In Scripture, when something is repeated, especially a name, it shows an emotional connection, a deeper sense of meaning.
— Lecrae
I consider what I do soul music. It's music that is concerned with the soul.
If you subscribe to any moral code that says you should care for humanity, obviously black people will fit into that category.
Me and Kendrick Lamar have had conversations for years back and forth, so that's my dude.
I'm digesting C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller and so on and so forth, Francis Schaeffer. I'm seeing how they've affected culture and politics and science and so on and so forth, with implicit faith versus explicit faith.
There's a line between being egotistical and being genius or great.
It's unfortunate that myself, as a black man, cannot care about the issues that impact the black community without being seeing as a race-baiter or without being seen as someone who doesn't care about any other ethnic groups.
I function, I live life as a Christian, and me living life as a Christian doesn't mean I'm a sanitized person. It means that I readily admit I'm a jacked up person, and I need a savior.
When you're part of hip-hop culture but you're a Christian, people want you to be either-or. Or they'll create a category for you, like, 'Oh, gospel rap!'
What I bring is unique. No one else brings to the table what I am.
Waka is really intelligent. A lot of people don't know that because he just gets people hyped up, but he's a dynamic individual, and once you get to know him, you get to see a lot of that.
A lot of times, we believe what the media says about us or what our awards or accolades say about us instead of what God says about us.
Whether you think you're jacked up or not, we're all broken people, and until we can admit that, we're not going to progress.
I'm not a country music fan, so if you slide me some music and say, 'You gotta check this out; it's country,' I'm going to be a little hesitant to listen, and I think if someone says, 'Hey, you gotta listen to this guy rap; he's Christian,' you're like, 'I don't identify as Christian, so not really sure I want to listen to that.'
Lecrae is not just, you know, church, church, church.
Christianity is the truth about everything. If you say you have a Christian worldview, that means you see the world through that lens - not just how people get saved and what to stay away from.
I'm free. So, every time you hear me, just know that I'm speaking as a liberated person.
I've always been the type of person - you know, I kind of am extreme. So you know, I'm not like, 'Oh, let me get one tattoo.' It's, like, my old whole arm has to be covered.
Being faith-driven, being a hip-hop artist, being artistic in an urban context - all of those things make you unique, and you put yourself on the outside of what's considered the norm.
A lot of times, when you don't have to deal with some of the circumstances that affect minority culture, you just don't think they exist. This is a conversation I have with lots of my white friends all the time.
A girl invited me to come out to a Bible study, and I said, 'Why not? I don't have anything to lose.' I went, and to my surprise, I saw people that loved God, but they were not square or rigid. They were just people like me.
I live in Atlanta because Ludacris lives in Atlanta. And because T.I. lives in Atlanta and because Lil Wayne comes to Atlanta to hang out all the time and because Rick Ross' engineers are in Atlanta.
The biggest accolades aren't the Grammys for me. It's creating opportunities for people.
Honestly, what Jesus was about was laying his life down for the marginalized who didn't have it all together.
That's a win for me, for people to be able to say, 'Faith, fatherhood, monogamy exists in hip-hop.'
I'll put it to you like this: You can only go as mainstream as people will let you go.
Pain can be a haunting reminder to appreciate every waking moment.
America has this fascination with glorifying the villain and not talking about the trials and tribulations. We tell the story of the successful villain a lot of times, but we don't tell the story of the people who don't come out so successful, and we don't tell the story of all the bystanders of that choice.
I'm in a very comfortable place, and some of that comes from the shackles of not having to be what people want you to be.
If you suffocate my blackness, you've got to realize that's supremacy.
I think every artist reaches a place where they want to transcend genre.
Many times, that's how people see Christian art or Christians making art: They see the art as having an agenda.
My music is not Christian - Lecrae is. And you hear evidence of my faith in my music.
My mother was a - she worked at a halfway house. And one of the former inmates slid me a mix-tape full of different hip-hop songs. And so that was my first kind of experience with rap music.
Nobody would deny that if someone was a billionaire in 1962, his billions are going to affect all of his descendants. The reverse is also true. The lack of education, material, and finances for a slave are going to affect the descendants of that individual as well.
I'm all about authenticity.
I would say before I dedicated my life to living for God, I was really your average thrill seeker.
Christians have no idea how to deal with art.
Gandhi said it; Frederick Douglass said it. A lot of people have probably said 'It's not Christ that I have a problem with, it's his people.' And that was my struggle: it's God's people. I felt disenfranchisement. I felt so much abuse from organized religion because I'm walking in a direction that a lot of them couldn't fathom and can't understand.
My views as a Christian means there's a moral plumb line that I'm fighting to adhere to.
I always liked the content of a Common but the commercial viability of a Lil Jon. And I would say, 'Why don't those worlds ever come together?' So for me, it was like, 'Let's do that.'
In order to cry out for my black brothers, I had to hate the police.
Life is a precious gift - a gift we often take for granted until it is threatened.
If my significance comes from God, then I know I'm always secure.
You don't realize you're vying for the approval of everyone so much until being yourself is not approved of.
When you have legends who want to do music with you, and you befriend the Kendrick Lamars and the Chance the Rappers, that's due to you really being authentically hip-hop and not being contemporary Christian.
I've done songs with legends like De La Soul with Pete Rock. I've done songs with B.O.B. I've done songs with Big Kit.
Christians need to embrace that there need to be believers talking about love and social issues and all other aspects of life.
I think of people like Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes. They all came out of the South, and they followed a certain tradition and energy. That's no knock to groups like The Temptations or The Supremes, not at all, but they were way more polished in how they did things.
