Stay Free - Russel Brand - BREAK BREAD EP. 15 - LECRAE

00:00:00.000 *sad music*

00:00:24.000 *sad music* Thank you for joining me for Break Bread with Lecrae.

00:00:34.000 I'm Russell Brand.

00:00:35.000 Lecrae is an American, Christian, rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor.

00:00:41.000 He was raised in Houston, Texas by his single mom in a challenging environment during his youth.

00:00:49.000 Lecrae was influenced by hip-hop culture and faced various personal struggles at the age of 19 after attending a Bible study.

00:00:55.000 He embraced Christ, the decision that transformed his life and career.

00:00:59.000 In 2004, he founded Reach Records, an independent record label, and released his debut album, Real Talk, and has since released several acclaimed albums.

00:01:06.000 He's won a bunch of awards, Dove Awards, Grammy Awards.

00:01:09.000 He's the president and co-founder of Reach Life Ministries, a non-profit organization aimed at equipping Christian leaders with culturally relevant tools and resources.

00:01:16.000 In addition to that, he's a New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur, social activist.

00:01:21.000 He is Lecrae, and I'm honored to be joined by Lecrae today.

00:01:26.000 Lecrae, all right, mate, thanks for joining us.

00:01:28.000 Thank you.

00:01:29.000 What a laundry list of things.

00:01:31.000 It sounded like a lot, mate.

00:01:33.000 It sounded like a lot of achievements.

00:01:39.000 I'm just grateful.

00:01:41.000 I'm honored to even be able to use my gifts in any capacity to do what God has called me to do.

00:01:47.000 So that's, you know, it's a blessing.

00:01:52.000 Man, I've been reading some things lately that have really challenged me.

00:01:56.000 I'm reading, like, I'm going to talk to you about that in a minute.

00:02:12.000 I'm reading a little bit at the moment of Thomas Merton, the Catholic mystic, and what I'm getting from him is how absolute our position as Christians must be.

00:02:23.000 And then just yesterday, I was reading the British writer Chesterton, On St. Francis of Assisi.

00:02:30.000 And I was struck, Lecrae, by this.

00:02:35.000 Following Christ and surrendering to him is so close to a...

00:02:41.000 It's such a transformative experience, and it's so outside of the material world, or at least outside of the cultural restraints that I would have organised my life around previously.

00:02:52.000 And I speak as a person that's had a bunch of addiction issues, the obvious ones, drugs, slightly less obvious, sex, less obvious still but significant, fame, money.

00:03:03.000 Everything has been sort of, you know, I've been very devout and very dedicated before I was Christian, and I'm dedicated and devout now.

00:03:11.000 So you must be a lot more experienced than I am dealing with things that I'm just now questioning.

00:03:19.000 For example, to start us off, you started by expressing gratitude.

00:03:25.000 And I see the significance of gratitude in ensuring that I don't give personal credit to myself for, inverted commas, my own achievements.

00:03:34.000 I wonder how you continue to navigate the space and power that you have without falling to or for either flesh or worldliness or even...

00:03:49.000 The kind of stuff that goes on in my head, which I'll probably call the devil these days.

00:03:53.000 I wonder how you continue to navigate them challenges.

00:03:58.000 Yeah, I mean, the funny part about it is I think there's this misnomer or this idea that once you become a Christian, all of a sudden you now are invincible to these challenges that you used to wrestle with in the past.

00:04:18.000 And for me, Very similar to you, very licentious background, very dark, promiscuous drugs, so on and so forth.

00:04:29.000 Those are the things that you're trying to run so far away from.

00:04:37.000 I think in the process of changing my mental maps, right, when I became a Christian, I feel like the first phase was awakening.

00:04:44.000 You're like, oh, wow, I did not know there was a God.

00:04:47.000 I did not know Jesus died for my sins.

00:04:49.000 Then after awakening becomes growth where you're trying to develop, you're changing your mental maps, you're digesting as many books as you can, as many sermons as you can, podcasts as you can.

00:04:58.000 And then the third wave is productivity where you're trying to get involved and what can I do to serve?

00:05:06.000 During that process, it's a lot simpler to abstain from a lot of the fleshly kind of things because you're in this process of growth and development.

00:05:19.000 It's really after that stage three where it hit me the most.

00:05:24.000 Stage three is where many Christians cap out. 1.00

00:05:29.000 They haven't dealt with any severe crisis in their journey with Christ to be able to have to pull on any Different types of resources.

00:05:38.000 And so that's really where the struggle had come for me is in that after I was productive and I was learning, now I'm in this process and this place of how do I navigate hardships?

00:05:51.000 And then it becomes a lot easier to lean on the old modes of reliance, which is the flesh, which is pride.

00:05:58.000 And so long answer to your question is what I've seen to be the best thing is To work through a constant pursuit of humility.

00:06:10.000 It's not like something that you just wake up and, oh, I'm humble today.

00:06:13.000 It's a journey.

00:06:14.000 Every day I wake up, arrogance and pride are at my throat. 0.81

00:06:18.000 And so it's been a constant battle to be in front of the Father and to be in front of Jesus to say, okay, I need to kill my flesh and fight.

00:06:29.000 Old molds of reliance is the kind of...

00:06:33.000 Spontaneous sentence that reminds me what you do for a living and demonstrates your gift in real time.

00:06:42.000 And I love what you said about crisis.

00:06:46.000 I come to faith late, I guess late in life.

00:06:49.000 I don't know how long I'm going to live for.

00:06:50.000 Eternity, apparently.

00:06:52.000 I come to life to faith recently.

00:06:56.000 And because the baptism and...

00:07:04.000 I've come to him in crisis like a kind of a rift, a separating, a breaking down.

00:07:12.000 And I've been through so many of those things.

00:07:13.000 I'm sort of surprised that I'm not wiser because I've been shown so many times, don't worship flesh, don't worship your ego, don't set yourself up as the sort of false god at the middle of your universe and then subtly make sacrifices to that false god the whole time.

00:07:30.000 I've been shown it so many times, I'm a slow learner.

00:07:33.000 I wonder, I know that a few things.

00:07:37.000 One is I know that you've had challenges in your early life.

00:07:41.000 Some people are commenting, constant pursuit of humility, Ashela in the chat saying that's a beautiful phrase as well.

00:07:48.000 I can imagine that you've dealt with crisis in your early life, just from what I know about you, but what about since coming to economic, cultural prominence and success, what does crisis look like in those conditions, if I may ask?

00:08:09.000 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:08:10.000 I think that's, you know, the irony is, if you look at my family's background, we come from humble, near invisible circumstances.

00:08:21.000 My grandmother left home at 13 years old.

00:08:24.000 She had 12 kids.

00:08:26.000 She was dirt poor. 1.00

00:08:28.000 She didn't know how to use a washing machine. 1.00

00:08:29.000 Then she has my mother.

00:08:31.000 My mother, she can't afford to take care of my mother, so my mother's sent to live with family members. 0.94

00:08:36.000 My mother grows up.

00:08:37.000 In unfortunate circumstances, she gives birth to me out of, you know, a young pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy, and now we're struggling.

00:08:48.000 And so there's this sense that I need to have financial security in order to avoid these cycles that I've existed in in the past.

00:09:03.000 Money became a source of security, a sense of like, oh, this is going to make sure that I'm safe and I'm good.

00:09:12.000 I don't think I had the temptations that I think a lot of celebrities or people who come into wealth have in terms of, I want to flaunt it and I want to be flamboyant and buy lavish things so that you can see that I matter.

00:09:30.000 I was more like the person in the scriptures who stored up all this grain in case, you know, to make myself feel like now I'm safe.

00:09:41.000 And I think what God has had to do is strip that off of me and to allow me to remember that the money is not my sense of security.

00:09:48.000 God is my security and he uses money as a tool in order to do things.

00:09:53.000 But at the end of the day, I've got to be relying on my daily bread.

00:09:56.000 It was never a sense of like, let me buy the flashy cars, let me do all these things.

00:10:00.000 It was more so, I'm safe now because I have money, which would make me make bad decisions because of the false pretense that I was safe.

00:10:13.000 It's pretty subtle and insidious that something that by rational and cultural Criteria would be regarded as sensible and appropriate as a Christian is a kind of false idolatry.

00:10:29.000 I identify that by making that security a type of God, it's a transgression against Christ and the perfect peace that he grants through his salvation ain't dependent on what we achieve.

00:10:44.000 And that, just for me, seems like a hard...

00:10:47.000 Like, alright, I'll just take enough manna for today.

00:10:50.000 I know that more manna's coming tomorrow.

00:10:53.000 I'm cool.

00:10:54.000 I'll be very tempted to load the tabernacle up with a lot of manna, see if I could sell manna on the side, get a little cut, cut that manna with non-manna.

00:11:04.000 Yeah, give my friends, I get the manna first, then give my friends, bro, this manna don't taste right.

00:11:09.000 I'm getting a nosebleed.

00:11:10.000 I don't know why that is.

00:11:11.000 I had the same manner you guys got Thank you Thank you.

00:11:22.000 That means I must have changed, man.

00:11:24.000 Before we go into it, your last answer inspired a lot of questions in me, Lecrae.

00:11:29.000 Before we get into looking at, because this is something I'm really fascinated in, because when you tell your family story like that, it seems like me as an English person, impossible to divorce the situation and circumstances.

00:11:44.000 You described from things, obviously, like everyone knows, about the culture and nature and history of the United States, and then the kind of argument about what aspects of that argument and culture do we allow, inverted commas, the culture itself to resolve, and what do we give to Jesus?

00:12:01.000 Now, I know the answer is we give everything to Jesus, but I reckon that there's probably a good conversation to have about that.

00:12:07.000 Can you lead us in communion, Lecrae, please?

00:12:12.000 Absolutely.

00:12:15.000 As we recall the night of the Passover where Moses told all of the people of Israel that they were to sacrifice a lamb in order for their safety,

00:12:34.000 we see that this was something that was done throughout time where Jesus himself sat with the disciples and they were Probably assuming they were just in another Passover meal process, but then he referred to himself as the lamb, and he said that his body was going to be broken for our salvation.

00:12:58.000 Not an actual spotless lamb, but he was the spotless lamb, and he said that his blood is what would save us.

00:13:06.000 And so we let us, you know, Break the bread of his body and eat of him, his flesh, and let us drink of his blood. 0.99

00:13:19.000 Father God, we thank you for your goodness and your mercy.

00:13:22.000 Thank you for sending Jesus to be our atoning sacrifice.

00:13:27.000 and we eat in light of the brokenness of his flesh.

00:13:32.000 Father, we thank you for the blood that covers a multitude of sins.

00:13:41.000 and we drink in light of the blood that was spilled.

00:13:47.000 We thank you in Christ's name.

00:13:55.000 Amen.

00:13:56.000 Amen.

00:14:00.000 If you feel called, as you do and obviously are, to represent Jesus here in ways that previously he hasn't been represented, presumably because some of the values that you say you wake up with at your throat, the pride, the arrogance in the genre of certain aspects and maybe the predominant.

00:14:21.000 Genres within hip-hop celebrate that pride and arrogance for reasons that culturally make a great deal of sense, given what, say, James Baldwin, that great African-American teacher, said, what kind of culture would have to create the category of Negro to cast its own shadow onto?

00:14:40.000 What does that tell you about culture?

00:14:42.000 Now, I know that for a minute you were involved in Black Lives Matter, and there's no question that there Are racial and cultural questions in the great nation of America that need to be asked and answered correctly?

00:14:58.000 How do we navigate something that seems from an outsider like me?

00:15:04.000 As obvious as how generational poverty of your family, your grandmother there, having all them kids, your mother, unwanted pregnancy. 0.99

00:15:12.000 It seems difficult to extricate those kind of challenges from the history of black people in the United States of America, given it's only probably five or six generations ago that there was either slavery or Jim Crow or some iteration.

00:15:26.000 How do we not seek to resolve those problems through...

00:15:31.000 The culture and through the politics.

00:15:33.000 What do great leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King offer us?

00:15:38.000 And how does America wrestle with those questions now through culture and inquiry without breaching the kind of Christian values that we know have to be ultimate in our lives?

00:15:51.000 Just a little question to consider after communion, Lecrae.

00:15:55.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:57.000 That was a good question.

00:15:59.000 One, I want to clarify beforehand, I was always a supporter of the sentiment that Black Lives Matter.

00:16:08.000 I was never a supporter of the organization.

00:16:10.000 So the sentiment I agreed with, I do think Black Lives Matter, and I think brown lives matter, and I think every life that God has created under the sun matters.

00:16:22.000 At that particular moment in time, it was as if Black lives were not being considered.

00:16:26.000 And so I agreed with the sentiment. 0.98

00:16:28.000 But the organization, I had significant challenges and struggles with.

00:16:33.000 So that's a delineation.

00:16:34.000 But to answer your question, you know, I think that there's always a tension when you're talking about ethnicity in America.

00:16:49.000 There's always this tension, but it's not even a tension that is birthed in America.

00:16:58.000 Even if you go into the scriptures, there's ethnic tension between the Samaritans, between the Jews and the Gentiles.

00:17:04.000 And so that ethnic tension and the necessity or the desire to exalt one's ethnicity over the other is an age-old issue.

00:17:19.000 I think that, you know, God is not opposed to ethnicities.

00:17:24.000 Otherwise, he would not have said, oh, the Jews are going to be my chosen people in this era of time.

00:17:29.000 And then, you know, grafting in Gentiles and just it didn't have to be that way. 0.88

00:17:34.000 He could have just made us like this, you know, homogenous group of people with no ethnicities.

00:17:40.000 But he did it.

00:17:41.000 So I think it's something that we should honor and respect.

00:17:44.000 I don't think it gives us credence to see one as greater than the other.

00:17:49.000 And I think what's happened in America historically is that we've created a caste system based on color.

00:17:58.000 So it wasn't about my color is better than your color.

00:18:03.000 It was about, well, how do we delineate between Who should be a slave?

00:18:10.000 Who shouldn't be a slave? 0.75

00:18:10.000 If we've already taken these Black people from Africa and they're slaves, then we've got these Irish people over here and they're slaves. 0.75

00:18:18.000 If they all start escaping, how do we delineate? 0.94

00:18:20.000 Well, let's just say, let's make the caste system one of color so that now we're just dealing with, if you're of this hue, you are lesser than. 1.00

00:18:29.000 And that was a lot easier to deal with.

00:18:31.000 It was pragmatic, and I'm not saying, I'm simplifying it, oversimplifying it, but it was pragmatic.

00:18:38.000 I think when you fast-forward the tape to today, you're just seeing the effects of that.

00:18:46.000 It's like a trickle-down effect.

00:18:47.000 Any decision we make, there's consequences and realities.

00:18:52.000 I live in Atlanta, Georgia.

00:18:54.000 It was burned down.

00:18:56.000 Because it was burned down, we live with the consequences of the way they rebuilt it.

00:19:00.000 I hate the roads and the hills, but that's the consequence of the rebuild.

00:19:04.000 So where we are today, I think as Christians, we've got to say, okay, how does the Lord want us to see each other?

00:19:11.000 How does he want us to treat each other in light of this?

00:19:14.000 And how can we consider one another?

00:19:16.000 Consider what may be the implications of historic trauma or tragedies and how that affects us today.

00:19:24.000 It's not to say, You know, I'm trying to make you feel guilty or you're better than me or I'm better than you.

00:19:31.000 It's just to say, hey, man, you've been through some trauma.

00:19:33.000 Russell's been through trauma.

00:19:34.000 Do I consider that when I'm addressing Russell?

00:19:36.000 Or do I just say, oh, man, you're a human.

00:19:38.000 I'm a human.

00:19:38.000 Who cares if you were addicted to drugs before?

00:19:40.000 That has no bearing on your life today.

00:19:43.000 I don't think that's wise and I don't think that's compassionate or kind.

00:19:47.000 All right.

00:19:47.000 It's like that Christianity encompasses values.

00:19:52.000 That transcend those kind of limitations, although those limitations are real in a way and have always been there.

00:19:59.000 And you said should, could, or may be honoured.

00:20:04.000 We could honour and enjoy that about one another.

00:20:06.000 And it is interesting when you talk about the individual trauma versus cultural trauma, because one of the things I get when I'm looking at the culture, Lecrae, is that people that are advocating on the left A redress and reckoning around the consequences of imperialism,

00:20:26.000 colonialism, which I can, as a British person, appreciate and understand, are proposing solutions that create more division and problems rather than the available solution of compassion and kindness that actually is solution-oriented.

00:20:45.000 A lot of the...

00:20:48.000 Solutions around, say, what they would call diversity are likely to bring about future conflict and division rather than solution, consolidation, and bringing about his kingdom.

00:20:59.000 It's almost like, ironically, these things don't go far enough.

00:21:03.000 They think that they're being really radical, but they're actually not going far enough because if you pursue the idea of compassion and kindness, then we're all one human family, then we do have an obligation to love one another, and it's complicated.

00:21:16.000 You're right.

00:21:17.000 I am defined by individual trauma.

00:21:20.000 Me, as a white, working-class English person, my cultural problems aren't...

00:21:30.000 Gosh, it's a terrible word to use, really.

00:21:33.000 Glamorised, or perhaps narrativised in the same way, because I don't want to suggest that slavery weren't a real and dreadful, dreadful thing.

00:21:39.000 But colonisation, I've always thought this as an English person, because it's sort of based a little bit on something the British writer George Orwell said, Lecrae.

00:21:47.000 He said, when he was asked some question about the British working class, he said the British working class is in India.

00:21:53.000 Because Britain had colonised India by that time.

00:21:56.000 But once a culture has dominated its own, inverted commas, native or indigenous population, it does move on to imperialism, colonisation, conquering other territories, accruing other territories, absolute and total dominion.

00:22:10.000 And I think that we are living in a time of such radical spiritual warfare that we can't afford to remain trapped in historic trauma, cultural or ethnic trauma, Or individual trauma.

00:22:25.000 We just need such resolute principles in him.

00:22:30.000 And I can't see another way.

00:22:31.000 I don't think there is another way.

00:22:33.000 Like any Christian, I've gone from...

00:22:35.000 That's a good...

00:22:35.000 Well, no, my type of Christian.

00:22:36.000 That's a good idea.

00:22:37.000 That's intelligent.

00:22:38.000 That's a good symbol.

00:22:40.000 Oh, man, it happened.

00:22:41.000 It actually happened.

00:22:43.000 Whether it's reading acts or things that happen in the privacy of my own mind or just the impossibility of it.

00:22:50.000 Not happening.

00:22:51.000 I've been submerged and overwhelmed.

00:22:52.000 When you said them three stages, I reckon I've been through awakening.

00:22:57.000 I reckon that's taken a long time.

00:22:59.000 Growth, I'm doing all that reading that you described now.

00:23:02.000 And productivity, I'm probably trying to rush too much into...

00:23:05.000 Productivity.

00:23:06.000 Let's get into productivity now.

00:23:08.000 We've got no time to waste.

00:23:09.000 And I would use scripture to back that up as well.

00:23:12.000 I'd go, look at Acts.

00:23:13.000 They weren't messing around.

00:23:14.000 They weren't like, I'm just going to go to university for three years.

00:23:17.000 They're out there baptising people front and centre.

00:23:21.000 Do you ever feel like your own Christianity?

00:23:25.000 Wherever aspects of your own...

00:23:26.000 I'll just offer this final clarification.

00:23:29.000 I've been talking for a while.

00:23:30.000 I talked to Dallas Jenkins the other day, creator of The Chosen, and I said to him, I bet you get that thing where people tell you, you should do this, you should do that.

00:23:39.000 And I'm like, but you don't need to listen to none of that because the Lord has put you in this position.

00:23:44.000 Same with you, because I'm about to do it a little bit with you.

00:23:46.000 you're the person that the lord chose to be in this position to set up all these initiatives to have all of this success to have this spotlight so almost anyone saying to you why don't you do it this way it's sort of annoying i think when people do that tell you like why don't you like they want to sort of mess with the faders on your mix well i would say like do you not sometimes feel that That what's happening is so urgent that we've got to really get into preparation.

00:24:16.000 There's some revival going on, don't you think?

00:24:18.000 Do you feel that we're being called to do things in a very early, first-century Christian way?

00:24:24.000 And how do you wrestle with that, with, I don't know, wanting to stay calm and tranquil and almost not get too narcissistic about your own importance?

00:24:34.000 Yeah, I think that's a great question.

00:24:38.000 I think that's the tension.

00:24:40.000 That's that.

00:24:41.000 So on one hand of the spectrum, you've got Paul writing to the Thessalonians, and it was as if they believed tomorrow Christ would return.

00:24:52.000 And so there was a sense of urgency from the moment he left to 2,000 years later, here we are.

00:25:02.000 So I think that's an aspect that...

00:25:05.000 We're to believe because we don't know the day or the hour.

00:25:10.000 It could be tomorrow.

00:25:12.000 It could be 2,000 more years from now.

00:25:14.000 But I do think that we work in such a way that demonstrates that we're not in control of that time.

00:25:22.000 I don't want to pretend like I can stop the clock whenever I want to and give myself some time before the Lord comes back.

00:25:30.000 I want to operate as if I believe this is a reality.

00:25:33.000 At the same time, You know, the scripture says, do not be overly righteous.

00:25:39.000 And I think in being overly righteous, we can tend to believe that we can fix all of the ills of society in our lifetime.

00:25:48.000 And, you know, sometimes we get overly righteous and say, an example is like, oh, I'm so sick of what's happening in Southeast Asia and people are being exploited.

00:26:04.000 You know, they're making these shoes for nothing.

00:26:09.000 And what can I do about it?

00:26:12.000 Well, am I going to be able to change the entire country like just me today?

00:26:20.000 Probably not.

00:26:22.000 Maybe I can adjust what I purchase if that bothers me in this capacity, but I don't want to be overly righteous and condemn myself because I haven't stopped.

00:26:32.000 The exploitation of child workers in Southeast Asia.

00:26:35.000 I want to, hey, what part can I play in the grand narrative of everything?

00:26:41.000 Excuse me.

00:26:44.000 And then I think for me, the last stage of productivity is where generally Christians cap out. 1.00

00:26:57.000 You've overworked yourself.

00:26:59.000 You've grinded.

00:26:59.000 You're a speedboat.

00:27:01.000 And you're running out of gas.

00:27:04.000 And God never intended us for us to be speedboats.

00:27:07.000 We're supposed to be sailboats.

00:27:08.000 A sailboat, there's work required, but you're raising a sail.

00:27:13.000 You're anticipating the spirit to blow you where you need to go and not just trying to do all of the work in your own strength, in your own power.

00:27:21.000 And the fourth stage, I would say, in the journey with the Lord.

00:27:27.000 It's being an apprentice of Jesus and allowing the Spirit to do the inner work, the deeper stuff in you.

00:27:33.000 Why is this my first place of running when I get in a jam?

00:27:40.000 Why is it not trusting in God?

00:27:41.000 I had to ask myself even recently, Jesus tells the disciples that when he appears and then he descends from heaven and he walks with them for a few days and he's like, I'm sending someone.

00:27:56.000 Better.

00:27:56.000 I'm sending you a greater helper.

00:27:58.000 And yet and still, I'm like, no, I want Jesus here.

00:28:01.000 I'd rather have Jesus than the helper that he gave me more than the helper.

00:28:06.000 And it's like, oh, Lord, I want what I... Why is that?

00:28:10.000 What is that in me that needs to be worked out?

00:28:12.000 And those are the questions, the deeper questions that I have to ask myself.

00:28:17.000 So, I mean, I guess to answer your question, I think...

00:28:21.000 We get over...

00:28:22.000 We're by nature self-righteous.

00:28:24.000 We're by nature people who like to control the narrative, who control things.

00:28:28.000 If I can do it, it'll fix it.

00:28:30.000 It'll do this.

00:28:31.000 And the much harder thing to do is to be dependent on God.

00:28:35.000 The much harder thing to do is allow Him to shape your character and mold you.

00:28:39.000 And as you're doing the work, not that you sit back, but to say, I may not be able to change the entirety of this circumstance, but God...

00:28:48.000 By your power, by your spirit, I'm going to play my part.

00:28:51.000 And who knows what that will contribute to.

00:28:54.000 Oh, yeah, I like that.

00:28:55.000 Because in a way, the alternative is like that aspect of Satan that is I want a kingdom set apart by myself comes out when I try to establish the parameters and conditions for even goals that I might declare are done in his name.

00:29:12.000 And obviously, all of us know.

00:29:15.000 In the name of the Lord, pretty dark things have been done.

00:29:20.000 So the best thing for me to do is, yeah, to move away from speedboat and my own fuel supply and towards sailboat.

00:29:27.000 Then I know, is the boat moving and what direction is it moving in?

00:29:32.000 But that's so at odds, isn't it, with the cultural directions that we're receiving that are so...

00:29:37.000 Absolutely.

00:29:38.000 Dedicated to personal autonomy.

00:29:43.000 When you come to the Lord, mate, would you tell me, please, a bit about that testimony and whether or not you ever felt that there would be an exclusion, a contradiction, though I see more and more every day that there is paradox throughout.

00:30:02.000 It's sort of almost built on the tension of paradox I'm somehow starting to understand or see or feel.

00:30:09.000 Anyway, I wonder, did you ever feel that there was something contradictory between hip-hop and some of the tropes and attitudes within hip-hop?

00:30:19.000 Although I recognise that, like any art form, it's...

00:30:22.000 It has many, many ways of being expressed and sort of sub-genres within it.

00:30:27.000 And how was it you come to the Lord?

00:30:29.000 And did you ever feel that coming to the Lord might be, because I can tell you this, from a cultural position that's not got the baggage that is implied in my question, me coming to the Lord, I don't want to be told what to do.

00:30:43.000 I don't want to bow down before some man, like man, even if that man is also God.

00:30:48.000 I think that's the thing, like the biggest problem I had, is that I want to be God.

00:30:52.000 I don't want to be told what to.

00:30:54.000 But to be God is terrifying.

00:30:56.000 You're just there on the edge of the universe with nothing and no one to turn to or have recourse to.

00:31:01.000 So I wonder how you came to the Lord and whether or not any of them conditions, i.e.

00:31:07.000 moving into hip-hop for part of your mission and ministry, and doubts about surrender to Him were troubling for you.

00:31:16.000 Yeah, I grew up with a mother.

00:31:22.000 Extremely religious, but in a very legalistic environment.

00:31:25.000 So she was taught she wasn't allowed to wear pants. 0.92

00:31:28.000 She couldn't listen to certain types of music.

00:31:30.000 She couldn't wear makeup.

00:31:32.000 She couldn't go to sporting events, movies.

00:31:35.000 And it oppressed her so much that she rebelled and did not raise me in any form of religious environment ever.

00:31:46.000 We may have gone to service like...

00:31:49.000 For special occasions, but it wasn't a part of my life.

00:31:51.000 She raised me to be a free thinker.

00:31:53.000 Gave me philosophy books and all types of different things.

00:31:58.000 Christianity was the furthest thing from my mind as a young man. 0.99

00:32:03.000 It seemed simplistic and it seemed almost remedial and stupid, if I'm being honest. 1.00

00:32:10.000 It was like, this is the dumb people's religion. 1.00

00:32:14.000 I see you can relate. 0.99

00:32:18.000 So, for me, I came to the faith as a skeptic.

00:32:22.000 I was like, answer this.

00:32:24.000 Do you have an answer for this?

00:32:25.000 Do you have an answer for this?

00:32:26.000 What about this?

00:32:27.000 And it was so intellectual that, for me, the struggle was, how does this, like, it does not make sense intellectually.

00:32:44.000 It wasn't lining up.

00:32:45.000 And the issue I had to come to grips with when I had an encounter with the living God is that someone may be able to argue intellectually with me, but this existential experience, this encounter with Jesus is not something that I, it's otherworldly.

00:33:05.000 It's outside of time, space, and dimension.

00:33:08.000 And I can walk you down the plank intellectually up to a point.

00:33:13.000 But you're going to have to exercise faith.

00:33:15.000 And honestly, to me, it takes more faith to not believe in light of everything that we see in creation.

00:33:21.000 So the contradictory part for me was long before I became a Christian.

00:33:28.000 It was always contradictory.

00:33:31.000 Once I became a Christian, I was so blown away with these new realities.

00:33:36.000 I was burdened to see people in the street and other hip-hop artists know what I knew.

00:33:43.000 I was like, how do I get them to see what I've seen?

00:33:46.000 And I didn't know.

00:33:47.000 I didn't think it was a bad thing to use the skill set.

00:33:50.000 I thought I was a skateboarder or a BMX biker.

00:33:52.000 And I was like, I'm going to use this for Jesus some kind of way.

00:33:55.000 How do I use this to help them see Jesus more?

00:34:00.000 Because that's all that I knew to do was to articulate.

00:34:04.000 And plus, hip-hop was, at the time, it was used to...

00:34:08.000 Push a lot of other agendas and worldviews.

00:34:12.000 So there was a lot of Islamic views in hip-hop.

00:34:15.000 There was like 5%.

00:34:16.000 They were all kind of like prison cults and cult theologies that were interweaved in there.

00:34:22.000 So for me, it was like, oh, okay, well, I'll just do what they're doing with my faith.

00:34:28.000 And so, yeah, obviously, hip-hop is rebellious.

00:34:33.000 And I think it's understandably so to a degree, but it's...

00:34:37.000 Also, a place where the sin inside of us can be highlighted and exalted because it makes money.

00:34:46.000 It's capitalism at the end of the day.

00:34:48.000 It's like, well, let me tell you terrible stories and heinous things because you're on a safari in the ghettos of America. 0.94

00:34:55.000 And what do you want to see?

00:34:56.000 You want to see a lion?

00:34:57.000 I'll tell you about a lion, even though this is not helpful for us as a culture.

00:35:01.000 If people are hungry to hear about lions, let me tell them the story of murder and death and all these particular things, which at one point in time was actual reporting from the community, but then it was exploited and made into a capitalistic way to survive.

00:35:21.000 And it's not all the rapper's fault.

00:35:24.000 The rappers are at fault for articulating this thing to get themselves out of a bad condition, sure.

00:35:31.000 But also the labels are at fault for endorsing it, for sponsoring it, for putting money behind it, right?

00:35:36.000 Like, why are this major company, why are you investing millions of dollars into little so-and-so who wants to talk about killing the community all day long?

00:35:47.000 I think that people would push back if someone made songs about, you know, taking advantage of children, but yet and still drug use.

00:36:00.000 And gunplay is acceptable. 0.88

00:36:02.000 I don't get it.

00:36:04.000 Oh man, that's some good analysis and good cultural history of hip-hop music there.

00:36:09.000 Makes me think sometimes that there are CIA ops where the same way as you would infiltrate a community with crack, you might infiltrate a community with cultural art forms that are self-punishing and punitive.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - February 25, 2025

BREAK BREAD EP. 15 - LECRAE

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