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Though I was aware of its existance, my first actual contact with religious rap music was about nine months ago when doing a search for MC Hammer on Google. (I also found this fantastic picture of Hammer promoting Black History Month.) The erronious and duplicious placement of irrelevant keywords was doubtless later confessed, either by rhyme or the traditional form, but this did serve its purpose: though neither religious nor a fan of rap or hip hop, I was intrigued enough to visit the offending website.
The shared biography page on this site tells all about how the label came to exist and how each of the people became involved. It gets off to an inauspicious start, as "Kasual wanted the things like the cars with the stereo systems and the rims" sounds like Bill Cosby on 'Kids say the funniest things'.
Everyone involved seems to have a very similar past:
"Kasual wasted his teenage years in this criminal lifestyle, but in the back of his mind he always felt the conviction of knowing that if he died in sin he would go to hell ... paranoid ... the Holy Ghost ... in the hood. So one Sunday morning in church Kasual gave his life to Jesus."
"The name Glory2God comes from our founder, president and CEO Johhny Heredia. After dropping out of high school with no direction in his life and sick of running from God, he gave his life to Jesus."
In the interests of balance, I would like at this time to mention an event from my own past. When I was 12, there was a boy in my class at school who did have God. He was always too busy to do his homework because he spent his evenings out trying to convert heathens, and was consequently expelled. God surely does work in mysterious ways.
The biography ends, "See you can have all the talent in the world but if the glories not going to God you're wasting your time, 'cause you can only go so far on your own, but with God your possibilities are endless. We believe God has called this label to do something great for Jesus! God bless." All of this was originally written in block capitals without any punctuation. It was also cited as "Matthew 5:16", which confused me.
Though their enthusiasm is in no doubt, God appears to spend less time watching over some than others, allowing Frankie T. to spend a small fortune recording full on lyrical assaults like:
"Turn off the TV, put down the phone
Go talk to J.C. and be alone
Talk to him five minutes a day
He won't wig out or give you play
He will not diss you in the end,
In fact, J.C.'s my freshest friend.
Jesus is my homeboy."
Not everyone can see the light. I presume that 50 Shekel, New York's premier Jewish rapper and sometime star of Radio Kol Ha Lev, will not be doing a great deal of rapping for Jesus in the foreseeable future. This is not to say that he isn't any good; he may well stink, but I haven't heard anything he has done. I have however heard "my boy" Nygh. Nygh regularly shares his talent on the the Hip Hop Infinity forums as 'The English Professor Guy', so-named because he is from Ohio. He does not rap for Jesus, but "for the fake rappers".
Nygh begins his song "Yo, this your boy Nygh, I haven't rapped for a while" to explain its faults. While identifying himself, he fails to say who he represents. Realising that he has already badly deviated from the rap checklist, he quickly adds "but I wanted to do a song for all the fake rappers, this right here is for the fake rappers, check it out, yo." This is much better, as it may be construed as both a dedication and a dis.
With a little help from Fruity Loops, Nygh performs every part in his songs. He multi-tracks to provide both the lead vocal and the secondary part that shouts out key words in unison with this. His timing is a little off which renders much of what he says unitelligable, but he makes up for this by breaking it down in the middle and having a brief conversation with himself.
Look out soon for the afireinside/subvulture dis track, doubtless now in the works unless Action Jackson went and lit a candle or something.
