The Blackshakespeare Chronicles - Is Hip Hop dead?

The disorderly juvenile had finally grown up and dedicated its swagger to developing financially lucrative brands that move whole families out of Marcy Projects. However, contrary to the monumental exploits made by the senior veterans of hip hop, the lyrical destiny of the overall genre still garners valid concerns. Def Jam’s 33-year-old Godson Nas brought the subliminal questioning of the genre’s commercial mic skills to the forefront with his fourth quarter 2006 release “Hip Hop is Dead.”

With the perpetuation of lower conscious rhyme schemes in today’s hip hop music it would appear that the genre could find redemptive balance with the emergence of spiritually based lyricism. However, 20 years have passed since the first commercial release from the movement and Christian hip hop, by most accounts, still suffers from a lack of credibility and commercial success in the marketplace. As a result the Blackshakespeare Chronicles is dedicated to taking a discerning look into the state of the subgenre through the eyes of some of its most fervent lyricists to ask, Is Christian Hip Hop Dead?

Teron Carter a.k.a. Bonafied of the Nashville rap duo The Grits is arguably hip hop’s most trusted disciple. So when the question of whether his beloved genre was dead surfaced the answer, in his opinion, was as simple as American Pie. “We [Christian hip hop artists] don’t even have a category by most music standards. Therefore how can something be dead, when it’s never been considered alive by the corporate decision makers of our music?” The Grits, whose name is an acronym for “Grammatical Revolution in the Spirit”, consists of Bonafide and Stacy “Coffee” Jones.

Unlike most hip hop evangelists, the southern charismatic rap artists, who teamed up in 1993, have penned songs for Hollywood and pressed ink in the mainstream pages of XXL, Vibe, and the Source. However, it was the top selling rap duo’s ink blot in Christian music’s leading publication, CCM Magazine, which transformed them into revolutionaries in an industry starving for representation. In the interview Coffee blasted the industry for its blatant racism by stating that black faces scare the white [Christian] industry that is supposed to support their [Christian] music.