Rap Music and Its Message

This chapter provides a methodology for exploring and understanding the connections between religion and popular culture, labeled as “nitty-gritty hermeneutics.” Nitty-gritty hermeneutics exhibits a sense of nonconformity. It ridicules interpretations and interpreters who seek to inhibit or restrict liberative movement and hard inquiries into the problems of life. The chapter then discusses nitty-gritty hermeneutics in the blues and rap music. In particular, it argues that rap music is an implicit critique of the black church, an accusation that the church has been consumed with a moralism that fails to take seriously the realities of African American suffering. Though rap has been criticized by some religious voices, it fills a spiritual void and engages in a needed dialogue about the situation of many black lives.