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March 19 - April 2, 2016
Arts
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Grammy winner Lecrae brings Christian hip-hop sounds to GCU BY ALAN SCULLEY
With his past two albums, hip-hop star Lecrae has gone where no other artist in the Christian hip-hop genre has gone. His 2012 album, “Gravity,” became the first hip-hop artist to win a Grammy in the Best Gospel album category. That album also established him as a presence in mainstream hip-hop, debuting at No. 3 on Billboard magazine’s album chart and setting the record for most copies of a Christian hiphop album sold in a single week with 72,000 units moved in the first week. Then with his 2014 album, “Anomaly,” Lecrae again broke a barrier, and proved he was now a force in mainstream hiphop when that album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart with first-week sales of 88,000 copies. That made Lecrae only the fifth Christian artist to top the album chart—and the first from the hip-hop genre to reach that pinnacle. Lecrae, who performs at Grand Canyon University Arena on Thursday, March 31, has tried to take the acclaim in stride. “I think in one sense I’m just honored that people would celebrate the gifts that I have,” he said. “But in another sense, I do it because I love to. I want to help people and I want to create great things. I’m a product of a great Creator and I want to create great things. So I just do it because I want to and I love to and not so much for the accolades.” Lecrae is well aware he is now a standard bearer for Christian hip-hop, and he’s reaching a level of mainstream popularity that no other hip-hop act in Christian music has achieved.
“Definitely in terms of blazing trails, you feel that because there’s a sense of loneliness, there’s a sense of just always having to knock down a wall or knock down a door, not really having any forerunners in a lot of ways to give you some examples,” he said. “So that’s definitely something I feel and recognize, and hopefully for every direction I go in, somebody can follow behind me and it will be a smoother path for them.” Lecrae has been following pretty much an uncharted path since he started his career in hip-hop. Born 36 years ago to a single mother, Lecrae Devaughn Moore broke into music in 2004. That’s when he partnered with Ben Washer to co-found a record label, Reach Records, and released his debut album, “Real Talk.” “Starting a label kind of was the only way to get things going,” Lecrae said. “We didn’t really have a full grasp of how all of these industries kind of worked. But hindsight being 20/20, it makes sense. There’s a traditional gospel route and there’s a contemporary Christian route, and hip-hop just was not visible in any of those two worlds. Hip-hop was just visible in the mainstream. So that was really the only option we had, was to kind of create something ourselves and hope that it worked.” From there, his career continued a steady climb, as he released subsequent albums, “After the Music Stops” (2006), “Rebel” (2008) and “Rehab” (2010). Several months before he released “Gravity,” Lecrae made a significant impact
Lecrae will school music lovers during his “Higher Learning” tour, which comes to Grand Canyon University Arena in Phoenix on Thursday, March 31. Submitted photo
in the mainstream with the mixtape “Church Clothes.” A video for the title track (featuring cameos from Kendrick Lamar and DJ Premier) was debuted on the XXL magazine website. The mixtape, hosted by hip-hop producer Don Cannon, went on to notch 100,000 downloads in 48 hours. A second mixtape in the series, “Church Clothes Vol. 2,” arrived in November 2013, and now Lecrae has released “Church Clothes Vol. 3” to open 2016. The new mixtape builds on the topical slant of the first two releases in the series. “The whole concept is to engage people from all walks of life, all faiths and viewpoints and people lack thereof,” Lecrae said. “And ‘Church Clothes 3’ was something I didn’t really plan on doing. But just in traveling, going to Africa, going to Asia, going to the Middle East and seeing the issues here in the states and all of the interpretations of ethnicity and culture and faith, I wanted to make a project that would allow me to talk about some of that stuff in a round-about way.”
Lecrae hopes to bring pure entertainment with some lyrical substance to his “Higher Learning” tour this spring. “It’s fun filled,” Lecrae said of his show, which will include a segment devoted to his “Church Clothes” material. “It’s just some sincere moments, some thought provoking moments. There are a lot of energized moments as well. And of course the (visual) production, we always travel with production, but at the same time we wanted to do something that felt intimate as well and create some intimate moments. But yeah, whether you’re a casual fan, a casual listener, or a super fan, I think there’s something for you.” Lecrae, Liz Vice and DJ Promote perform at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 31, at Grand Canyon University Arena, 3300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix. Tickets are $24.75 to $87.50. For more information, call (602) 6398979 or visit www.gcuarena.com/events/ lecrae.
Devorah Hadassah going to the theater Devorah Hadassah is going to see “The Diary of Anne Frank,” winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize and Tony award, 7 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at Hale Centre Theatre, 50 W. Page Ave., Gilbert. Deadline to
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purchase tickets, which are $25 for members and guests, is March 25. Info: Barb at (480) 318-7568 or Hadassah.evinfo@cox.net.