Growing up in inner-city neighborhoods, there's a particular structure, which I'm sure is true of most social contexts. The type of person you are determines the role you play.
— Lecrae
When I hung out with my Uncle Chris, things got real. He was fun, talkative, and loud. He was the life of the party and a magnet for mischief. Since he saw the world through a gangsta's lens, he wanted me to become tough and aggressive.
College allows you to make better decisions, better friends, and a better future. There's only one catch: when the opportunity comes, you actually have to take it.
People who've only seen me perform might assume that I'm confident and that being ignored wouldn't bother me - but it does.
I don't feel any sense of prioritizing white evangelicalism.
When God's hand is on you, there's nothing anybody can do to stop that.
To realize that I had been living a lie, to realize that I was unsatisfied and I would never be satisfied until I came to Jesus was so revolutionary to me that I wanted everyone to taste it. I wanted everyone to see how awesome God was.
I spent some time in Cairo, and you see these Coptic Christians and Muslims holding hands. They got a rich history together of working together and cohabitating. You couldn't pay to see that in America.
You take the negative, the bitter, the pain, the suffering, the depression, and all of those are ingredients for something far more purposeful than you can imagine.
My mom was big on education, big on reading, so she was always pushing books on me: 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' like, 'Read these books.' And it was like, man, I'm learning stuff that I just can't get anywhere else.
Jesus ain't American, you know what I mean? And there is gonna be more people in Heaven who don't speak English and are not white when we get there.
Atlanta, to me, has the sauce as far as urban music is concerned.
I hate systemic oppression in America.
Faith is not about serving some tyrant in the sky that says, 'You need to get your act together.' Faith is about having a loving father who says, 'Hey, listen... I'm here with you. I'm going to hold your hand. Just rock with me.'
I don't like putting on airs; that's not my thing. I'd rather just be myself, just connecting to people genuinely.
My mother, my relatives, and closest friends have risked their lives in the area of law enforcement and corrections, so I never have and never will say, 'I hate police.'
It is possible to call God 'Lord,' to feel emotionally connected to faith, to do the altruistic things and still not want God.
As children, we look up to people, for better or worse, and see them as the standard for how we should act and identify ourselves.
My mom had always been big on education. She was the first woman in our family to go to college, and she often reminded me that I needed to go to college if I wanted to really make it in life.
Old habits die hard, and if you're not careful, the person you used to be can overtake the person you're trying to become.
Being an outspoken Christian in the music industry means always feeling out of place. It's like whatever you have accomplished is less credible because of your faith.
I know where my bills get paid from, and that's God!
I feel fortunate to have a huge family that is beyond race, creed, culture, and have a Father who shepherds us all. When I think about that, my mind is blown.
I knew my ways were unfulfilling. I chased power, pleasure, possessions, something satisfying. I knew I kept getting let down. I knew it was insanity, and I was never going to find fulfillment, but I didn't know what else to look for.
You can't celebrate gifts without celebrating the giver of all gifts, so I want to celebrate Jesus.
I love Lauryn Hill when she first came out with her solo project because it felt like she just knew what she was doing.
Hip-hop is substance. It's social. It's science - that's what it started off as. We have fun, and we still having fun; ain't nothing wrong with fun, but we need that social, we need that substance, we need that science, and we need that spiritual.
No matter how bad you mess up, God loves you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
The pain and the suffering that I went through made me an activist. It made me stronger; it made me more compassionate.
History doesn't give credence for resorting to violence to have your voice heard.
Moving forward, hopefully the platform my career has given me will allow me to continue to be a voice in culture, whether that's doing lectures on campus or writing books or whatever that looks like. I feel like that's really the lane that I uniquely connect with.
Hang out with me long enough, and I'm bound to let you down.
I navigate different cultures daily, and I understand how people can make false assumptions because of their lack of interaction with the cultures I find myself in. But if they don't frequent these spaces much, how can they rush to judgment?
Laying my will down for Jesus was laying my life down for others.
As we wrestle with questions of identity, we imitate those actions we think best fill an ambiguity we have within ourselves. And that goes for everyone; no one is free from this condition.
My stepdad didn't have a father growing up, so he didn't know how to have a father-son style conversation. Plus, we had a tense relationship in which he never really offered me advice.
I try to produce music that is life-giving and inspires people to hope, but it isn't just for the super-religious. I want to address themes that people who aren't Christian can appreciate.
Many people don't know that all Grammy awards are not created equal. An unspoken hierarchy exists in many circles, and some categories are more respected than others.
I'm not afraid of people; I'm afraid of not doing what God created me to do.
I thought that God and rap would never work. I thought that God wasn't okay with rap. People knew I used to rap, and I went to the Bible studies. Someone said, 'Hey, you should rap about Jesus.'
For a lot of people, groups, Christians included, issues are homogenized. And so to be a Christian, I'm either this staunch, conservative Republican, or I'm this tree-hugging liberal. You're stereotyped. It's almost assumed that people know what your issues are going to be.
For me, 2016-17 was hell, and there's no way around it for me. I went through pain, depression, fear, doubt, and all of that was a journey that I was able to write through, and then I wrote when I was coming out of that dark place as well.
I know I'm wonderfully made, and nobody can take that away from me. So regardless of what I show you or expose to you, you don't have any bearing on my worth and what I mean.
Your identity is not wrapped up in how right you get it or how perfect you can posture yourself. But, your identity is wrapped up in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I think complexity is beautiful.
People have got to form some kind of unified fronts where you know who your allies are, you know who your friends are, and really begin to work together to create different kinds of infrastructures to protect one another and to help one another thrive.
We judge people based on their clothes, social class, and, dare I say, ethnicity. Our comedians make light of these stereotypes regularly, and we laugh at their accuracy.
I just don't want to be the artist who's out on the road and has no real perspective of what's happening at home.
Honestly, the pains of humanity have been draining me.
My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.
