The music of Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae and his label Reach Records may not yet be in your church hymnal, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t heard it — especially if you have youngsters in the house.
Reach Records’ music was featured in the 2021 Netflix hit family movie, “Blue Miracle,” then in the 2022 science fiction series “Raising Dion” (Season 2). It also was included in the NBA-centric video game “2K20,” one of the most popular titles for PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
Lecrae, who has seven Grammy nominations and two wins to his name, has been the driving force behind Reach’s success, guiding the label he co-founded to mainstream success while ensuring it stays true to its Christian mission.
‘Digging deeper’
The music is for hip-hop fans who want their music filled with hope and inspiration — who long for it to be free from the coarse content found in so much mainstream hip-hop, Lecrae said. It is a “bridge” between the church and the culture.
“There’s some artists who make music just for the church. And that’s great. There’s some artists who make music from the church to the world. And that’s great,” he noted. “[But] we make music for the church and the world. So there’s something for everybody when they listen.”
With eight artists, Reach’s release schedule stays busy. In the past year the label has produced new music by Andy Mineo (“Never Land II”), Hulvey (“Coma” and “Christopher”) and 1K Phew (“No Church In A While”).
Some songs will have unambiguous faith content. Others won’t. But all of them will “paint a better picture of who God is,” Lecrae said.
The 42-year-old said he spent the first part of his career focused on his own success, but now he wants to focus more on raising up the next generation of Christian hip-hop performers.
“I want to encourage these young Christian hip-hop artists to be okay with digging deeper [in Scripture],” he said.
For the genre to continue growing, Lecrae noted, it needs to be embraced to a greater degree by the Christian community.
“If we double down and continue to support each other then it’ll grow,” Lecrae said. “The Christian music industry got behind Christian hip-hop for a season and it propelled it. We have to lock that down and support ourselves first — support one another as a Christian community before the outside world can acknowledge what we have to offer.”
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