Christian rapper Derek Minor on the battle in every human heart

Christian hip-hop artist Derek Minor is focused on the clash of civilizations in his latest album, Empire. Not the struggle between human societies but the knock-down-drag-out fight between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, which rages within and all around us.

Backed by guest heavyweights Lecrae and Tedashii, Minor sometimes fires off words thick and fast, other times low and languid, incorporating elements of battle rap, soul, and even a dollop of pop. Uniting all of them, serious or sanguine, is Minor’s ability to deliver incisive observations about race relations, inner hypocrisy, and even a day at the beach.

Minor first sets his sights on our culture of self-exaltation, in the quasi-liturgical “All Hail The King.” A tapping pulse builds anticipation and ambient sounds crash through the background like satellites while Minor rips into scientific elites who study the cosmos and almost take credit for it: “Universities go and they plant planets / and it’s outlandish to be out acting like you out tracking. / You are not running anything, not even jogging.” With all their fine intellects, Minor wonders how they miss the jaw-dropping evidence of God who, “Created our bodies and painted us colors, is that something you have considered? / Well in all of your figuring how did you figure you’re more than an action figure?”

Race is another front of the battle in “Stranger,” which features a sleek techno-groove with handclaps, solid piano, and soulful female vocals. Minor raps with finesse about the problem of “black-on-black violence” but admits that “We don’t talk to police / that’s black-on-black silence.” For those who quickly dismiss racial dimensions, Minor teaches how recent events serve as a lightning rod to African Americans who keenly remember how, “We were chained on that boat / See America left our right / We still hanging from the rope / And I promise I want to leave it in the past but it’s hard / Cause I just seen an unarmed teen shot down like a dog.”

In the most poignant parts of the album, Minor spills the innards of his personal battle. “Babel 1” expresses his struggle with pride and the inclination to usurp God’s gifts for his glory. In “Save Me,” a keyboard creates disturbing dissonance as Minor hits maximum force recalling his anger and confusion when he lost several family members in one year, along with his wife fracturing her spine. The crisis, however, ends in Minor’s complete surrender: “I bend my knees with these tears in my eyes / And my hands to the sky I’m praying for change / Put me in fire take all that I have / To the end of my days I’m not cursin’ your name.”

Minor portrays the conflict of good and evil playing out all around, and the real harm perpetrated by those elevating human wisdom and denigrating God. He analyzes equally street thugs and gangbangers or businessmen clad in respectability. Empire illustrates the stakes of the conflict and how it occurs in human lives everywhere, be they rich or poor, educated or plain. In this Minor calls to mind Russian writer and dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, who said, “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”

Amid this battle occurring in every human heart, Minor reminds us that the outcome is already settled by the one true King before whom every knee will bow. Christian rapper Derek Minor on the battle in every human heart