Tony Cummings reports on ETW, JC And The Boyz and D-Boy.

"Well here it is right in your face jammin'/I grab the microphone and start slammin' but not crammin' the word of God down your throat/it's real dope and I hope you can cope/but if not yo bit and it no thangiI'll just chalk you up as Mr Brain try in' to drain the juice but I get loose and when I produce/1 take my time/just a branch from the vine the true vine Romans 10:9 read homeboy it might change your mind/ but if not then fine 'cause I ain 't got time to waste no time/I 'm just kikin' out the vocab that make devils mad and those who are possessed cause it s fresh or should I say Jesus/so give me that mike/you stupid O you 're hard headed like the pharaoh he didn't want to listen and neither do you/what's it gonna take for God to get through to you/not what you 're doin' ain't hot every record you 're bus tin' is just rated X cussin' junk/but you can't see that yet 'cause you 're a fish caught in a net in the fog following the father of lies/maybe this here will open your eyes the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb 'cause I just go on and on/till the break of dawn this brother told me there's only one thing wrong why the same message in every song - Jesus Jesus."

D-Boy

Of all the new wave of Christian rap albums the one which has attracted some of the most 'going ga-ga' reviews is Plantin' The Seed' by D-Boy Rodriguez (Frontline Records), D-Boy is a Puerto Rican rapper from Dallas, Texas whose mother Cookie Rodriguez starred in an early Teen Challenge movie 'Please Don't Make Me Cry1. His streetwise nickname comes from an unlikely source. "I used to sing 'Danny Boy' when I was a kid and my grandmother started to call me D-Boy. The name just stuck. I was born and raised in church and when I was 15 I went away to youth camp in East Texas and got really slain in the spirit. I knew then I would be serving the Lord."

Growing up in Dallas, D-Boy listened to seminal secular rappers like the Sugar Hill Gang, got into break dancing and rapping until "my mother told me to rap for Jesus". D-Boy became a full-time Christian worker, working out of a converted warehouse called Street Church Academy, a school and an outreach for street kids. His rapping break came when a friend Tim Miner needed a rap to be written for a track he was recording for an album which was to be released in 1988 by Sparrow 'I Know You Think You Know'. "I wrote this rap, went down to the studio and ended up doing it on the album. Then people started writing in and asking where they could get more of my raps! Tim said make a demo and he came along and sang on them and then Frontline picked it up."

The magical mixture of Tim Miner's blue eyed soul interjections, some wicked drum programming and D-Boy's witty and incisive raps make 'Plantin' A Seed' one of the best albums of the year so far. Take 'Church Hoppers' for instance where D-Boy takes apart uncommitted church visitors with the most acerbic wit shown since Steve Taylor's "Steeple Chase":

"The churches today the numbers are whopping/They do this little dance and it's called church hopping/They hop from church to church cause they're very unstable/They might as well wear a church-hopping label."

Other subjects 'Plantin' A Seed' takes on are spiritual warfare ('Stompin' Satan') and up-front evangelism (the title track). D-Boy is convinced the church needs to recognise the potential of rap to communicate spiritual truth. "Look I work in the front line, in among drug dealers and prostitutes and all we have to use is the music of the streets to reach people. But when I go and do a gig sometimes I get real antagonism from Christians. The kids who come in, they love it. Like I played at a church in Dallas and started rapping and the DJ was mixing and scratching. Then they went and cut my mike off! They told me the kids were getting too excited! How we gonna reach kids with attitudes like that?"

In many ways, the Christian rap scene seems to resemble the white metal scene in as far as it's grown from being underground to a major new genre. It also seems likely to survive for some time to come. Says DC Talk's Toby McKeenan "I think it should stay around in Christian music because it's such a straight approach. It's just preaching the Word. Rap's gone through a couple of phases. When it first started, it was a total political statement for urban centres of America. Then, it led into this bragging type of thing, where "I'm the best on the block." But now it has really gone back. Groups like Public Enemy and KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions have gone back to saying "Yo, if you don't have something to say, then keep your mouth shut." They make fun of the MCs that just brag like LL Cool J. So they're looking for some substance in rap."

Whether Christians are rapping about Jesus or Public Enemy is rapping about black power, there is a deep belief and conviction in what is being said. Does rap, because of its bold approach, lend itself more to crossover than other pop music forms?

Chris Cooper of SFC thinks "Now there are more people in the mainstream that are conscious of God. So God, they're going to listen, if it's meeting the musical standards.

"When you listen to rap, it's like that man's story, of what he has to say. Because that's all rap is; what you're talking about. And when you're doing a rap, either you're talking about Jesus or you're not."

Toby McKeenan of DC Talk agrees. "Rap is such a strong statement about what you believe in your heart. That's what Public Enemy talks about, although I don't agree with what they're saying at all, cause they're just sowing seeds of rebellion within the black culture.

"But to me, they're preaching what's on their heart, which is fine, go for it. But why can't we preach what's in our heart, and have people buy it just the same? A lot of people that buy Public Enemy don't buy into their ideas at first. But as they listen to it, they'll start believing that stuff. So that's why I think rap can cross over. Because it is just a political statement. And if we believe in our hearts what we're saying about Christianity, what's the difference between that and what Public Enemy is doing?

The author acknowledges with thanks the use of material originally published in 'Rhythm, Rhyme And The New Word Music' by Brian Q Newcomb (April 1990.CCM) and 'Knights Of The Rap Table' by Brent Hershey (Jan/Feb 1990, Notebored).