Reflection: How Hip Hop Saved My Faith

I will never forget the feeling I had when I first heard Kanye West’s "Jesus Walks" track from his The College Dropout album. It felt like Kanye channeled and articulated my angst, hope, faith, and doubt in less than four minutes. I was not the only person to connect with the song considering its massive commercial success.

For me, the brilliance of the song was not displayed in the first two versions of the Jesus Walks videos, which garnered critical acclaim, but in a lower-budget third version that was financed completely by Kanye. This version showed Jesus walking through the hood with Kanye on an ordinary day. When talking about the making of the third "Jesus Walks" video, Kanye said, “Even after seeing the Chris Milk video, there was something I was still missing. I still didn’t feel like I had the hood. That’s what Jesus Walks was for – the hood.” Kanye’s desire to translate Jesus in a palpable and culturally relevant way is a key to understanding why I believe the Americanized Jesus Christ of popular consumption has failed to do the same thing.

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