christianity emphasized the spiritual over and above the physical, allowing for a brutal theology of dehumanization. He writes that Christianity “is more deeply concerned about the soul than it is about the body, to which fact the flesh (and the corpses) of countless infidels bears witness” (44).
In his narrative, Baldwin includes the twisted theology of the time, one that situated human beings into racialized categories horrifically attached to levels of worth. He references the harmful theological jargon passed down in church and human history. He details, “I realized that the Bible had been written by white men. I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a descendant of Ham, who had been cursed, and that I was therefore predestined to be a slave,” and he goes on to include that “when one looked out over Christendom, that this was what Christendom effectively believed. It was certainly the way it behaved” (34).
The historical reality of imperial Christianity and the advent of a nationalized religious imagination provoked troubling implications within the church. Baldwin writes, “it demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck” (98).
Lecrae’s reference to Baldwin is not a scandalous abandonment of the Christian faith. Rather, it reads (or sounds) like a vocal solidarity of justified frustration. Baldwin was slapped in the face by his father for keeping company with a Jewish man. Lecrae was lambasted by Baucham for empathizing with Black suffering. Lecrae openly points to the faults of the church community. Baldwin also located a myriad of issues in his time. Baldwin witnessed discrepancies in the church, and he eventually left. But Lecrae offers realistic lyrics of hopefulness.
The Church
Lecrae’s lyrical narratives and literary references are more than stopping points of exploration. They reveal a theological model of conviction. I find it fascinating that within Lecrae’s musical output, we find this development from Timothy Keller to James Baldwin. But it almost conveys a theological transition from Timothy to James. It includes the awareness that doctrine is important but equally important is the commandment to love one’s neighbor, defend the fatherless, stand in the streets, and cry out against injustice.
Lecrae’s developing music is a form of knowledge about lived theology. It demands a certain awareness of James’ insight that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). The Christian witness requires believers not to abandon but to live out the profession of faith. Lecrae protests the mere articulation of a white theological echo chamber. As he states in “Deconstruction”:
Maybe this is all a lie, they don’t really love me
They just love it when I say the things they want to hear in public
They’re like following they God mean turnin’ on black people
Is black evil?
Why do they hate and attack people?
Lecrae seemingly expresses the commitment of going beyond speech, beyond the gatekeepers of evangelicalism, beyond the borders that humans set up which Christ forever tore down. Lecrae’s music encourages an embodied theology that cares for the sick, the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. This is a faith that goes beyond the head and includes the hands. One that serves. One that listens. A faith that is longsuffering and forbearing.
“Deconstruction” details Lecrae’s difficult, complicated, hurtful, joyful, rewarding, defeating, and downright confusing relationship with the church. And yet, he’s still got on his church clothes—tattered and torn, wasted and worn. As he raps in “CC4″:
Say we want peace and we say we want unity
We need to move as a unit first
I still believe in the church
But it’s gon’ take us to put in some work though
Either you hatin’ or helping
And if you gon’ help then go put on your church clothes
The Future
The sampling of literature in Lecrae’s music from “Non-Fiction” to “Deconstruction” offers insight into the reality of racism within the Christian church. It also shows the limitations of particular Christian traditions, which are by no means representative of Christianity proper. The shortcomings of white evangelicalism are felt within Lecrae’s own lyrical deliveries. But his story allows for a holistic Christian witness that not only divides the word of truth properly but also joins hands with other believers to accomplish the work before us.
Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi created a language for the next generation to articulate the shortcomings of the church and the state. In this generation, Lecrae gives us a similar yet unique form of lyrical articulation that future generations will build upon. But he also provides us with the language to deconstruct, examine, and change the non-fiction reality around us.
