Hip Hop is a religion? KRS-One says it is.

This is supposed to be a "spiritual manual for citizens of Hip Hop Kulture that combines classic philosophy with faith and practical knowledge."
His new book, The Gospel of Hip Hop: First Instrument, not only focuses on the origins of Hip Hop and its signature cultural components– break dancing, graffiti art, rapping and deejaying—but also explores the spiritual side of Hip Hop.
According to the book publisher’s Web site, “Set in the format of a self-help holy book, this 800-plus-page opus is a spiritual manual for citizens of Hip Hop Kulture that combines classic philosophy with faith and practical knowledge, for a fascinating, in-depth exploration of Hip Hop as a life path.”
Though The Gospel of Hip Hop: First Instrument looks like a Bible and is intended to be a life manual for HipHoppas (KRS-One’s term for followers of Hip Hop culture), the similarities end there.
First off, the book’s philosophy is less like the Bible and more like Rhonda Burn’s The Secret in that the book’s goal is very humanistic; its primary purpose is to change the lives of its believers from whatever they are or were to lives of Health, Love, Awareness and Wealth (H-LAW).
One of the biggest differences between The Gospel of Hip Hop as espoused by KRS-One and the Gospel of Christianity as espoused by Jesus Christ and the apostles is simple– in KRS-One’s religion, there is no need for a mediator.
“I think I have the authority to approach God directly,” said KRS One.
“I don’t have to go through any religion or train of thought. I can approach God directly myself, and so I wrote a book called The Gospel of Hip Hop to free us from all this nonsense garbage going on right now,” he said.
The obvious question is if a person does not have to go through any religion to get to God why make one up?
Furthermore, which God is KRS-One really referencing?
Could it be the god to whom he made reference on his 2002 song, “God is a Spirit?”
Yeah, actually.
Though the song, which featured Holy Hip Hop artist B.B. Jay, quoted the Bible, made references to being “Christ-like” and used a refrain from the book of Revelation, the song isn’t about Christianity at all.
First, referencing Christ overturning the money changers’ tables in the temple saying, “Mine will be called a house of prayer,” and immediately following those lyrics with “Mine is called the house of Hip Hop,” it is here that we begin to see whose gospel KRS-One is preaching — His own.
The house of Hip Hop that KRS-One made reference to is, no doubt, his own Temple of Hip Hop.
The Temple of Hip Hop started out as a music preservation society, but has grown into a ministry, archive, school and society (M.A.S.S.)
In 2000 KRS-One, speaking of his Temple of Hip Hop and members, Lauryn Hill, Kid Capri and Busta Rhymes said, “We believe that not only is hip hop divine, but the temple is divinely ordained, because we accept it as that.”
Under this rationale we may accept anything as true and proclaim it so because we “accept it as that.”
Though KRS-One’s thought process here seems wanting and juvenile, it bears out KRS-One’s belief that in 100 years, Hip Hop will be a new religion on earth.
And as Hip-Hop’s self-appointed prophet, it’s only fitting that KRS-One would set out to write its “holy book.”
Paul Brunton, a renonwned British philosopher and the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective once warned, “Those who find their fulfillment in any form of the arts and who look to it for their highest satisfaction may become, and often do become, attached to it in such a way that it blocks their way to the still higher level where all attachments, including this one, must vanish.”
Were Brunton alive today, KRS-One’s efforts to peddle music as religion would be met with Brunton’s words, “Even the highest art is only a means to an end– it ought not to be made an end in itself.”




This month marks the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birthday.

