Disciples of the Street

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

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:48:00 -0400

by ERIC GUTIERREZ

Upcoming Events

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:47:00 -0400

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 True Story of Rap & Redemption in the Holy Land of Hip Hop. Buy Your Copy Now.

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:46:00 -0400

The True Story of Rap & Redemption in the Holy Land of Hip Hop. Buy Your Copy Now.

"Long live the Rose that grew from concrete/When no one else even cared."

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:55:00 -0400

“Long live the Rose that grew from concrete/When no one else even cared.””

- Tupac Shakur

The Durham Raiders of the Carolina Football Development League...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:51:55 -0400

The Durham Raiders of the Carolina Football Development League join Poppa T, The Remnant’s Niles Grey (hands raised), and (far right) rapper Crystal Agapé and The Remnant’s Just-John Jordan

"Disciples weren’t pure but they were tryin’ to be. Disciples were savages on the low."

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:10:00 -0400

“Disciples weren’t pure but they were tryin’ to be. Disciples were savages on the low.”

- Nas

The Disciples of the Street...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:04:00 -0400

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…”

"People say hip-hop has five elements, you know? But the sixth is spirituality"

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:02:00 -0400

“People say hip-hop has five elements, you know? But the sixth is spirituality”

- DJ Cool Clyde

DEFY THE ODDS (D.O.): ”By My Side”

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:51:00 -0400

DEFY THE ODDS (D.O.): ”By My Side”

THE REMNANT

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:50:00 -0400

THE REMNANT

The one and only Stevie Wonder holding his copy of Disciples of...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:04:00 -0400

The one and only Stevie Wonder holding his copy of Disciples of the Street. The legendary owner of KJLH-FM radio station, devoted to community empowerment and peace, invited Eric Gutierrez to talk about Disciples of the Street on ‘Thunder Thursdays with Stevie Wonder.’ After hearing about Disciples of the Street on ’The Front Page with Dominique DiPrima,’ KJLH 102.3-FM’s progressive current affairs and talk program, Stevie invited Eric to be a guest on his own show. Dominique and Stevie couldn’t have been nicer and the callers questions were interesting, passionate and went straight to the heart of the growing hip-hop church movement.

Stevie Wonder (L), music legend and host of ‘Thunder...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:03:00 -0400

Stevie Wonder (L), music legend and host of ‘Thunder Thursdays,’ and Dominique DiPrima (R), host of ‘The Front Page,’ invited author Eric Gutierrez (Ctr) to the KJLH-FM studio on Thursday, July 17, to talk about Disciples of the Street on both of their radio shows. Station owner Wonder on-air slogan matches the call letters, which stand for “Kindness, Joy, Love & Happiness.”

Toronto-based rapper Defy the Odds on the Durham, North...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:43:00 -0400

Toronto-based rapper Defy the Odds on the Durham, North Carolina, leg of the HipHopEMass Resurrection Tour. D.O. was one of the young rappers singled out in XXL magazine by Chuck D. of Public Enemy as one of rap’s New Breed.

The Promise of a Hip Hop Church

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:12:00 -0400

Disciples of the Street: The Promise of a Hip Hop Church — When a charismatic priest, hip hop legend Kurtis Blow, and a crew of young rappers and DJs create a hip hop ministry around a 140 year-old traditional church in the South Bronx projects, both rap and religion are challenged to take a hard look at what they have become.

Disciples of the Street is a story of life-or-death faith, conflict and transformation in the streets and in the pews that not only confronts the institutional church and the world of hip hop, but offers hope for their future.

Click here to Purchase Your Copy of this Compelling True Story of Rap and Redemption

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:00 -0400

Click here to Purchase Your Copy of this Compelling True Story of Rap and Redemption

"Hip hop is the last form of transcendence available to young black ghetto dwellers."

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:55:00 -0400

“Hip hop is the last form of transcendence available to young black ghetto dwellers.”

- Dr. Cornel West

Author Eric Gutierrez is a noted writer and speaker on religion,...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:45:00 -0400

Author Eric Gutierrez is a noted writer and speaker on religion, politics and culture. Formerly senior editor of Latina magazine and executive editor of High Performance: the Journal of Alternative Arts and Issues, his commentary, news analysis and essays have appeared internationally, including the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Jerusalem Post (Israel), Vanidad (Spain), and VIVE (Australia).

A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, where he received his M.Div. degree and delivered the 2005 Harvard Divinity School Commencement address, Gutierrez speaks at universities, foundations and houses of worship nationwide.

The recipient of a Brody Fellowship for Literature from the California Community Foundation and a Burton Fellowship, Gutierrez is one of the new breed of public intellectual, offering readers and audiences an inspirational vision of justice and reconciliation for the future of America.. He lives in Los Angeles and currently teaches in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts.

Author Photo by: Jenny Walters

“It’s a sermon but no one is close to falling...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:34:00 -0400

“It’s a sermon but no one is close to falling asleep. He tells them about the roots of hip-hop, about landlords setting fire to people’s homes for insurance cash and how the children of the South Bronx tried to make something beautiful on the other side of the burned-out street, how it wasn’t about the thug life but about creating a better life. Kurtis Blow, this man who’s performed live in front of hundreds of thousands of people and on television, is giving everything he’s got to these fifty-eight kids in lockdown…”

From Disciples of the Street: The Promise of a Hip Hop Church —