Here's a video that found its way on several blogs recently:
[via willnotbeignored1]
Weeks ago I began working on a blog entry about DC Talk, but when I saw this video making the rounds in the blogosphere, I decided against posting it. That's how it goes sometimes: if I see a lot of other bloggers posting the same video, I will usually decide to not post it on Dead-Logic, because it's a safe assumption that folks have already seen it. I do make exceptions from time to time if the video is awesome enough (i.e., Tim Minchin's Storm).
But DC Talk is part of my history. To not talk about them is to ignore an essential part of the story, and this blog more than anything else is about my story: the confessions of a heretic, the acknowledgement of a life filled with uneasiness and sometimes turmoil due to my struggles with faith which inevitably led to my estrangement from Christian culture - a culture I still miss and wish I could still be part of, in spite of how glad I am to be free from its clutches.
The video I planned to share originally was this silly piece of music from 1991 titled "I Luv Rap Music":
To give myself a little bit of credit, I Luv Rap Music wasn't exactly my favorite song (although it seemed like everyone else in my church's youth group loved it), but there was a time when I considered DC Talk one of my favorite bands (I wore their T-shirts!), even though their music wasn't all that good. Why? Here's the story:
Steve and I grew up listening to rap music. We would sit in his room for hours listening to Run DMC, Public Enemy, NWA, Boogie Down Productions, Kool Moe Dee, A Tribe Called Quest and too many other artists to list here. We listened to other kinds of music too. Grunge hit the scene when we were in high school, and of course we grew our hair long and wore a lot of flannel. My favorite band back then was Nirvana. But for all the alternative music and heavy metal we listened to back then, we always found our way back to hip hop. Our knowledge of the genre was extensive. Our collections of rap tapes (yes, cassette tapes) were massive.
DC Talk was the first “Christian rap” group I ever heard. I put “Christian rap” in quotations because 1) DC Talk only qualifies as “rap” in the strictest sense of the word, and 2) Christian rap is its own genre, representing a subculture within a subculture: Christians trying to express their spirituality through hip hop. Of course - and this was especially true for Christian rap in the late 80s/early 90s - Christian rap doesn't have the same support from the Christian Bubble that artists like Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith do, so they couldn't always produce the same quality of music that one would hear in "secular" music. Also, a lot of rappers went Christian because they weren't good enough to make it in the real world.
No matter how talented (or untalented) you are, you always have a shot at being a Christian music artist.
Of all the Christian music I listened to in high school, only a fraction of it was good. Every time I turned on MTV (back when there was actually music on "Music Television") or listened to secular music, I always wished the Christian music I listened to sounded as good as that. There's really only one reason we kept listening to such poor quality music:
Because it was Christian.
Steve and I went back and forth about whether Christians should listen to secular music. Hip Hop was especially a concern because of the nature of the lyrics. We had decided once that we were going to rid ourselves of all secular music and listen only to Christian music. Maybe a whole month passed before we were back to listening to secular music. We didn't stop listening to the Christian stuff; we just stopped demonizing the non-Christian stuff.
Other Christians were a little more radical. A youth minister named Jim - a guy who always looked like that older guy who tried way too hard to fit in with the younger crowd, and tried even harder to act and dress like a teenager - who worked at a church in the same region as the church where I worked - issued a challenge to his youth group: hand over all your secular music. He had stacks of secular music in his office from kids who handed over thousands of dollars of tapes and CDs in order to dedicate their lives to the Lord.
When I was in Bible college, we had chapel services every Tuesday and Thursday. During one particular chapel service a few students were outraged that the musicians on stage during worship incorporated the music of Hootie and the Blowfish into their praise music. I heard one of the students complain: “I can’t believe they’re playing SECULAR music!” Later that day I saw a couple of them walking around campus trying to get signatures on a petition for... something. I’m not sure what, but I know it had something to do with combating the evils of secular music.
Truly, Hootie and the Blowfish is the devil’s music.
I look back on my life as a Christian and see so many moments of unnecessary tension and stress. Did I really have to listen to music with guilt, or worry that I was "grieving the holy spirit"? Did I have to settle for rubbish that passed itself off as music? I would have been much happier if I had just listened to whatever music I wanted to listen to without worrying about whether it was "secular" or not.
But, of course, religion is nothing if it's not trying to make you feel bad about yourself.
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