Show Notes
Guest Bio:
Lecrae Devaughn Moore is an American Christian rapper, singer, songwriter, film and record producer, record executive, and actor. He has written two books and been nominated for many awards, including seven Grammy nominations. Lecrae partners with many nonprofits to take care of his community and care for people. He is passionate about sharing the message of restoration in his own life to inspire others so that broken people can heal and even be made new. He is a devoted Christian, husband, and father.
Summary of EPISODE:
Childhood isn’t always a safe time. For Lecrae, he learned that his childhood caused intense trauma that would affect him for the rest of his life. On this episode of Where Ya From?, Rasool talks to Lecrae about his childhood experiences with moving, growing up around gangs, and falling in love with hip-hop. As an adult, Lecrae explains overcoming the trauma of his childhood and how being a popular artist both helped him and hurt him.
Notes and Quotes:
- “I saw little kids beating on a speaker and I was like, ‘That’s me.’ I had never seen a little black boy on television and I was like, ‘That looks like me, I could be this kid.’ And so that’s when it happened for me. I fell in love with hip-hop.”
- “I honestly did not imagine turning 18. So I thought I was going to turn 18 and go on a robbing spree and I’m an adult. Now I can go kill and shoot and steal, rob a bank or something. I didn’t know, it was craziness.”
- “I was around a white kid in my class, and he said he was an atheist. And I was like, ‘What is that?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa.’ And I was like I kind of feel him on that, but I’m afraid to say that out loud because I kind of feel the same way. I don’t really think there’s a God. But then he said something that scared me. He said, ‘Yeah, it’s just us.’ And I think I had a mild anxiety attack because I was like, ‘If it’s just us, I’m in control of my life, which is terrifying because I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And so that freaked me out and it sent me on a little bit of a journey. And I started trying to dive into religion, just like philosophically, intellectually. And college was like Athens, it’s Rome. It’s like, ‘All right, let me explore the realms of faith and God.’”
- “Then I heard the gospel and it radically changed my life and I was never the same.”
- “When I ended up meeting the Lord, I remember walking the streets of Atlanta, taking off my jewelry, giving it to homeless people. Taking my rings off, giving it to homeless people. All the money I had on me I was like, ‘I’m going to get you some McDonald’s.’ It was like I was so grateful for the transformation that had just happened to me, I just wanted to like express it. It was like this feeling of joy I had never experienced.”
- “God does what He wants to do. But the type of consistency and proximity I had to those individuals while performing in the prisons, I was seeing the light bulbs come on. And it was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy. All glory to God. I can’t reinvent that.’”
- “That amount of fame and opportunity, financial wherewithal that was happening coupled with feeling suffocated and feeling as if all of my blackness cannot co-exist was a nightmare, but I didn’t know it. So what it did internally was it made me bitter, and in my bitterness I began to internalize all the criticism and then it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
- “It’s not that I’m no longer a Christian, it’s that this is a worldview that has a particular political leaning or particular rituals or functionalities that I don’t necessarily subscribe to. And I think that’s okay. I think it’s not that I looked down on it, it’s just that I understand that God is bigger than what we here in America deem to be Christianity. Some of it is more institutional than it is biblical. And it’s not to say the institution is wrong, it’s just to say that it’s not mandated. You know what I mean?”
- “I wish I knew then what I know now. I may not have had to suffer through some of the things I’ve had to suffer, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I didn’t know what anxiety felt like, I was experiencing it, but I didn’t know that it was called anxiety.”
- “It’s very specific because I have to navigate PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. I have to navigate anxiety probably for the rest of my life. And so I will have to constantly be in a state of depending on God to restore my mindset, restore my hope, restore my vision. And restoration is the reality that you’re going to have those lulls in life.”
Links Mentioned In Show:
- Leave us a review https://podcasts.apple.
com/us/podcast/where-ya-from- podcast/id1581145346 - In Pursuit of Jesus: https://inpursuitofjesus.net/
- Restored by Lecrae
- Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch
- Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcy
- Follow Where Ya From? Podcast on Instagram: @whereyafrompodcast
- Visit our website to sign up for email: https://www.whereyafrom.org
Verses Mentioned in Show:
- The end of the story of Moses
