‘The Promiscuous Gospel’: The religious complexity and theological multiplicity of rap music

Abstract

Over the past several decades, there has been increased attention to the religious exploration of popular culture, including rap music. However, as is often the case, such attention has resulted in a narrowing of rap music's religious and theological meaning – a forcing of rap music into preconceived cartographies of life. In this article, I suggest that the slippery, messy and complex nature of the sacred dimensions of rap music can only be addressed in a rigorous way through the use of theoretical and methodological tools that are flexible. This article proposes this type of flexible framework can be achieved through combining Anthony B. Pinn's notion of complex subjectivity and his nitty-gritty hermeneutic with Laurel C. Schneider's theory of multiplicity.

Keywords:

• hip hop
• rap music
• complex subjectivity
• religious syncretism
• theological multiplicity

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Drs Anthony B. Pinn, Mary Keller, and Laurel C. Schneider for their insightful comment, challenges, suggestions and questions related to an earlier version of this essay.

Notes

 1. Common Featuring Cee-Lo. ‘G.O.D.,’ Sony BMG, 2007. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/common/g-o-d-gaining-ones-definition.html

 2. Here, and throughout this essay, my point is not to give an assumed religious or theological analysis and explication of such lyrics, rather my intention is to demonstrate the varied religious and theological perspectives that may be both present and absent at the same time within a particular song. Such complexity challenges and disrupts perspectives on the religious whose static approaches fail to come to grips with, and be gripped by such complexity. For the purposes of this paper, I use the rubric ‘religious complexity and theological multiplicity’ taken from Anthony B. Pinn and Laurel C. Schneider's work, as a descriptive framing of the way in which, I believe rap music confronts the religious in general. That is to say, there is something about the way in which the modality of rap music in specific and popular culture in general wrestles with the nature and meaning of life in general that poses an inherent challenge to static and inflexible approaches, definitions and frameworks of religion and theology. How does or is the scholar of religion and theology to grapple with what can sometimes seem like religious and theological syncretism or incoherence within cultural phenomena such as rap music?

 3. Here, I am calling for not only more expansive and complex approaches to the religious exploration of rap music (which is likewise a call to expand traditional understandings of the religious and theological in general), but equally important, I am also suggesting that a fruitful religious and theological engagement with rap music is one that should be dialectical, that is, one that embraces the messiness (as expressed within the music) of life and can give articulation to its religious and theological dimensions, and likewise one that can be changed by the ‘religious confrontation’ within rap music itself. I am most interested in expansive approaches that can give articulation to the struggle for meaning within popular culture, but likewise use such cultural production to interrogate our own ideas and assumptions of both religion and theology respectively.

 4. I cite these two books as non-academic examples that continue to polarise and cheapen both the engagement and understanding of rap music in particular and hip hop in general. These two church-based examples are not presented to represent the breadth of church based engagement and likewise the wider academic scholarship on rap music and hip hop such as works by Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West. Although these examples are not representative of the larger scholarship between hip hop and religion, what they do however represent is a growing hegemonic approach whereby theological and ideological limitations cheapen a full and meaningful engagement with rap music and hip hop.

 5. This more common conflation of and collapse between ‘Hip Hop’ and ‘rap music’ become important distinctions, especially when the stigmatisation and moral critiques of the cultural ‘products’ become literal critiques representative of the broader culture itself.

 6. It is important to keep in mind that what Anthony B. Pinn gives us alongside the Noise and spirit (2003) volume is a theory of the religious, what he calls complex subjectivity most poignantly stated in his work entitled Terror and triumph published in 2003. I draw particular attention to this distinction because it is important to recognise that what Pinn offers religious studies in general is a theory of the religious, and although Pinn has always used and incorporated varied materials of raw data (bodies, ritual, music, etc.) his more descriptive work in Noise and spirit gives attention to the religious confrontation in rap music from diverse perspectives. Although, Pinn's Humanist analysis is a valid religious option in a religious exploration of rap among others, his theory of religion broadly engages but is not limited to particular cultural material such as rap music.

 7. That is not to say that all of rap music deconstructs in general. Rather what I am suggesting here is that with regards to the struggle, search, and quest for meaning in rap music, configured as religious questions, that there is likewise both a challenge and construction taking place, a (de)construction, that is in the Derridian sense, never a destruction or full incorporation of norms, values, and ideologies, but rather, a move that both embraces and denies, challenges and constructs, absent and present, and that is ‘faithfully unfaithful’ to tradition(s) in general.

 8. By ‘historical tensions and fissures’ I mean similar to the spirituals and the blues, rap music offers a lyrical window into vital questions and concerns raised within black religion in general. Such tensions, are theologically and religiously oriented, and include different approaches to theology, religion, God, and spirituality. Black religion has never been a monolithic experience, and this element, I believe is best expressed within cultural products, such as music, that arise organically, from within the communities themselves.

 9. I am not suggesting that Pinn's theoretical and conceptual contribution has only been specific to rap music, although I do believe he is one of the first scholars of religion to take serious the complex religious dimensions embedded within rap music. Pinn's theory of the religious is drawn from cultural resources and data that include rap music, but is not limited to only musical production; his work takes into account a broad array of ‘unfolding cultural productions’. I do not want to conflate collapse nor suggest that Pinn's theory of the religious, his hermeneutical contribution and descriptive work is specific to rap music only. What I am suggesting however is that Pinn's unique theory of religion is one that is flexible and robust enough to engage cultural productions such as rap given its flexibility and comfortability with religious and theological uncertainty.

10. Such as for example, what other (new and different) god constructions or religious realities are being constructed and played with beyond the more dominant and already legitimated forms of religious traditions? Tupac may rhetorically construct a god that looks very different from Common's human-god motif. How do we understand these competing illustrations and constructions of religious reality, especially its unstable nature?

11. 2 Pac featuring Anthony Hamilton. ‘Thugz Mansion’, Interscope Records. Lyrics can found at: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/2pac/thugzmansion.html, Video can be watched at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = dx-Vs2L71lk

12. Mos Def. ‘Fear Not of Man,’ Black on Both Sides. Priority Records, 1999. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 8BEg38-bWY8

13. Throughout this paper I continually give deference to the ‘fluidity’ and ‘uncertainty’ of rap's many religious suppositions, questions and answers, however, I am also aware that rap music is also afflicted and overshadowed by its demands for ‘realness’ and authenticity that certainly yearn for ‘truth’, essentialisms, and a sort of precision that is not representative of the realities of our lives. However, while I acknowledge this thirst for authenticity (gender, sexuality, etc.) within the music, I also sense a deep comfort with regard to religious incoherence and contradiction.

14. Talib Kweli. ‘Get By,’ Quality. Rawkus Records, 2002. Watch video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 9pUKLD_0NsE

15. Talib Kweli. ‘Around My Way,’ Beautiful Struggle. Rawkus/Geffen Records, 2004. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/talibkweli/aroundmyway.html

16. Talib Kweli. ‘Give Em Hell,’ Eardrum. Blacksmith Music/Warner Bros. Records, 2007. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/talibkweli/giveemhell.html

17. Talib Kweli. ‘Hostile Gospel,Part1 (Deliver Us),’ Eardrum. Blacksmith Music/Warner Bros. Records. 2007. Video can be seen at: http://videos.onsmash.com/v/UGnFSAj6PvlmNuuB

18. Nas. ‘Disciple,’ Streets Disciple. Columbia Records 2004. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nas/disciple.html

19. Nas. ‘The Cross,’ God's Son. Ill Will/Columbia Records, 2002. Video can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 35AQQSislvM

20. Nas. ‘Heaven,’ God's Son. Ill Will/Columbia Records. 2002. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nas/heaven.html

21. Common featuring Cee-lo. ‘G.O.D’. Lyrics can be found at: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/common/g-o-d-gaining-ones-definition.html