Refocusing and Redefining Hip Hop: An Analysis of Lecrae\u27s Contribution to Hip Hop

Hip Hop scholarship has overlooked and separated emcees who publicly identify themselves as Christians who exist to make God famous. This deficiency contributes to an inadequate understanding of Hip Hop and places Hip Hop in a dangerous position of alienating ostracized voices. This paper aims to draw attention to these shortcomings by analyzing Lecrae\u27s contribution to Hip Hop. Influenced by his worldview, Lecrae leads a socially conscious movement and helps to bridge the sacred and secular gap. Lecrae redirects Hip Hop back to its roots. I will examine Lecrae\u27s lyrics, websites, social media and interviews. Interviews of Lecrae will come from several mainstream Hip Hop websites and videos found on YouTube. The combination of all these areas of inquiry will present a holistic view of Lecrae. The goal of this paper is to provide one article about Christians in Hip Hop with the hopes of spurring more discussion around such a vast field of study