I remember when I was 17 and a woman asked me, "are you saved?"
I didn't have any idea what she meant.
I was like, "saved?
What the heck is saved?"
The best thing I could think through was maybe she means, am I like my
grandmother?
And I adamantly told her no, because I'm not like my grandmother.
I do hip hop music.
It's more than music.
It's actually a culture.
It's the lens by which you see the world.
[poetic verse] They talkin' reckless, what you expectin' from the walkin' dead? [end poetic verse]
It's OK to be bold, passionate.
It's masculinity.
It's what I do.
I used to sneak and watch rap videos in my grandmother's house when I was
too little, she wouldn't have let me watch them.
And I would sit there and watch them, and I would just marvel late at night.
I found people to look up to.
There were no Barack Obama's, there were no Martin Luther King's and
Malcom X's.
They had all passed away and so I had Tupac.
[poetic verse] I've been trapped since birth, cautious 'cause I'm cursed.
The fantasies of my family in a hearse, and they say it's the white
man I should fear, but it's my own kind doin' all the killing here. [end poetic verse]
I wasn't the greatest athlete, definitely wasn't a scholarly student.
I wasn't the toughest guy.
But being able to rap was my source of significance.
I grew up wrestling with significance because my father and my mother
weren't together.
Never met my father.
He became a drug addict and kind of let his life crumble.
I felt like my dad was this piece of my life that I needed to have to feel
like I was somebody.
Having a single mother who worked a lot, she just had to entrust me to the
care of family members and different people a lot of times.
I experienced abuse as a kid, I experienced neglect and different kind
of things, and so I was just wanting real significance and I didn't feel
like I was going to get it trying to be this manicured, good, all around
student and person.
The people I looked up to were gangsters.
My uncle, I remember him showing me a gun and I just wanted to
be like those guys.
So, I took a BB gun and stood in the middle of the street and pointed it at
a car, and I just saw the lady panic and freak out.
For me, that was just fun.
I just didn't have anything to do.
I wanted to be back in the inner city.
I wanted to be doing criminal activity, so I just kept rebelling and
I kept doing worse.
In drugs at 16, fighting all the time.
I got arrested in high school for stealing, and you're just like, what
are you going to do with your life?
I got put on a gang list.
I remember thinking, man, I guess I'm supposed to care.
Went from drugs to drinking to I'm a wreck, partying,
to I don't fit anywhere.
I'm just this misfit of a person.
My mother was like, "you just need to read your Bible."
And I remember ripping the pages out of the Bible and
throwing it on the floor.
I said, "I don't want this Bible."
I just couldn't wrap my hands around this being true, this being real.
My grandmother was a Christian.
I would have to go to church with her.
It was like older people.
It was old people.
So for me, church wasn't about God.
Church was for them.
It wasn't for me.
It was probably not real, probably just something people use as a crutch.
I think as the emptiness started to get more profound, when I had to drink
more, smoke more, find another woman, another woman, another woman, I was
really, really, really in a dark place.
[poetic verse] 5:46 in the morning, tossing and turning, chest burning, sermons in my
head keep reoccurring, having vision in my head of a kid crying at the feet
of a father for all the wrong things that he did.
Now I'm sweating in my sheets, can't sleep, 'cause my mind keep telling me
I'm six feet deep.
Don't remind me.
Even though I'm still alive, I can't tell.
The way I'm living my life, I feel I'm going to hell. [end poetic verse]
I got invited by a friend to a conference.
And I'm really just more excited about being in the big city.
I'm more excited about there being girls.
I'm more excited about just what the city brings.
I'm not really concerned about the conference.
So I get to the conference, and I see like guys who have been shot from
being in gangs.
I see girls who were extremely promiscuous in the past.
I see rappers.
I see dancers.
I see singers.
I see people who came from the same background I came from, and they still
embodied who they were culturally, but they were all in love with Jesus.
And I had never seen that before.
And then I saw another group, and they were sold out for Jesus.
They were rapping and you heard about it in their songs, and I was like,
"what in the world?"
And as I listened to the lyrics, I was like, man, I don't know this.
I don't understand this God, this God they're talking about.
And then finally, someone got up and said, "do you know you've been bought
with a price?"
And they told me the story of Jesus on Golgotha, and Him carrying the cross
and Him bearing all of my sin, all of my lying, all of my cheating, all of
my escapades, all of my drinking and drugging and put it on His own back.
And he said, "I was bought with a price."
And it made me think, somebody thinks I'm significant enough to die for me.
Somebody thinks I'm significant enough to climb up this mountain with this
cross on His back and take nails in His wrists and His feet for me.
I remember articulating like, "God, get me out of this, just don't kill me.
Do whatever you've got to do to get me me out of this.
Just don't kill me."
I was driving down the highway and I turned so quick and lost
control of the wheel.
My car flipped over again and again, roof caved in, windshield caved in.
No seat belt, glass everywhere.
My glasses that I had on were molded into the frame of the car, and I
didn't have a scratch.
That was it.
I said, "I get it."
Called up my friends who I knew were living for Jesus, and I said, "we've
got to make this happen.
I'm coming home."
I saw change happening.
I spent a lot of time searching for father figures.
Until I saw the evidence.
And God has shown me that ultimately, He's my father.
And it drives me to keep pressing.
I started volunteering at a juvenile detention center.
Some of those songs that I had written in my darkest times when I was crying
out to God, I would do for them, and you would just see them
sitting there weeping.
And time after time, they'd keep requesting it, "can you
do that song again?"
"Can you do that song again?"
I just need that to hold onto.
I need something that's going to remind me that I need Jesus.
It hit me like, this is what I want to do.
I want to use music to offer hope and encouragement to people.
[poetic verse] I was created by God but I didn't want to be like Him, I wanted to be Him.
The Jack Sparrow of my Caribbean.
I remember the first created being, and how he shifted the blame on his
dame for food he shouldn't have eaten, and I look at us all of Eden.
We're in designer fig leaves by Louis Vuitton make believin,' but God sees
through my foolish pride and that I'm weak like Adam, another victim of
Lucifer's lies.
But then in steps Jesus.
All men were created to lead, but we needed somebody to lead us.
More than a teacher, but somebody to buy us back from the darkness.
You could say He redeemed us. [end poetic verse]
I've learned to stay close to my source of significance, to
my source of worth.
That's God.
My name is Lecrae, and I am Second.