What's behind hip-hop's religious revival?

[rug]

Chance the Rapper performs at the 59th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)

Zac Davis
February 13, 2017

There is no chapel in Rockefeller Center, but at least twice last year, “Saturday Night Live” was transformed into Sunday morning at a Baptist church. In February, Kanye West, in anticipation of his upcoming album, “The Life of Pablo,” closed the sketch comedy show with a surprise performance of the album’s lead track—flanked by a gospel choir, R&B singer Kelly Price, pastor Kirk Franklin and the year’s breakout star, Chance the Rapper.

West begins by singing a riff on the Prayer of St. Francis:

Deliver us serenity
Deliver us peace
Deliver us loving
We know we need it.

Next, Kelly Price interrogates God on the problem of evil, asking:

So why send oppression not blessings?
Why, oh why'd you do me wrong?
You persecute the weak
Because it makes you feel so strong.

Chance the Rapper spits a line about St. Michael the Archangel (“foot on the devil’s neck”), whose prayer card he carries with him. Finally, Kirk Franklin concludes the song with a spoken prayer:

Father, this prayer is for everyone that feels they’re not good enough / This prayer’s for everybody that feels like they’re too messed up / For everyone that feels they’ve said “I'm sorry” too many times / You can never go too far when you can't come back home again.

http://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/02/13/whats-behind-hip-hops-religious-revival

[bravenak]

1. Rappers are super religious.

Tupac songs are filled with Jesus, God, Heaven, prayers... Black people are super religious. No matter where I go, somebody is either praying for me or calling the Lord's vengeance down upon me.
It's a big part of black culture to be religious. Makes sense that it would find it's way into everything we do.
I really don't see it as a revival since it has actually always been this way, whether peopke notice it or not. Hip hop got labeled by the 'mainstrean' by people who never can or will understand the culture behind it. I remember when Kirk Franklin's Stomp was played on the radio all day and Tupac was calling out hail mary's on his gangster rap.

[lunasun]

2. Well one thing with chance the rapper is he has been giving his music away for free for a long time

That means there is no music studio telling him he can't do this or that because it is not marketable or not the trend the studio wants to promote . So it is super religious and pretty out there in a sense because it is not being curtailed by recording pros and execs, which is what people are used to , homogenized after the studio's imput . His independent choice , his own and it has an audience and it is not new.
Kanye's Jesus Walks hit has to be almost 10 years old so not new either, although he changes off and on different concepts for albums