First things first! Remember why are you writing and who are you writing to. You must know your audience and how they will respond to what you are saying. Always write with the mindset of helping that person or even giving hope to those who are in need. Sure you can make it fun and entertaining as long as the right message gets through clearly. For example, think that you are a listener and you tune in to this song entitled: For Every Tear. Now you assume automatically that this particular song will give hope to those who are crying due to hard trials in life. So when you finally listen, it delivers exactly what you were expecting. This songs relates to you and ministers down to your soul. Now this is what you call target marketing; we will get into that later though.
So you see, you must be able to relate to your audience both biblical and experienced based. Once you got this in your mindset now you are ready to start writing. Before you write your first line, you must make sure your music expresses what you are rapping about. I mean, you don’t want to minister to someone about God when your music sounds like Satan himself created it. You got to have flow with both lyrics and the music.
Most of the times what I do is let the music dictate to me what my lyrics will be about. That way, the lyrics will easily flow with the beat, setting the right mood for the song. It’s kinda like they will belong to each other. Lol! Once you accomplish this, now you are off to writing your first bar. A bar is when you create one line for your rap. When you end the second line with a following rhyming word, this is two bars, and so on. Each line or full sentence equals one bar. The standard for a verse is 16 bars, but the minimum is 8 bars. Each rhyming segment consists of 2 bars and the hook of a song is mainly 8 bars as well.
Now that we got all of the technical stuff out the way, it is time to minister the gospel. You must also remember that whatever you talk about in your song, make sure that the word of God speaks through you. It is not the artist that delivers, but it’s the power of God. Many Christian rappers make the mistake of just rapping regularly and mentioning Jesus from bar to bar, but never really speak a word that will help one’s soul. This is not what Christian rap is all about. Gospel rap is speaking life to give hope to one’s situation, not a feel good message. You must send deliverance with your lyrics, not just feel good words with the mentioning of the word Jesus here and there. People hear the word Jesus and God enough. We as Holy hip hop rappers must speak to them how God and Jesus can solve their problems. As a listener, they tend to listen for encouragement, deliverance, and hope. If you can serve your listeners with these three elements, you are on your way to being a great Christian rapper. “May Gog bless your ministry!”