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Christian Hip Hop
Big sound, big surprises
Rhymz Suhreal brings 'southpaw punch' to hip-hop ministry
By Called and Sent staff
Northern Wisconsin has hip-hop tradition like Eminem has tact.
Rhymz Suhreal brings 'southpaw punch' to hip-hop ministry
By Called and Sent staff
Northern Wisconsin has hip-hop tradition like Eminem has tact.
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Becky and Zak Alwin rehearse a song from their upcoming CD, "Free," due for Christmas 2006 release.
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So when a shiny-bald native son and his wife take the stage for a
local show, you might expect country, maybe some folk. But not hip-hop.
Then the bass notes start to thump. The lights go down, and Rhymz
Suhreal hits you with a rap-and-rhapsody combination that leaves you
floored. Cuz this ain't your typical hip-hop show.
Since schoolteachers Zak and Becky Alwin began recording as Rhymz
Suhreal in 1999, they have played prisons, parks, universities and
coffee houses across the upper Midwest. Wherever they play, the
interplay between Zak's rugged rhyming and Becky's smooth singing
continues to forge a distinctive sound that's much more Nelly than
Nashville, the center of all things Christian music.
Sample: Rhymz Suhreal's version of "Amazing Grace," (sound clip) off their 2002 self-titled debut CD, launches with Zak rapping the conversion experience of the song's author, John Newton:
The harder I tried
To keep myself afloat
The more water there was
That came into my boat
"The song is a classic hymn not done in a classic hymn way," says Christian radio DJ Rick Godley (his real name) of KHLL radio in Monroe, La. "It's a hip-hop thing. If that intro's not played, it's just another version of 'Amazing Grace.'"
Godley says that the huge phone traffic from "Amazing Grace" at KHLL rivaled that of one the biggest songs he has played in his 20 years in the radio business, Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart." When area Christian bookstores refused to stock Rhymz Suhreal's CD, KHLL did it for them and sold about 500 copies.
"It obviously spoke to the public," Godley says.
What's a Musicianary?
Making the Gospel public in a culturally relevant way is what has kept Zak and Becky, who have been married eight years and have a 2-year-old son, pressing on with their music and their careers at the same time. As they finish their second CD, "Bird in a Cage," they're preparing to become full-time missionaries, or "musicianaries,"with Milwaukee-based Shalom Ministries.
Shalom focuses on inner-city Milwaukee but serves all of southeastern Wisconsin with a wide swath of ministries, including a food-and-clothes pantry, prison outreaches, home renovation and concerts in the park presented on two mobile sound stages.
At one of those concerts, a block party in Milwaukee, Zak and Becky got to experience firsthand the power of the music to deliver the message. A woman walking home with a sack of groceries overheard Becky belting out "Amazing Grace." When Shalom Executive Director Tony Vento followed Rhymz Suhreal's gig with a Gospel presentation, she was the first one to come forward.
"She was just going home with her groceries; she had no plan to give her life to Christ," Becky says. "We're just partnering up. It's just this little piece, and we're using our gifts and talents as part of the body to draw people in and share the message."
One Group, Many Avenues
Vento, a former gang leader who has run the ministry since 2000, says that Rhymz Suhreal's music, combined with who they are, gives them an in with a diverse crowd of listeners. In the suburbs, he says, Zak and Becky don't intimidate like a former criminal with gang tattoos might; in the inner city, some people stick around just to make fun of them - until the music plays.
"They come on stage, and a lot of the inner city guys are like, 'Here we go, lollipop!-'" Vento says. "And then they start having a great time."
Zak, 33, teaches high school history and coaches boys basketball. Becky, 31, teaches junior high geography. So just going to work the past several years has kept them connected with their audience. "When [concert-goers] find out they're teachers, it blows their minds even more, because they have a great opportunity after they're done to talk with some kids," Vento says of his latest recruits. "It's a southpaw punch -- you're not expecting it."
Shalom's prison ministry gives Zak and Becky yet another avenue with a musical form that speaks immediately to the audience. Playing just once at the Southern Oaks detention center for girls told them what is possible when the Gospel is presented in a relevant way to a truly captive audience.
"That was probably our favorite gig of all time. It was just amazing," Becky says. "The pastor who works with the girls told us of the 50 girls, all of them had been abused in some way. They've had a hard past. Some of them were in tears as we shared the message. The girls were so into it. It was like, 'This is what it's about. We want to reach these people.'"
The current connection is rich with irony, considering some of the first people Zak rapped with as a teenager in the mid-80s were young black men from Milwaukee who his dad, an employee at the Lincoln Hills detention center in northern Wisconsin, would bring home on weekends. Rap at that time was still an urban and black phenomenon to most of America. But after hearing a tape by rap pioneer Kurtis Blow, Zak -- the white kid from Wausau with "a serious percussion bent" and a taste for poetry -- had found his jam.
"I remember writing a rap with this one guy in my bedroom," Zak recalls. "It kind of gave me authenticity and experience with the culture. It wasn't like I was just a white kid in the middle of nowhere."
Today Rhymz Suhreal and their music stand in the gap between a hip-hop culture rent by social and spiritual struggles and the message of the Gospel. Vento spent years in that culture as a sort of liaison between a well-known gang's Chicago and Milwaukee operations. He sees the hip-hop of Rhymz Suhreal and other rap groups in his network as one of the innovative tools the church needs to develop to reach people.
"It's an awesome sound," Vento says. "What the devil is trying to use for destruction, God can use for His glory. And why not"
Based on the feedback from "Amazing Grace," Godley sees "a genuine hunger and thirst for it." Zak hopes he and Becky can walk the line between self-promotion and ministry in such a way that gets the new songs to ears that need to hear but puts the message first.
"It's not my goal to have the attention, even though you naturally do when you're on the stage," Becky says. "But now it's for a different purpose. It's not about us. We feel very passionately about the music, but even more so about the God we serve.
"What gets us juiced up is when we see this music connect people to the Father, to the message, and it gives us an avenue," she says. "The message is within the music, and the music is just a tool we're using, the Roman roads, to get to the people."
The harder I tried
To keep myself afloat
The more water there was
That came into my boat
"The song is a classic hymn not done in a classic hymn way," says Christian radio DJ Rick Godley (his real name) of KHLL radio in Monroe, La. "It's a hip-hop thing. If that intro's not played, it's just another version of 'Amazing Grace.'"
Godley says that the huge phone traffic from "Amazing Grace" at KHLL rivaled that of one the biggest songs he has played in his 20 years in the radio business, Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart." When area Christian bookstores refused to stock Rhymz Suhreal's CD, KHLL did it for them and sold about 500 copies.
"It obviously spoke to the public," Godley says.
What's a Musicianary?
Making the Gospel public in a culturally relevant way is what has kept Zak and Becky, who have been married eight years and have a 2-year-old son, pressing on with their music and their careers at the same time. As they finish their second CD, "Bird in a Cage," they're preparing to become full-time missionaries, or "musicianaries,"with Milwaukee-based Shalom Ministries.
Shalom focuses on inner-city Milwaukee but serves all of southeastern Wisconsin with a wide swath of ministries, including a food-and-clothes pantry, prison outreaches, home renovation and concerts in the park presented on two mobile sound stages.
At one of those concerts, a block party in Milwaukee, Zak and Becky got to experience firsthand the power of the music to deliver the message. A woman walking home with a sack of groceries overheard Becky belting out "Amazing Grace." When Shalom Executive Director Tony Vento followed Rhymz Suhreal's gig with a Gospel presentation, she was the first one to come forward.
"She was just going home with her groceries; she had no plan to give her life to Christ," Becky says. "We're just partnering up. It's just this little piece, and we're using our gifts and talents as part of the body to draw people in and share the message."
One Group, Many Avenues
Vento, a former gang leader who has run the ministry since 2000, says that Rhymz Suhreal's music, combined with who they are, gives them an in with a diverse crowd of listeners. In the suburbs, he says, Zak and Becky don't intimidate like a former criminal with gang tattoos might; in the inner city, some people stick around just to make fun of them - until the music plays.
"They come on stage, and a lot of the inner city guys are like, 'Here we go, lollipop!-'" Vento says. "And then they start having a great time."
Zak, 33, teaches high school history and coaches boys basketball. Becky, 31, teaches junior high geography. So just going to work the past several years has kept them connected with their audience. "When [concert-goers] find out they're teachers, it blows their minds even more, because they have a great opportunity after they're done to talk with some kids," Vento says of his latest recruits. "It's a southpaw punch -- you're not expecting it."
Shalom's prison ministry gives Zak and Becky yet another avenue with a musical form that speaks immediately to the audience. Playing just once at the Southern Oaks detention center for girls told them what is possible when the Gospel is presented in a relevant way to a truly captive audience.
"That was probably our favorite gig of all time. It was just amazing," Becky says. "The pastor who works with the girls told us of the 50 girls, all of them had been abused in some way. They've had a hard past. Some of them were in tears as we shared the message. The girls were so into it. It was like, 'This is what it's about. We want to reach these people.'"
The current connection is rich with irony, considering some of the first people Zak rapped with as a teenager in the mid-80s were young black men from Milwaukee who his dad, an employee at the Lincoln Hills detention center in northern Wisconsin, would bring home on weekends. Rap at that time was still an urban and black phenomenon to most of America. But after hearing a tape by rap pioneer Kurtis Blow, Zak -- the white kid from Wausau with "a serious percussion bent" and a taste for poetry -- had found his jam.
"I remember writing a rap with this one guy in my bedroom," Zak recalls. "It kind of gave me authenticity and experience with the culture. It wasn't like I was just a white kid in the middle of nowhere."
Today Rhymz Suhreal and their music stand in the gap between a hip-hop culture rent by social and spiritual struggles and the message of the Gospel. Vento spent years in that culture as a sort of liaison between a well-known gang's Chicago and Milwaukee operations. He sees the hip-hop of Rhymz Suhreal and other rap groups in his network as one of the innovative tools the church needs to develop to reach people.
"It's an awesome sound," Vento says. "What the devil is trying to use for destruction, God can use for His glory. And why not"
Based on the feedback from "Amazing Grace," Godley sees "a genuine hunger and thirst for it." Zak hopes he and Becky can walk the line between self-promotion and ministry in such a way that gets the new songs to ears that need to hear but puts the message first.
"It's not my goal to have the attention, even though you naturally do when you're on the stage," Becky says. "But now it's for a different purpose. It's not about us. We feel very passionately about the music, but even more so about the God we serve.
"What gets us juiced up is when we see this music connect people to the Father, to the message, and it gives us an avenue," she says. "The message is within the music, and the music is just a tool we're using, the Roman roads, to get to the people."