Churches Try Redeeming Rap

As he takes the stage, wearing baggy jeans, an oversize basketball jersey and a massive gold chain, Sahaan McKelvey could be any rapper, layin' it down for any crowd in any of a dozen concerts happening in Portland that night. But he's not and they're not and it isn't.
McKelvey is a youth pastor. His crowd is 100 teenagers, parents, grandparents and young families, and this is RepChrist, a night of holy hip-hop at Irvington Covenant Church in Northeast Portland.
McKelvey and his backup, a five-piece band, a deejay and background singers, fill the church sanctuary with the unrelenting urgency of hip-hop that has found salvation not in drugs, not in violence, not in the degradation of women, but in the message of Jesus Christ. Here's a sample:
"No condemnation, I'm free, I'm free.
"I dance and sing in liberty.
"I don't care what they say about me,
" 'Cause I have a right to be free."

Via Kgw