KJ-52 – Still In The Game

CCM: When you say you, “Approach everything as if you’ve never heard me,” what drives that?
KJ-52: No matter how you boil it down, Christian rap is a genre that you discover. You know what I am saying? People are raised on soul records and jazz records but no one says, “I was raised on Christian rap records.” People discover it, and most people still don’t know it exists. They discover it post-conversion or it’s a music that is there for you when you get saved. It’s too young to be a genre that fathers are raising their kids on.

So I have to be cognizant that every time I step into a room, or when I tell people what I do or when I am performing or making a record, I’m erring on the side of caution, which is that they’ve never heard me and don’t know anything about this genre. That’s my reference 99 times out-of 100.

The other problem is that this is not a genre that honors its pioneers. They don’t even know about them, you know? It’s not like mainstream hip-hop where you have a degree of reverence for old-school artists. Most Christian rap fans don’t even know [the genre’s pioneers]. For the most part, it is looked at as old-school and not-cool. It’s just not honored. It’s getting better [as time goes on], but the rules are just different, and that shapes what I do.

CCM: Obviously, we want to know about the new album. Did you have a strong vision of where you wanted to go with the songs on Jonah?
KJ-52: I had a loose idea. I didn’t want to do the same thing I’d always done. I think part of it was that I had to be aware of my space within the genre, but I also factored in, and I hate to say this, but you have to be careful at this age. You don’t want to walk in like an old guy in the club with dad-jeans on and a tropical fish shirt. I didn’t want to be that type of guy that is like, “This is the way we always did it, so it should work this way.” Even from an execution standpoint on certain songs, it is important not to be over-the-top goofy, which is not even my mindset, but I have to be very careful on things like that.

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