Disciples of the Street

..................The Promise of a Hip Hop Church................

by  ERIC GUTIERREZ

Upcoming Events

Sunday, December 7, 11 am:  Jahneen, D-Cross and Paradox, co-founders of the HipHopEMass featured in Disciples of the Street: The Promise of a Hip Hop Church, will be in action helping lead the morning service at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. Author Eric Gutierrez will also be present to sign copies of Disciples of the Street. 

St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery is located at 131 East 10th Street, at the intersection of 10th and Stuyvesant Streets and 2nd Avenue in the East Village in New York City.

Sunday, December 7, 12:30-1:45 pm: Author Eric Gutierrez will moderate a discussion about the controversial nature of gospel rap featuring excerpts from Disciples of the Street with D-Cross, known as “The Living Instrument”; Jahneen, recording artist and pioneering female rapper (“The Gigolette”); and Paradox of gospel rap duo The Missionary Men (“Homesick”). “The nature of the hip hop church movement is still evolving,” explains Gutierrez. “Whether it is ultimately seen as an evangelical tool, an act of blasphemy or a truly prophetic voice crying out in the religious and cultural wilderness depends on the message that prevails. What is clear is that the messengers are here to stay and rap and religion will never be the same.”  

St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery is located at 131 East 10th Street, at the intersection of 10th and Stuyvesant Streets and 2nd Avenue in the East Village in New York City.

The Disciples of the Street...

KURTIS BLOW - ”People die all the time, but growing up in Harlem in the ’60s and ’70s he had seen it happen. He had watched his brother murder someone. He saw another man beaten and set on fire. There were times when he could have killed people - should have killed them. The only explanation he has for why he did not is that somewhere inside his heart or mind, someplace only partly recognized, he stayed true to the covenant God made with him…”

JAHNEEN - “In the mid-1980s she gets on the charts with her rap, ‘The Gigolette’:

    You heard about the Gigolo/

    He’s a lover man as we all know/

    But you ain’t heard nothing yet/

    ’Til you check out the Gigolette/

    She’s a money-maker/

    A real heart-breaker/

    She’s smooth as she can be….

She was hanging with hip hop royalty, living in VIP rooms, and believing life was ‘one great party with a bunch of cocaine.’

    Suddenly, at the height of the party, something changed…”

D-CROSS - ”They call him D-Cross, the Living Instrument. He likes the name, not just because it stuck or because it describes his extraordinary musical skill, the ability to sound like any instrument or scratching vinyl. He likes it because it reminds him to strive every day to be an instrument of uplift, to be an extension of God’s work…”

DEFY THE ODDS - “D.O. had made hip hop history when the Toronto-based rapper claimed the Guinness World Record for World’s Longest Freestyle, rapping non-stop for eight hours and forty-five minutes. He was no novelty act, however, getting respect from Chuck D. of Public Enemy , the magazine XXL as one of ‘rap’s new breed,’ and from the South Bronx crew as one of the hip hop disciples…Taking the stage at the corner of a blighted downtown intersection, D.O. shouts into the mike, ‘Y’all ready for church?’”

THE MISSIONARY MEN - “They had run into some trouble, not on the streets but in their own conservative denomination, trying to express themselves to God and to express godliness to other people through hip hop. They know what they are doing is real and true even if it is hard for others to comprehend. But they want to connect with others like themselves, young Christians born into and raised by the tribe of hip hop….”

THE REMNANT - “This is high hip hop church and as the procession moves through the aisles some of the children and young people look at each other with huge smiles as if they can’t believe this is happening in a church.

Adam, carrying the prayer book high above his dreadlocked head, leads the procession surrounded by clergy and clouds of incense. As he turns down the center aisle, making his way to the altar, the crowd gets a good look at him sporting a large T-shirt that reads, ‘Religion Kills, Jesus Lives.’”

DJ COOL CLYDE - ”Every August Cool Clyde, the first DJ to put live scratching on vinyl, returns to Rosedale Park across from the Bronxdale Projects, the place he calls ‘the birth park of hip hop.’ That’s where he used to spin for fun back when no one knew the ultimate reach of what they were doing. Now he’s the organizer of Raising Kings and Queens, an all-day hip hop celebration of the unity, peace and love that hip hop’s founders and the street disciples never stopped preaching. He dares to believe that the ones who weren’t there in the beginning might hear hope in the remix, like they all once did back then…”