{"id":1338,"date":"2013-07-07T08:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T08:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html"},"modified":"2013-07-07T08:24:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T08:24:00","slug":"starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html","title":{"rendered":"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Daniel White Hodge<\/a> is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony\u2019s first album,\u00a0E 1999 Eternal<\/span>, as well as helping to score the first two seasons of New York Undercover. With a Ph.D. from Fuller Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, he is now the director of the Center for Youth Ministry Studies and assistant professor of youth ministry at North Park University in Chicago. He is also a contributor to the Rhetoric Race and Religion<\/a> blog<\/span><\/div>\n
Hodge\u2019s books,\u00a0Heaven Has A Ghetto: The Missiological Gospel & Theology of Tupac Amaru Shakur<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0The Soul Of Hip-Hop: Rimbs Timbs & A Cultural Theology<\/span>\u00a0are explorations of \u201ctheomusicology.\u201d CT\u2019s Wes Jakacki talked with him at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Music about Reformed rappers, why many Christians are still uneasy about hip-hop, and the religious themes that pulse underneath even the most secular rap.<\/span><\/div>\n
How has your relationship with hip hop changed over your life?<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
I was a listener as a kid, back in the late 1970s when I first heard The Sugarhill Gang and Run DMC and started wondering how they put those words together. Until high school, I was more of a consumer. In high school I became a participant. In my early twenties, I was involved as a producer. Now I am looking at how God is involved in almost every facet of hip-hop culture, which has become more of a lifestyle, not just something in [a musical] corner.<\/span><\/div>\n
What is the theological heritage of hip-hop?<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
The historical root of hip hop is self-awareness and self-consciousness. \u201cUse your mind. See the world and see it for what it is.\u201d KRS-One or Afrika Bambaataa said there are nine elements of hip hop, but there are really ten. The tenth is spirituality. It\u2019s about connecting with God. A lot of folks say it\u2019s because we have given up on the tenth element that hip hop is in the condition it is in. With any art, when you add money and commercialization, there is the danger that the soul gets lost. You saw that with the organic food movement when Wal-Mart showed up in organic food. It\u2019s what George Ritzer calls the \u201cMcDonaldization of society.\u201d That is what hip-hop today is fighting against.<\/span><\/div>\n
Theologically, hip-hop is about connecting with the broader supernatural world. Most hip hop heads know that we just didn\u2019t happen by accident. This isn\u2019t an accidental universe or space we find ourselves in. In many hip-hop circles, you see God in everything: the space, the art, the sky, the wind. It\u2019s really this idea that God is involved in what we are doing. I think that\u2019s ultimately what hip hop is attempting to do.<\/span><\/div>\n
People like KRS-One will say that we even have a religious structure within hip-hop. He wrote a whole book looking at the gospel of hip-hop. The cover actually looks like a Bible. He wrote it in the same way as our New Testament: chapters and verses. Hip-hop is an outlet for people to begin to connect with something that they might not be able to connect with in a four-wall church. Concerts and spoken-word venues were powerful venues. The smaller venues are not much bigger than a classroom, but they feel transcendent and leave people saying \u201cGod is in this place.\u201d In that sense, we are having church: People\u2019s minds are being opened and people are leaving transformed.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony\u2019s first album,\u00a0E 1999 Eternal, as well as helping to score the first two seasons of New York Undercover. With a Ph.D. from Fuller Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, he is now the director of the Center […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nStarting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. Johnson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andre E. Johnson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html\",\"name\":\"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/892ad446aed3fd242a430151516a83fc\"},\"description\":\"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/\",\"name\":\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/892ad446aed3fd242a430151516a83fc\",\"name\":\"Andre E. Johnson\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8740442d3e2978d7a9dd204585be3ed0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8740442d3e2978d7a9dd204585be3ed0?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Andre E. Johnson\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/author\/ajohnson\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop","description":"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop","og_description":"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html","og_site_name":"Rhetoric Race and Religion","article_published_time":"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00","author":"Andre E. Johnson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Andre E. Johnson","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html","name":"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00","dateModified":"2013-07-07T08:24:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/892ad446aed3fd242a430151516a83fc"},"description":"Daniel White Hodge is a producer with a Ph.D. In his twenties he had production credits on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's first album, E 1999 Eternal, as","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/starting-a-dialogue-with-hip-hop.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/","name":"Rhetoric Race and Religion","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/892ad446aed3fd242a430151516a83fc","name":"Andre E. Johnson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8740442d3e2978d7a9dd204585be3ed0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8740442d3e2978d7a9dd204585be3ed0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Andre E. Johnson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/author\/ajohnson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}