A Hip-Hop Look at the Atonement
I have been listening to an artist named Shai Linne this week. I didn’t know much about Linne, but an elder at my church recommended a CD of his entitled The Atonement. I have a history of disliking rap in general, but I was introduced some time ago to a rapper who attended Boyce College, Flame, who has an amazing knack for bringing the gospel in clarity to a genre that has forever been associated with violence, sex, and self, so I decided to follow my elders advice and I checked out The Atonement and was blown away. Mark Dever said about The Atonement, “I love words. The complexity of the rhyming is dazzling…It is more theologically dense than any other music I’ve heard” The theology that is found in this one CD is deeper and greater than you will be able to find in the entire discography of many Christian artists. That is not to say that other Christian artists are not glorifying God through their music, but there is something to be said about an artist who can skillfully take the deep things of God and put them in a format that can be understood by the average Joe.
The Atonement is a work of art. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “School Daze.” Taken at face value, the song is from the perspective of Shai as he walks through a school and witnesses the deterioration of morals as he sees students smoking pot, the physical deterioration of the actual school building, and classrooms that are out of control. But as the song continues, it is clear that this school is worse than even the worst school one could find in the US:
Looked in the courtyard, saw some burning crosses
Interrupted, I heard curses tossed from the nurse’s office
I’m not sure what developed there
But heard something about students on welfare denied health care
Many of the girls were already impregnated
Cafeteria segregated, people separated
In fact it was legislated- most could not compete
And sadly, only the rich kids got to eat
The poor kids and orphans were tossed the smallest portions…
What Shai is doing here is creating a microcosm–a miniature world. In other words, this school represents the world and the students and their actions represent the various ways man has sinned and destroyed the world around them by their actions.
Another song on the album that is particularly intriguing is “Were You There?” This song is simply amazing. It takes you straight to the Garden of Gethsemane and gives you a front row seat to Christ’s agonizing trip to the cross. The last three lines of the song are: ”An angry mob who’s yelling out “crucify” / The way we treat the Lord of glory is debased and it’s foul / Ashamed, I bow because I see my face in the crowd.” In this song we are not only given a front row seat to the cross, we are implicated as those who willingly crucified Christ:
We zoom in the lens on Christ’s agony on the garden
Doomed for His friends- His tragedy for our pardon
Foreseeing the Father’s cup of wrath- it has Him stifled and weak
He’s sweating blood with His disciples asleep
The Prince of Peace knows the beef shall increase
Since the thief approaches with the soldiers and the chief priests
His arrest is not just- neither is the trial
While Jesus is being treated foul, he sees Peter’s denial
He’s sent to Pilate, to Herod, back to Pilate
The violence of humanity at its finest
So now He stands before the crowd doomed to die
An angry mob who’s yelling out “crucify”
The way we treat the Lord of glory is debased and it’s foul
Ashamed, I bow because I see my face in the crowd
I highly encourage you to purchase this CD. It is a wonderful listen, especially during this season of Lent as we approach Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. If you’re interested in hearing directly from Shai Linne about the genre of rap mixing with Christian lyrics, I would suggest that you listen to this 9Marks interview with Mark Dever. The interview is about an hour and is worth the time you’ll take to hear it.
So what do you think about Christian rap? Is rap a proper genre for theology and Christian thought? Why or why not? Does the beat of rap music lend itself to sensuality, or is it a valid form? How does form (rhythm, instruments, etc.) affect us?
