From Vocativ
Data shows that references to Islam in hip-hop lyrics, once pervasive, are at an all-time low—while rappers are talking about Christianity more than ever. Why has rap forsaken one god for another?
Back in July, reclusive Roc Nation rapper Jay Electronica emerged from self-imposed exile to the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, playing a raucous, cameo-filled set that ended with his mentor Jay Z conferring a righteous honor upon him. Flanked by besuited members of the Nation of Islam’s Fruit of Islam wing, Jay Z removed a glistening Five Percent Nation medallion from his neck and placed it over the head of his enigmatic charge. For a fleeting moment, hip-hop appeared as it once did: powerful, black and Islamic.
That moment quickly passed. With rare exception, the Fruit of Islam, Jay Electronica’s Nation of Islam uniform and Jay Z’s Five Percent Nation necklace were not mentioned in the festival coverage that followed. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Once as common in rap videos as Timberlands, Nation of Islam imagery and broader Islamic references have all but disappeared from hip-hop in recent years. Often called “hip-hop’s unofficial religion,” Islam is now a negligible force in rap. What happened?
To find the answer, let’s go back to 1998. Hip-hop was at a crossroads: firmly entrenched as a dominant commercial force but reeling from the deaths of its two biggest stars. There was a vacancy atop the rap game, and plenty of people were trying to fill it. Jay Z broke out in 1998 and landed his first number one album, DMX grunted his way to two number one albums, and Outkast released its twice-platinum masterpiece Aquemini. But for our purposes, 1998 was significant because it was the first year since hip-hop entered the mainstream that Islam fell out of favor. Replacing it? Christianity.
We know this thanks to Rap Stats, a tool from Genius.com that plots “the frequency of words appearing in rap songs from 1988 through the present day.” Here’s a chart showing that starting in 1990 (“the year that rap exploded,” according to Billboard editor Paul Grein), rappers’ use of the word “Muslim” rocketed past their use of the word “Christian.”
