“Now I Bang for Christ”: Rites/Rights of Passage
Christina Zanfagna
Chapter from the book: Zanfagna, C. 2017. Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Zanfagna, C. 2017. Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels.
Chapter 1 examines the making of gospel rappers through the conversion narratives of gospel rappers and an amalgamation of stories about “saving” Los Angeles. Discourses of urban reform during these years were highly spiritually charged and linked to images of disaster and apocalypse in the wake of major earthquakes and floods, as well as the 1992 riots. This was the context in which certain hip hop artists in Los Angeles, many of whom were former gangbangers and gangsta rappers, converted to Christianity and began performing gospel rap. Conversion was a rite of passage into a new way of life, offering holy hip hoppers passageways across generation, genre, and geography. As many of them say, “Now I bang for Christ.”
Zanfagna, C. 2017. “Now I Bang for Christ”: Rites/Rights of Passage. In: Zanfagna, C, Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.35.b
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Published on Aug. 29, 2017