Is Hip Hop Dead? Part II - SHONLOCK vs. WORD RECORDS

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“..Things changed after I signed the deal and anything outside of the CCM or the white side of the industry they weren’t interested in putting money in. That was a hard pill to swallow because I’m black.” – Shonlock on his controversial deal with Word Records

The rap game on Christian soil is no joke. The Iraq War has experienced fewer casualties – black and white. The confederate flag still determines the dissemination of music in America. And lyrical freedom in label distributed hip hop is as compromised as former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame’s identity.

As much as mainstream rap causes some theologians and common lay folk to cringe, there is a more truthful liberty with the dollar making art form. Even with its less than subservient street philosophies, we always know where things stand. We know that Big and Pac had beef, and that 50 has been popped more times than grace allows - it is what it is. Black Entertainment Television boisterously reminds us on the daily, of the state of deterioration within the walls of urban America. However, the same truth doesn’t glare so righteously in the business of Christian hip hop. There are noted examples of failed marriages between hip hop’s born again lyricists and the Christian music industry. Case in point: the recent divorce proceedings between Word Records and Christian hip hop’s most distinguished and gifted freshman, Deshon Bullock a.k.a Shonlock.

Ever been to a Shonlock show? The energetic Chicago reared rap artist is a performer. So when hip hop crooner’s, out-of-the-trunk CD sales receipts topped more than 15,000, record labels came knocking. However, two years after signing with Warner Bro’s Christian storefront Word Records, the Atl-ien hip hop artist sits restless on the back of a Toby Mac tour bus wondering like Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On?” The reality is Bullock knows exactly what’s going on. He signed on as the first hip hop artist to a label whose urban track record alone is cause for an NAACP intervention and now he’s out of a deal.