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Everything: Learning Hip Hop Theomusicology from Lauryn Hill

Everything: Learning Hip Hop Theomusicology from Lauryn Hill

Last updated on: October 19, 2026 at 4:18 am by Alan Lechusza Aquallo

Everything: Learning Hip Hop Theomusicology from Lauryn Hill 2026-10-19T04:18:58-07:00 Alan Lechusza Aquallo

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“My hold things; they have not distinguished between the hold and unhold, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them” (Ezekiel 22: 26 NJKV).

“The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger” (Ezekiel 22: 29 NKJV).

Part of living a futile life is learning how to balance tolerance while trying to understand intolerance. The desire to be included may be a human instinct, but it can also be an earthly limitation. Mind, spirit, and soul demand the necessity to worship. What we place at the forefront of worship will define how we tolerate or see an intolerance about others.

These desires: worship, tolerance, and intolerance narrate our instinct while giving borders to limitations. Encapsulated in the term “everything,” our humanity is complacent in painting broad social norms strokes to avoid acknowledging or giving attention to what we decide to worship, how we grant tolerance, and how we institutionalize intolerance. Essentializing “everything” does not remove the philosophical gravitational pull of the term.

Phenomenologically, “everything” is ephemeral, momentary, a blip on the proverbial radar. Yet, the grand social contract gives privilege to this term, “everything,” with satisfaction. Is it possible, then, to negotiate culture socio-religiously through a pop cultural application of an essentialized “everything”? Asking such a question opens the arena of culture, socio-religious discipline, understanding, recognition, practice, and the phenomenological basics of real lived experiences negotiated through the actions of tolerance and intolerance.

Is there a potential intersectionality that can accumulate, balance, and express these elements as a methodology to understand “everything”? Perhaps the first step in this process is to question a more obvious: “Is there truth in ‘everything’?”

Photo | Lauryn Hill, Kongsberg Jazz Festival, 2019 | courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons

Tolerance/Intolerance: A Socio-religious Analysis

Dr. Timothy Keller defines an interesting way to explore the dynamics of inclusion as: 1. Exclusion, 2. Subjugation, 3. Assimilation. These three points presented by Dr. Timothy Keller further unpack the positions of tolerance and intolerance. This inclusive/exclusive binary gains more depth when read through a trajectory of biblical knowledge and community interaction. Dr. Keller sees these as coming through the vehicle of “Inclusion” by way of how this works antithetical to biblical knowledge.

Dr. Keller points out that Christians use these three points as a methodology for determining community and inclusivity. 1. Exclusion – if you “don’t” act, behave, think, practice, look like “me” (or the assumption of a “me” desired to be expressed – a self-determined phenomenological viewpoint), then you are “excluded,” denied access to my sphere of inclusivity. 2. Subjugation – if you “don’t act, behave, think, practice, look like “me” (or the assumption of a “me” desired to be expressed – a self-determined phenomenological viewpoint), then you are removed from my sphere of influence and relegated, subjugated to a location under surveillance and control by means of “my” position of power and dominance (fictitiously constructed and self-determined phenomenologically articulated). 3. If you “don’t” act, behave, think, practice, look like “me” (or the assumption of a “me” desired to be expressed – a self-determined phenomenological viewpoint), then to remain within my sphere of contact/inclusion, you must assimilate to my self-determined phenomenological definitions and objectification.

These work from Dr. Timothy Keller’s analysis as positions to determine an inclusive relationship. When applied to theomusicology, the analysis demonstrates how and why Christian Hip Hop and non-faith-based Hip Hop fluctuate between varying degrees of tolerance and intolerance.

Application; Theomusicology

When each point offered by Dr. Timothy Keller is applied through theomusicology, the tolerance/intolerance binary revises the strata through which aesthetic and socio-religious discrimination is constructed and maintained. Inverted, the argument of how tolerance/intolerance is a segregational perspective illustrates how an oppositional gaze, an inverted gaze of tolerance/intolerance, can be used as a self-examination tool, sociologically and socio-religiously deconstructing a self-determined viewpoint by recognizing the phenomenological action as a temporary lens through which to recognize self-invested, aesthetic and religious discrimination.

In doing so, the three points from Dr. Timothy Keller are not limited to objectification of an “other” (read: the two poles of non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop), but as viewpoints without bias to recognize personalized discrimination misunderstood and misapplied as “inclusion” by those who are the active tools of objectification, objectifying the “other,” contradicting scripture knowledge, to support, build up, and ultimately love each other and community.

“The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:31 NJKV).

“He answered: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Luke 10:27 NKJV).

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NKJV).

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25 NKJV).

Practicing and Speaking Across Borders

Analyzing Hip Hop through a critical theomusicological discipline involves setting aside aesthetic judgements, cultural signifiers, and personal opinions. Remaining objective, devoid of opinions, vacant, and willing to be critical of the work under review moves away from the temptations to rely on technical prescriptions and see the undercurrent larger relationships between a global culture and biblical knowledge/truth.

Reading Hip Hop theomusicologically, while seeing how to apply Dr. Keller’s three points, turns the critical analysis to recognize how these three points are, in the lived realities and experiences of non-faith-based and Christian Hip Hop, are inverted as a methodology to use a non-faith-based Hip Hop track to illustrate biblical knowledge as inclusion, notwithstanding tolerance/intolerance, or a self-determined objectification recognizing the temporal phenomenological moment as a pivot away from reifying bias and aesthetic discrimination on religious grounds, but rather as an active agent of self-examination, a realized phenomenological stare (a personal inquiry, self-staring attention) to recognize ficticious aesthetic borders to cross with religious discipline to gain revelation of scripture/biblical knowledge/truth from the other – Christian Hip Hop/non-faith-based Hip Hop.

Dr. Keller provides theomusicological border-crossing tools active through a self-reflexive phenomenological gaze from the inspiration of the “other.” To activate this process, the three points offered by Dr. Timothy Keller are not to be closed systems, but are points of engagement and departure.

These three points are recognized by Dr. Timothy Keller to define tolerance/intolerance and inclusion. However, these three points work as binary points of itself; a circular movement is available reflexively to recognize, examine, and disturb borders of discrimination and self-imposed limitations.

Tolerance/intolerance, exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation are possible to be socio-religiously dismantled through a phenomenological reflexive stare at how Hip Hop, either non-faith-based or Christian, sees itself in relationship to the other. At this conjunction point, social norms qualify that borders of exclusion are present.

If the collective process suggested by Dr. Timothy Keller is a practice of inclusion through border-crossing tolerance/intolerance, exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation, and applied to the aesthetic and dynamics of Hip Hop, the core elements of theomusicology (personal testimony, discipleship, evangelism, biblical knowledge/truth, community, and activism) socio-religiously deconstruct the borders of separation, segregation, and expressive discrimination, participating in the provided intersectional space to start the conversation on socio-religious and cultural connection; an unbound, broad, lived experience communicative connection.

Image | Christian Hip Hop in the Hood | created by the author

Speaking, Learning, and Realizing: Primary Source Narrative, Identity, Knowledge, Experience

The primary source for Christianity is biblical knowledge/truth. The primary source for non-faith-based global Hip Hop is the Message. The disturbance comes as each vernacular sees its primary source as the only source available to communicate a Message. At best, this allows a measured position of tolerance. Intolerance is personally maintained by each in opposition to the other.

Exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation become negative angles of viewing the other. Inverting the gaze by recognizing one’s limited level of tolerance through a grounding of personalized intolerance can give one the realization that the primary source narrative from the other is not to be dismissed, but embraced as the point of contact to investigate, explore, and understand where similar positions are available.

When this inverted gaze comes through a self-interrogated recognition of limited tolerance (read: the application of control, power, and socio-religious dominance) through a desired necessity to articulate an intolerance (read: the foundation of control, power, and socio-religious dominance), the primary source narrative vocalized from each position to the other no longer builds lines of exclusion, subjugation, or assimilation for the necessity to elevate socio-religious dominance through control and power of a narrative. The primary source of the other, when this inverted gaze application is recognized, allows space to listen, learn, realize, and understand the primary source narrative of the other, leaning into the metaphorical or actual intersectionalities between these two positions.

The major reason why Christian Hip Hop and non-faith-based global Hip Hop work as adversary counterpoints is the nonverbal, internalized urgent necessity to be the socio-religious dominant vernacular, the sole primary source narrative in the totality of expressive cultural norms.

Christian Hip Hop views the importance of biblical/scriptural knowledge and truth as the sole primary source narrative to be expressed. Non-faith-based global Hip Hop maintains its Message as the primary source narrative, arguing with visible evidence that this expressive discourse is more prominent on the global stage. This insulates both positions in a closed system, an oppositional system; even when the language used sounds inclusive, the practice of exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation is enforced for power and control to accumulate socio-religious dominance.

What is recognized and needs to be explored more, from both Hip Hop profiles, non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop, is the available exchange, the epicenter of how Hip Hop as a primary source is an agent for border-crossing, a tool to explore the intersectionalities, and the lens to read the other without enforced cultural or socio-religious power, dominance, or control. The scaffolding is available but is not embraced. The trajectory is present but more often overlooked. The language is known but is not learned, heard, or practiced. The liberation of difference between non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop resides in the cultural and socio-religious interlocking circles.

What limits the interaction is the tolerance/intolerance of the other through exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation as points of power, dominance, and cultural and socio-religious control. When both profiles grasp the reality that by excluding the other they are in effect creating a closed self-reification system firming the lines of segregation and discrimination which each states to be against. Hip Hop, as a critical dynamic expressive cultural and theomusicological agent, offers itself to aid in the dismantling of socio-religious fixed borders.

The closed systemic self-referential operation works against this opportunity, giving limitations to the lived real experiences from each profile which can help promote the other and, as a consequence, progress the Message of Hip Hop and the Great Commission of Christianity. To do so, an initial step is to look at the surrounding environments (read: social norms and religious) to see the larger aspects of everything.

What “Everything” Can Mean: Lauryn Hill’s “Everything” and Lalo G Alvarez’s “Everything/Everything Part 2.”

As a basic example, two artists use the same word but express it from their own discipline, which can serve as a contact point to overcome power, dominance, and control socio-religiously, dismantling exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation to enact a dynamic vernacular that speaks to both a non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop identity.

Lauryn Hill, “Everything Is Everything” (Official Video), 1998/1999.

Lalo G Alvarez, “Everything” (Official Video), 2023.

Lalo G Alvarez, “Everything Part 2” (Official Video), 2025.

Both works are rich in content and deserve a singular analysis. For this purpose, a brief example of how these two works relate will suffice, with the desire to explore their interconnective realities more in future writings.

The most direct way to see how this process works as a negotiation between non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop is to look at the lyrics of Lauryn Hill’s “Everything Is Everything.”

Everything (everything, everything) is everything (is everything)
What is meant to be, will be (what? Uh, uh)
After winter (after winter), must come spring (must come spring)
Change, it comes eventually (yo, uh-uh)

Everything (everything, everything yo) is everything (is everything, everything)
What is meant to be will be
(Understand that everything is everything)
After winter (after winter), must come spring (must come)
Change, it comes eventually (gon’ change, for change)

I wrote these words (I wrote these words)
For everyone who struggles in their youth (’bout to do this one for the youth, uh)
Who won’t accept deception instead of what is truth(gotta know the truth, y’all)
It seems we lose the game
Before we even start to play(this not our game, uh, uh-uh)

Who made these rules? (Who made these rules?)
We’re so confused(we’re so confused)
Easily led astray
Let me tell ya that

Everything is everything
Everything is everything (everything is everything)
Everything is everything
Everything
After winter (after winter)
Must come spring (it’s all gon’ change, y’all)
Everything is everything (yo) [emphasis added]

Lauryn Hill’s “Everything is Everything” has multiple verses. Yet, these are the opening lines which are consistently noted as the “lyrics” of the work.

These opening lines are the foundations around which the remainder of the work circumnavigates. It is the middle eight lines which turn the gaze of the work from a singular point of view looking at the world context as a limitation to one questioning and seeking a larger perspective.

Who won’t accept deception instead of what is truth(gotta know the truth, y’all)
It seems we lose the game
Before we even start to play(this not our game, uh, uh-uh)

Who made these rules? (Who made these rules?)
We’re so confused(we’re so confused)
Easily led astray
Let me tell ya that

Everything is everything

Starting with the extracted lines, the quest from deception to truth is set in motion. The work is not stable; the individual relationship to the present is challenged and questioned:

“Who won’t accept deception instead of what is truth”.

The next two lines, “It seems we lose the game/ Before we even start to play,” lean on the next line, “Who made these rules?” This is the point where the work and the invested individual are pushed to their limits; the personal bottom of the present context is reached, which demands a strong question of how one came to a point of near or assumed defeat. This is the point where the individual in the work begins to look beyond the limitations of the self.

Originally, the dependence was on exclusion, subjugating the present environment, assimilating to social norms, and being locked in the interplay between tolerance/intolerance of the surrounding environments.

To question “Who made these rules?“, the individual starts to invert the gaze away from the self, either consciously or unconsciously recognizing the exclusionary borders that were assumed to protect “everything”, therefore granting knowledge about a “truth” which is now understood by the individual as being “accepted deception.”

The next two lines are the pivotal moment in the work:

“We’re so confused/ Easily led astray”.

Recognizing confusion and how easy it is to be led astray is the tipping point; this is where the growth and progress can begin. This is the entry point for faith to be introduced. The following line, the title of the track, “Everything is Everything,” then takes on a different meaning.

No longer is the work focused on the external, confused defeat. The individual, by way of this downward spiral, seeks a truth, not a deceptive truth, but a truth that comes from one who created the context in which the individual finds themself, the one whom the work is discussing, the one who is “everything.”

The line, “Let me tell ya that,” inverts the gaze from the individual to an external knowledgeable perspective. The work starts as a point of view, a limited, defeated aspect of the current context set toward a decline.

This last line, “Let me tell ya that,” refocuses the gaze from a limited point of view to a larger perspective seeking truth about “everything.” Again, this is the segue toward the introduction of biblical knowledge and truth.

Photo | Lauryn Hill, Kongsberg Jazz Festival, 2019 | courtesy of Birgit Fostervold, Wikimedia Creative Commons

Biblical Scripture As Everything

There are multiple examples throughout the bible which can speak to the “everything” the work by Lauryn Hill presents. One example is from the book of Ephesians.

“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:17-20 NIV, emphasis added).

This short biblical verse answers the questions Lauryn Hill brings to light in her work “Everything is Everything.” The resolution not to be foolish, how to be filled, what expressive language to use, and how to give thanks, to “God the Father for everything,” addresses the projection and the pivotal moment at the core of Lauryn Hill’s work.

When reading this track, “Everything is Everything,” theomusicologically, the influence of biblical knowledge and the truth sought at the start of the work by Lauryn Hill is not completely answered, but points in the direction away from the deceit, confusion, and sense of loss stated. In a brief biblical scripture, the descending scale of Lauryn Hill’s “Everything is Everything” has a pivotal moment by way of a letter to the Ephesians.

This biblical scripture is a call to action; it’s a statement of what to do rather than a mechanical tool of how to do something. Lauryn Hill’s “Everything is Everything” looks to learn, gain, and control everything in one’s environment.

The biblical scripture from Ephesians starts as a what to do, “do not be foolish,” but immediately turns to what to be, “filled with the spirit, speak to one another, make music from the heart, give thanks to God the Father for everything”.

To put a fine point on this biblical truth and how it answers Lauryn Hill’s “Everything is Everything,” the resounding mantra of the work is the phrase,

“What is meant to be, will be.”

This biblical scripture excerpt from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians is, as noted, a call to action on how to be. Lauryn Hill’s passive social norm statement, “What is meant to be, will be,” is answered in Ephesians 5:17-20 on how to be and how, then, to see everything that is provided by God the Father.

Non-faith-based global Hip Hop has an answer to the questions, the confusion, the foolish deceit, and who made the overarching rules. What Lauryn Hill does is leave the point unanswered.

The link “Let me tell ya that,” is followed by the title of the track, “Everything is Everything.” A fast, short, vacant answer, but one socially accepted. Ephesians fills in the open space.

Lauryn Hill’s work is seeking a technical mechanism to do as an answer. Ephesians underscores that it’s not a technical mechanism to do, but what one is to be: thankful to God the Father for everything. Lauryn Hill has her social normative “everything” answered by the One who is “Everything,” God.

Counterbalance in Christian Hip Hop

As a counterbalance, two tracks from Christian Hip Hop artist Lalo G Alvarez are aptly titled, “Everything” and “Everything Part 2.” Layered with personal testimony, the works by Lalo G Alvarez center around one key phrase in “Everything Part 2”,

“Deliver me from my enemy/ I’m talkin’ about the inner me” (1:37).

In a single line, Lalo G Alvarez addresses the entire 4:08 work “Everything is Everything” by Lauryn Hill. The surrounding biblical knowledge and testimony make up the majority of these works by Lalo G Alvarez, without erasing the strength, power, and truth of this eleven-word line.

Adding to this are two other focal lines:

“Everything I know/ I’m believin’ everything You wrote” (Everything Part 2), and

“You’re everything that I need/ Everything I need is in You” (Everything).

Lalo G Alvarez goes one step further, executing his discipline in narrative, as prayers which are realized as Christian Hip Hop tracks. “Everything” is a large prayer to Christ; a Hip Hop confession, repentance, and testimony. “Everything Part 2” is an overarching prayer of thanksgiving to God; a Hip Hop devotional, submission, and reprise of testimony.

Lalo G Alvarez is illustrating how Christian Hip Hop can read between the lines in some areas. Likewise, Lauryn Hill demonstrates how non-faith-based Hip Hop functions as a point of direct contact for the application of biblical knowledge and truth in current environmental contexts. Without any prior relationship, aside from the shared title, these works from two different Hip Hop artists establish a discourse for profitable biblical knowledge and truth to be expressed, in lived real-experience situations, through the critical lens of Hip Hop, which was employed theomusicologically.

Christian Hip Hop’s Learning Curve

What comes to light in this analysis is what Pastor Alistair Begg notes from his analysis of the work of the Apostle Paul: the necessity and urgency of perseverance. The reading of the book of Acts by Pastor Alistair Begg draws out how the Apostle Paul did not cease in his drive, calling, and post-conversion work to bring the Gospel truth to each situation. Even when those who did not have ears to hear, the Apostle Paul did not allow this to hinder his promotion of Gospel truth.

In such a manner, non-faith-based Hip Hop includes this persistence. It is Christian Hip Hop that limits its calling, drive, and urgency to persevere. There is no question that Christian Hip Hop is fixated on promoting biblical knowledge and Gospel truth, but this operation largely takes place in a closed system, a vacuum, appealing to a collective with varying degrees of faith, belief, and walk on an individual journey through Christianity. Non-faith-based Hip Hop is unapologetic and persistent with its drive, calling, and work to share, progress, and express Hip Hop culture and, from a larger conscious perspective, the Message of Hip Hop.

Christian Hip Hop is more inclined to communicate selectively to a predetermined audience. In this capacity, Christian Hip Hop needs to learn from non-faith-based Hip Hop; drive, articulate the calling, work to share and express persistently to those who may not have ears to hear, and in any context where one circumnavigates.

It is this methodology that non-faith-based Hip Hop instinctively has in relationship with the Apostle Paul. This exemplifies how Christian Hip Hop needs to learn about itself from non-faith-based Hip Hop; working in a closed system does not promote Gospel truth, nor does it follow the Great Commission of taking the Gospel out to all nations (Matthew 28:18-20), every culture (Mark 16:15-16), and note the importance of repentance (Luke 24:47-49) through the authority granted by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8) to make disciples (John 20:21).

Reflecting on the earlier points of tolerance/intolerance through enforcing exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation, Christian Hip Hop far too often operates through this process to validate its own tolerance while objectifying an intolerance to non-faith-based Hip Hop. The reverse is equally present.

But if Christian Hip Hop recounts its core intention, not to copy, mimic, simulate, or reprocess the Hip Hop global market industrial complex with faith-based signifiers, but to function as a contemporary agent to express Gospel truth and biblical knowledge, then the lesson to learn from non-faith-based Hip Hop is to be unapologetic and persistent with its drive, calling, and work to share, progress, and express Gospel truth and biblical knowledge through the aesthetics and expressive agent of Hip Hop across the borders of local, national, and international levels. Non-faith-based Hip Hop promotes itself as a polemic and an apologetic for its identity and a conscious Message.

Christian Hip Hop falsely believes that it works, as a genre, in the same capacity. Where, in reality, Christian Hip Hop may do so to a select, predetermined, multi-faith-informed audience. Christian Hip Hop expresses a polemic and apologetic in a closed system. The mechanisms for the dispersion of the Gospel truth and biblical knowledge are embedded in Christian Hip Hop, yet it is more simplistic to communicate with those familiar to some degree with the language, the lexicon, and the significance of Christianity. However, this blind embrace of limitation excludes, subjugates, and assimilates to itself, through a self-reflective identity of Christian Hip Hop pushing it away from the larger local, national, and international levels of contact. Christian Hip Hop, then, firms borders around itself, limiting its voice, and continues to self-reference. This does not follow the core intent of Christian Hip Hop: use Hip Hop discourse and culture to express Christianity to those unaware of Gospel truth and biblical knowledge. Working in a closed system establishes an authenticated, essentialized voice; when viewed externally reads negatively.

Non-faith-based Hip Hop is unwilling (read: intolerant) to engage with Christian Hip Hop due to the firm lines of demarcation built around a protective self-reference and assumptions of tolernace/intolerance of non-faith-based Hip Hop. Christian Hip Hop is unwilling (read: intolerant) to engage with non-faith-based Hip Hop due to the same firm lines of demarcation Christian Hip Hop has formalized around a protective self-reference and assumptions of tolerance/intolerance of the understanding or willingness of non-faith-based Hip Hop to connect with Gospel truth or biblical knowledge. Likewise, the reverse is equally present.

The border-crossing agent points back to the teaching from the Apostle Paul, instinctively managed in non-faith-based Hip Hop as a persistent, unwavering, consistent, applied polemic and apologetic. The mechanism is Hip Hop discourse.

The applied narrative is either the larger non-faith-based Hip Hop or Christian Hip Hop, which both use the signifiers, aesthetics, and dynamics of Hip Hop to contextualize, formalize, and solidify non-faith-based or faith-based culture. This is the negotiative point of contact, the intersectionality, the lived experience for both non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop to dialogue. The larger non-faith-based Hip Hop vernacular exemplifies how to work persistently, which is a discipline Christian Hip Hop is aware of through the writings and teachings of the Apostle Paul.

The contact point is not limited; it is circular. Each discipline has the same process available, but the factors of exclusion, subjectification, and assimilation heighten the tension between tolerance/intolerance negatively, where Christian Hip Hop reads this as the moment to isolate itself for the protection of identity and lack of security in non-faith-based Hip Hop to acquire Gospel truth or biblical knowledge. In counterpoint, non-faith-based Hip Hop excludes, subjectifies, and casts an assimilated understanding of Christian Hip Hop along the same lines of isolation Christian Hip Hop constructs.

An unnecessary binary of insider-outsider results without the desire or intent to socio-religiously deconstruct the binary, which reifies a social norm of segregation and socio-religious discrimination. The reality is that both disciplines are using and relying on the same lexicon of liberation and expression, Hip Hop, which, as a mechanism, offers a dynamic intersectional space of contact for both disciplines to exchange their reading and experienced analysis of Hip Hop.

If this were to actively take place, both the larger non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop would recognize the value of persistence, as noted by Pastor Alistair Begg from a critical reading of the life, writings, and work of the Apostle Paul, combined with the conscious Message of Hip Hop.

What Is Bigger Than Hip Hop

Taking possession of the work by Dr. Timothy Keller, through an analysis of two different Hip Hop works from the different profiles of non-faith-based and faith-based Hip Hop, focusing back on the application of persistence to see the limited borders of Christian Hip Hop and how these can be dismantled from lessons by the larger non-faith-based global Hip Hop canon, the result is a critical interrogation of tolerance/intolerance not to be reduced to a trilogy of exclusion, subjugation, and assimilation to side-step a self-referential closed system of Hip Hop expression.

The liberal vernacular of Hip Hop culture can be heard with Christian Hip Hop ears without being imposing of doctrine. In a similar capacity, the specific vernacular of Christian Hip Hop culture can be heard with a larger global non-faith-based Hip Hop ear to deepen biblical knowledge and truth. Reifying one reduces the other.

There will be times when either or both identities will not be willing to entertain their counterpart. When these moments arise, it’s valuable to recall that there is a process, a methodology, a discipline available to start the conversation between the two identities, not to prompt positions of power, dominance, or control; not to further entrench exclusionary borders, but to hear the Message from both Hip Hop and the Gospel to learn that everything is an essentialized viewpoint.

Everything does come through a message. Where non-faith-based global Hip Hop seeks a Message of truth, Christian Hip Hop seeks to express a Message of truth. It’s the expressive dynamic agency of Hip Hop that can broadcast the ultimate Message to both identities, not to exclude, but to systemically include everyone who hears the Message, has faith in the Message, and believes in the Message. The Message is Christ, who is bigger than Hip Hop.

To read more from Alan Lechusza Aquallo’s “The Sweatpant Sessions,” please consider subscribing for free and check out others on Patheos.

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About Alan Lechusza Aquallo

Dr. Alan Lechusza is a scholar whose name has become synonymous with critical thought and cultural discourse. He is a thinker and writer who explores popular culture with a critical eye. He holds a PhD and uses his deep, resource-rich understanding to question and redefine how we see art, power, and knowledge. His research covers various topics that aim to break down and rebuild our ideas about culture, artistry, and socio-political authority. Dr. Lechusza closely examines everyday cultural expressions in ways that challenge conventional thinking. His writings make people think and view culture in new ways. Dr. Alan Lechusza wants to create conversations to inspire change and challenge our understanding of how we experience the world. You can read more about the author here.

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