ZANFAGNA CHRISTINA ZANFAGNA | HOLY HIP HOP IN THE CITY OF ANGELSHOLY IN THE CITY OF ANGELS The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Lisa See Endowment Fund in Southern California History and Culture of the University of California Press Foundation. Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels MUSIC OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA Shana Redmond, Editor Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., Editor 1. California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West, edited by Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje and Eddie S. Meadows 2. William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions, by Catherine Parsons Smith 3. Jazz on the Road: Don Albert’s Musical Life, by Christopher Wilkinson 4. Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars, by William A. Shack 5. Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West, by Phil Pastras 6. What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists, by Eric Porter 7. Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. 8. Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans, by William T. Dargan 9. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba, by Robin D. Moore 10. From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz, by Raul A. Fernandez 11. “Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad, by Timothy Rommen 12. The Memoirs of Alton Augustus Adams, Sr.: First Black Bandmaster of the United States Navy, edited with an introduction by Mark Clague, with a foreword by Samuel Floyd, Jr. 13. Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music, by Amiri Baraka 14. Different Drummers: Rhythm and Race in the New World, by Martin Munro 15. Funky Nassau: Roots, Routes, and Representation in Bahamian Popular Music, by Timothy Rommen 16. Blowin’ the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene, by Travis A. Jackson 17. The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop, by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. 18. Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post–World War II Paris, by Rashida K. Braggs 19. Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels, by Christina Zanfagna Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels Christina Zanfagna UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advanc- ing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by Christina Zanfagna Suggested citation: Zanfagna, Christina. Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ luminos.35 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC by NC ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zanfagna, Christina, 1980- author. Title: Holy hip hop in the City of Angels / Christina Zanfagna. Other titles: Music of the African diaspora; 19. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Series: Music of the african diaspora; 19 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017026657| ISBN 9780520296206 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780520968790 (e-edition) Subjects: LCSH: Rap (Music)--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Rap (Music)—California—Los Angeles—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3921.8.R36 Z36 2017 | DDC 306.4/ 842490979494—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026657 For my mother and father, and in memory of Pastor Carol Scott See, they call Los Angeles the City of Angels; but I didn’t find it to be that, exactly. —the big lebowski This is a multi-layered city . Layers of history reach deep, Run red, scarring the soul of the city . How I love it, how I hate it . —louis rodriguez, “love poem to los angeles” To live and die in L.A., it’s the place to be You’ve got to be there to know it —tupac, “to live and die in l.a.” CONTENTS Introduction: Earthquake Music and the Politics of Conversion 1 1. “Now I Bang for Christ”: Rites/Rights of Passage 28 2. Hip Hop Church L.A.: Shifting Grounds in Inglewood 55 3. Beyond Babylon: Geographies of Conversion 82 4. The Evangelical Hustle: Selling Music, Saving Souls 106 5. Roads to Zion: Hip Hop’s Search for the City Yet to Come 128 Epilogue: Aftershocks 145 Acknowledgments 147 Notes 151 Bibliography 177 Musical Links 189 Index 193 Introduction Earthquake Music and the Politics of Conversion For it is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. —Frederick Douglass Pastor Graham waited for me at a table in the International Food Court in down- town Los Angeles. A week earlier, in the spring of 2007, I met the former gang- banger-turned-preacher at a Hip Hop Church L.A. Friday night service in Ingle- wood, where he delivered a powerful sermon on the nature and importance of compassion. His hair tightly braided in cornrows and his skin heavily inked with tattoos, Pastor Graham—at thirty years old—was one of a growing cadre of young black hip hop pastors and gospel rappers in Los Angeles. When he was not deliv- ering the Word, he was rapping with members of Hood Ministries—a collective of gospel MCs and street disciples whose sound more closely resembled gangsta rap than gospel music. Over a slice of pizza, I asked him, “What do you call your music?” He contemplated while finishing his mouthful, then answered, “I don’t like to call it Christian rap or gospel rap or even holy hip hop ’cause that some- times scares people off.” A few bites later, he proudly declared, “I call itearthquake music, because this music shakes our souls and moves the ground we walk on.” Earthquake music. Our conversation grew more intensely personal. I learned about his turbulent upbringing during the 1980s and ’90s at the height of L.A.’s gang wars and police raids: how an older gang member introduced him to using a gun on the streets of Compton, California, when he was just nine years old and how he ended up in jail at age seventeen. His hustling lifestyle brought him fast money, cars, and women, but he lost it all as quickly as he made it. After staring down the barrel of his own gun, a trigger pull from ending his life, he awoke to a new spiritual path. “To find a way through these streets, I had to look to the sky, but also dig deep,” he uttered as he recalled this seismic shift in his life. His gaze dropped to the ground. “God kept 1 2 Introduction me moving out here, but my heart is scarred from everything I’ve been through— all the tragedy around me. That’s why we gotta make this earthquake music.” SOUTHLAND ERUPTIONS Hip hop, since its fabled birth in another devastated city—the Bronx, New York— has been both a disruptive and transformative force. In the 1970s, amidst postin- dustrial neglect, white flight, extreme poverty, street gang wars, and the looting and arson associated with ongoing New York City blackouts, black and brown youth turned violent and competitive energies into artistic expression. DJs cre- ated funky beats out of preexisting technologies and old records while MCs de- veloped raw, rhythmic rhymes that voiced their daily lives and future aspirations. East Coast politicians and media sources typically “wrote off” or demonized this burgeoning youth arts culture, criminalizing its graffiti as public defacement and its music as disorderly “black noise.”1 In spite of, or perhaps because of, its unruly reputation, hip hop has spread to become a lingua franca for youth around the world, spawning numerous subgenres and variants. Among these is Christian rap or holy hip hop—an inevitable development especially given the historic centrality of both Jesus and avowedly religious music in black communities. Emerging in the mid-1980s, holy hip hop (also known under the monikers gos- pel rap, Christian rap, Christ hop, worsh-hop, and hip hope) refers to a musical genre and cultural movement that integrates Christianity and hip hop.2 As a musi- cal practice used to articulate both a spiritual and social conception of self, gospel rap features biblically informed and Christ-centered lyrics over hard-hitting hip hop beats. The first holy hip hoppers came of age during the geopolitical and eco- nomic shifts of the post–civil rights years and comprise what many refer to as the “Hip-Hop Generation.”3 As this diverse subculture of predominantly black youth explored and converted to Christianity, they in turn brought hip hop worldviews and aesthetics to their worship practices. While Islam—and in particular, the Five Percent Nation—has historically been the most prominent religious ingredient in hip hop’s diverse religious stock, explicit references to Christianity found a home in the steadily growing culture of holy hip hop, especially in Southern and West Coast hip hop scenes.4 But the story of holy hip hop in the City of Angels is unique.