Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta’s God by Ebony A. Utley (review)

The book of James reprimands Christians for blessing God and cursing their neighbors with the same mouth, associating the double-forked tongue with evil and a lack of discipline. Yet, rhetorical scholars have insisted that far from being a necessary mark of poor character, the ability to speak in many voices—to “contain multitudes” in Whitman’s terms—requires great discipline and skill. Thus, it is fitting that in Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta’s God, Ebony A. Utley invites readers to consider how rappers who spew curses and praise God in the same breath artfully problematize the binary between the sacred and the profane. Focusing on the figure of the “gangsta” in rap music, the self-styled deity in the flesh, Utley argues that the genre’s focus on religion enables meditations on morality, power, and meaning in American life.

Utley’s analysis centers on two conceptions of God articulated in rap music, God “out there” and “down here.” God “out there” is the deity high above who is distant from humanity, while God “down here” communes and empathizes with the marginalized. In her examination of the lyrics of over 100 rap songs, album liner notes, and music videos, Utley demonstrates that rap musicians oscillate between these two notions of God as they engage in the self-mythologization and reflection that is central to the genre. Additionally, Utley insists that rap music’s God talk critiques and is irrevocably tied to the declining socioeconomic conditions in urban African American communities. Drawing parallel histories of the emergence of hip hop and the deindustrialization of the urban city, Utley argues that rap music became an urgent artistic form through which to express the struggles that young men and women faced on the streets. In this context, the gangsta’s vision of God emerged as a “socially constructed deity whose purpose [was] to provide meaning and power in a world of chaos and disenfranchisement” (9).

That the conceptions of God to be found in rap music are spatialized is key to understanding how they function as commentaries on urban poverty and racial injustice. Throughout the book, Utley examines how God “out there” and “down here” is alternately used by the gangsta to convey alienation from and entanglements with larger structures of power. Chapter 1 examines how rappers appeal to a God “out there” in prayers and pilgrimages in an attempt to deal with the loss and violence that pervade their lives. Chapter 2 considers how female rappers, long-overlooked in mainstream narratives of the genre, construct an image of God who functions as a father and lover. Interrogating how rappers such as Lil’ Kim and Lauryn Hill frame their relationships with God in terms of domination and submission, Utley argues that this music reflects the ways in which black women critique, interact with, and problematically affirm male privilege.

The next two chapters address how rappers project themselves onto Christ and the Devil, both biblical figures who reside “down here.” In particular, Utley argues that these two figures, intertwined as they are with histories of and appeals to power, are ripe for symbolic appropriation by a music culture of the powerless. Chapter 3, which contains some of Utley’s most engaging and incisive criticism, turns to an examination of how rappers appropriate the figure of Christ, the ultimate symbol of God “down here.” Utley argues that “[t]he Jesus story is the gangsta’s story,” (50) as rappers identify with the Christian narrative of persecution and ultimate victory over one’s foes. Chapter 4 demonstrates the extent to which rap plays with contradiction, as the Devil takes on multiple meanings within the genre. While some rappers associate Satan with their enemies, others also embrace him as a trickster figure who speaks to the compromises the black artists must make to achieve mainstream success.

Utley’s analysis highlights the ways in which rap functions as an inventional resource that...