Flow4Christ

I never envisioned that hip hop would play this big of a role in my life.

I was always a fan of rap music. For years, I listened to what I refer to as “secular” – that is, non-Christian music. I told myself the same thing as everyone else: I only listened to it for the beat, not for the message, blah blah blah. Until one day I caught myself rapping songs that were stuck in my head. You know how music can be. A melody gets caught in your head and you’ll be singing it all day long.

Problem, though, was that the words to this particular melody were something I would never utter in church. When I drove with my parents, I always turned down the music. I never let my youth pastor in on what I listened to. Then I saw the music start to take over me.

I was angry all the time. Since I listened to so many songs about chasing women, that’s what I became about. I always justified it by saying that I never went “too far,” but I knew I was still in the wrong. At an Acquire the Fire conference in early 2010, I made a commitment to the Lord to clean my life out, beginning by only listening to godly music. That evening, I deleted every secular song from my iTunes library.

A month later, I wrote my first rap.

I wish I could say that I became a top-notch rapper overnight, but I can’t. I wasn’t very good when I started. Even now, I know that there is a lot I need to improve on. But, I’ve seen God bless me over the past few years in this area of my life. He placed a quality producer of music in my life (Calik Stillsik) to help me produce my first two mixtapes (Die to Live and Spoken Thoughts), and has placed another producer in my path (Andrew McLean) to begin working on my debut album. He’s also placed a lot of other rappers (Matt Tisdale, Kenneth Russell, and others) in my path that have helped me develop my lyricism and show me different things I can do with hip-hop music. As I look back on my journey through hip-hop, it’s a complete blessing to see how many people have been a part of this journey with me.

While I thoroughly enjoy making music and while writing lyrics is one of my favorite things to do, I must make it known that rap is not my life. Many people ask me if I could see myself doing music full-time. My answer is a very quick “no.” It is something that I use to minister to others and to myself, but it is not the entirety of my minis