MC Hammer was the first to make explicit references to Christianity in secular hip-hop with the tracks “Song of King” (1986) and “Pray” (1990), which reached the No. 4 position on the Billboard R&B charts. Doug E. Fresh’s “All the Way to Heaven” (1986) can also be considered among these early examples of spiritually informed hip-hop lyricism, although all three tracks were squarely planted in the commercial hip-hop market. When asked about his religious hip-hop songs, MC Hammer replied, “A long time ago, I made the commitment to dedicate at least one song per album to God. He has been very good to me, and never for one minute do I want him to think I’ve forgotten, because I haven’t.”

Christian symbols and themes continued to be invoked by hip-hop artists who do not consider their music to be “Christian rap,” most notably Tupac (“I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto” and “Black Jesuz”), Nas (God’s Son) and DMX (“Lord Give Me a Sign”), and, more recently, Kanye West (“Jesus Walks” and Jesus is King), Chance the Rapper, and Kendrick Lamar. Other hip-hop artists have converted to Christianity and moved away from the secular hip-hop world, including Kurtis Blow, Reverend Run (of Run-DMC), and the late Bushwick Bill of the Geto Boys.

While more traditional adherents of Black Christian worship have expressed an aesthetic aversion to the “noise” and iconography of hip-hop, seeing it as an unorthodox presence in the church, certain Black pastors and church leaders began integrating hip-hop music and vernacular into their services in an effort to reach Black youth who were feeling increasingly alienated and estranged from Black Christianity. During the mid-1980s, at a time when many African American inner-city communities were plagued with an epidemic of illicit drugs that resulted in violent crime, Black youth became increasingly vulnerable to an array of social and economic forces, including unchecked police brutality, gang-related homicides, the HIV/AIDS crisis, mass incarceration, and increased generational poverty and urban decay. Black churches struggled to capture the attention of its youth and find viable solutions to the moral crisis that undermined their personal and spiritual development. By coupling the Christian message with their preferred music, ministries used hip-hop to teach biblical events, themes, and lessons to youth. The lyrics emphasized the performer’s relationship with Jesus Christ and the virtues of practicing a Christian lifestyle.

Church ministries in the early 1990s supported the efforts of local artists in the production of hip-hop inspired by a biblical message. This led to independent recordings of local groups, but it was Kirk Franklin who successfully fused elements from gospel (choir and instrumental stylings) with rapping, hip-hop beats, and samples from funk (“One Nation Under a Groove” by Funkadelic), as heard in “Stomp” (1997). This song opened up space for holy hip-hop as a distinctive style and musical genre within Black churches across the United States (although most holy hip-hop MCs would consider Kirk Franklin’s music to be gospel. Hip-hop ministries (housed within traditional churches) and free-standing hip-hop churches began to appear in the 1990s and early 2000s, most notably Kirk Franklin’s bi-weekly hip-hop “Take Over” service at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California; the Crenshaw Christian Center’s “Hip-Hop Sundays” in Los Angeles; Kurtis Blow’s Hip-Hop Church in Harlem, New York; and the Crossover Church in Tampa, Florida; among others.

The emphasis on message rather than rapping techniques has led to holy hip-hop artists not being taken seriously outside of the church, but this changed in the first decades of the 21st century. More lyrically diverse and battle-oriented rappers began producing holy hip-hop music and record labels, such as Cross Movement and eventually Reach Records, and have made significant inroads into increasing the acceptability of holy hip-hop outside of the church and youth ministries. Although sufficiently below the radar of mainstream visibility, the holy hip-hop movement now boasts their own annual awards show, several national festivals and conferences, online music archives, a slew of hip-hop preachers, independent record labels, numerous radio programs, and hip-hop ministries and churches. The increasing number of FM, internet, and satellite gospel radio stations throughout the 1990s and early 2000s and the emergence of shows dedicated to gospel rap, such as the nationally syndicated Sunday morning broadcast, The Spirit of Hip-Hop, has been critical to exposing gospel music audiences to holy hip-hop. Categories for gospel music awards have been expanded to include Christian rap by the National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences (the Grammy Awards), the Stellar Awards, and the Gospel Music Association (GMA) Dove Awards.

The Christian rapper to receive the most mainstream attention has been Houston-born MC Lecrae. His skills as a rapper and high-quality production techniques earned him a Grammy for Best Gospel Album with his 2012 release, Gravity, as well as Best Artist of the Year at the 46th Dove Awards and Best Gospel Artist at the 2015 BET Awards. Lecrae’s awards (all won in religious categories) reveal that while gospel rap sonically registers as hip-hop, the audience it cultivates commercially is a religious one. Lecrae’s recent success, along with his 2015 performance of “Welcome to America” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and 2016 performance at the BET Hip-Hop Awards, has brought unprecedented exposure to the subgenre. Lecrae’s success in mainstream hip-hop has led him and others to question the distinction between religious and secular hip-hop.

Lecrae, on his 2006 track “Jesus Muzik,” raps about the confused reactions he receives as he drives his pale-yellow convertible down the street blasting his Jesus beats: Then the hook, which features a “screw” technique of making the words super low in register and hyper-slow in delivery, drops in: “Ridin’ wit’ my top down listenin’ to this Jesus music.” Lecrae refers to the bewilderment that his music and his identity create for those witnessing him ride through the neighborhood “bumpin dese Jesus beats.” The song’s instrumentals, like most gospel hip-hop, sound just like any other commercial hip-hop track. Expecting to hear the profane language so common to gangsta rap and other forms of commercial hip-hop, passersby often do a double take upon hearing the religious message booming from his car speakers.