Hip-Hop is Antithetical to the Gospel

The following content is the answer given by Voddie Baucham when asked "What do you think of Christian hip-hop?" This is an excerpt (provided at the bottom of this post) of the Antioch Bible Church question and answer session.

I'm not a fan of Christian hip-hop. Hip-hop is a culture that I believe is antithetical to the gospel.

I grew up in south-central Los Angeles. I grew up with hip-hop. I don't mean I grew up with it playing in my home—I didn't—I mean I grew up where it grew up, and I grew up when it grew up.

It comes out of gang culture.

Hip-hop has a music—it's mainly rap.

Hip-hop has a graphic art—it's graffiti. Graffiti was tagging for gangs to tag their territory.

Hip-hop has a dance—it went from pop-it-and-lock-it to now animating  and other things like that.

Hip-hop has a language—it's slang—it's the bastardization of language.

Hip-hop has an ethos, that ethos is aggressive, arrogant, and shoots the middle finger at the culture. Much of it is degrading, it is degrading to women and men—you walk around with your pants sagging and people looking at your underwear, you have a hat cocked to the side.

Again, why are we doing this? It's not the best that culture has to offer, and we ought to be about the highest and best that culture has to offer. If we want to evangelize to people in this inferior subculture, then we ought to, but we do not drag the church down to this inferior subculture.

That's my opinion; others will differ and disagree, but I'm not a white guy who's going to be labeled as a racist, so I'll just say what I feel.