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I had never cried off of hip hop before\u2013then\u00a0Lecrae<\/a>.\u00a0 The 33-year-old rap star had just gotten hype at the McDonald\u2019s Inspiration Celebration concert in Maryland, performing his Christian-message hits, jumping higher than any Que Dawg, and getting the crowd dancing like it was Friday night (instead of a Thursday evening). But for his final song, \u201c Just Like You<\/a>,\u201d Lecrae cut the music. We stopped dancing. We just listened. He started rapping about a drug-addled father who was never there and the Father who always was, who changed him, and whom he now lives to be \u201cjust like.\u201d And we started worshipping.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

Teens, young adults, even older attendees who had only come to see Tamela Mann and veteran gospel artists John P. Kee, Vickie Winans and Smokie Norful, were on their feet, hands in the air, thanking God. As the spirit in this song filled me up, gratitude spilled out of me, too, for the obvious gift God had given to this artist to speak words that touched us all in different ways and for different reasons, but ended with the same result: total praise. Lecrae is a man on fire, unashamed and on a mission.<\/span><\/div>\n

Just before he blew us all away, I caught up with the married, father of three\u2014with\u00a0 six albums<\/a>\u00a0to his name\u2013backstage to talk about the message behind the music, those persistent Jay-Z rumors, and the pressure of fame and faith.<\/span><\/div>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"