Lecrae, Take Me As I Am and Cash or Chirist/Fanatics

Quality: 5

Clean: 5

Genre: Rap

Christian rap artist Lecrae is coming out with a new album, Rebel,  September 30. You can pre-order it from his label and from Amazon…although they are currently out of stock. If you like rap, you should check him out. I always thought I could like rap, but I never listened to it because the entire genre was too laced with profanities and ill-treatment of women. Last year one of my students introduced me to Lecrae. I felt like my musical world was turned up-side-down. Here was good quality rap music with a positive message. My husband had had the same quandary. He basically only likes rap/hip-hop but had in the past couple years just stopped listening to ALL music because NOTHING he liked was clean. So finding Lecrae was a gold mine for both of us. As one facebook fan says, “…god provided an answer to my music problem. Positive lyrics and sick beats.”

Take Me As I Am, is both my husband’s and my favorite song by him. Its from his 2005 album, Real Talk. Its basically the story of his and every conversion from living for ourselves to giving our life to Jesus. The words are poignant and convicting. Listening to a song like this on the drive to work sure beats the radio with songs like Promiscuoius Girl et al.

This is a fan made video

My second favorite song by him is in collaboration with another artist, Trip Lee. Cash or Christ/Fanatics is a mash-up between Lecrae’s original rap Fanatic and Trip Lee’s original rap Cash or Christ (from album If They Only Knew), with metal music in the background. It might sound weird but it is awesome! The main message is about living a life for Christ vs. for our material lusts. The mashup is found on an album by 116 Clique called Amped.

Here is another fan video. (I’m not a huge video person but its a way to share the songs with you). listen to the chorus by Lecrae where he says over and over that he’s Redeemed. It makes me tear up almost every time.

Check out his Myspace page which has a couple of his new songs.