The "black rapper": why a Christian is sweeping the world of music

Nathan Feuerstein, or NF, is a 28 -year -old rapper who has just launched his fourth studio album, 'The Search'

A young white teenager from Michigan, who uses his initials as an artistic name, emerges in the hip-hop scene;The thrilling letters of his reflect the wounds of a broken home;And his music quickly becomes a cultural phenomenon, getting with a Billboard album, a triple platinum single and millions of fans worldwide.

If you grew up in the 90s, you know this story well. Es la historia de Marshall Mathers, o Eminem (originalmente «M&M»), que capturó la atención del mundo con sus LPs de Slim Shady y Marshall Mathers.

But it is also the story of Nathan Feuerstein, or NF, a 28 -year -old rapper who has just launched his fourth studio album, The Search, which, like his last album Perception, has quickly headed Billboard's lists.

Like Eminem, NF's story is far from being idyllic.After his parents divorced, he was physically abused by his mother's boyfriend.In 2009, his mother, addicted to drugs, died of an overdose.

(His song about his mother, "How Coud You Leave Us," is a heartbreaking anthem for the children of the opioid epidemic.) NF was catapulted to fame a few years ago with the single "Let You Down" and Michigan's boy who listened to Eminem when he was a teenager - and still shows obvious signs of his influence, especially when delivered to the fanfanorría of aFashion -made rap is now compared to him.

But NF's music also represents a clear divergence of Eminem's.Slim Shady bloomed on the cheerful and sometimes driver rhythms.Dre of the first years;The Search is driven by the premonitories and dramatic popular rhythms a decade later.While Eminem often gave in to the arrogance and comic of popular culture;NF tends to immerse inwards, more in the manner of the Rhymesayers Entertainment list, reflecting on their own insecurities.

And the biggest difference between NF and Eminem is both the least obvious and more surprising: NF is a Christian who originally signed with a Christian music brand.But as he explains in an interview, echoing Flannery O'Connor: «I'm a Christian, but I'm just an artist ... I just make music.I speak of my life, I speak of my faith.I talk about positive things that I have happened and that they have taught me things and I talk about negative things I am dealing with ... I do not make music for Christians.I make music for all «.

The video of the opening song presents the existential images present on this unique album.Dress with dark clothes and a characteristic hat with the word "real", the rapper pushes an empty shopping cart with a lot of black balloons (which, at one time, points out when it refers to its "loads") through aDesolated landscape dotted with figures in white monkeys.NF begins with a small animated talk with himself: “Hi Nate.How is your life? I do not know.Alright.I've been dealing with some things like all human beings and I really didn't sleep much last night ”.As the song progresses, we enter NF struggles with mental health, which apparently reached a low point during their recent promotion to success:

The video of the following song,

The pair of songs presents us with the relentless confrontation of NF with its own mental and spiritual darkness and its fallen being.Georges Bernanos wrote about "the deepest foundation of the soul of man: the secret hatred is probably the deepest part ... of each life".Most of The Search's songs, from "Hate Myself" to the disturbing "trauma", which shows NF's talent, is an open secret.

But The Search is not all pessimism.The man, wrote Pascal, is unhappy and great, and is great because he knows he is unfortunate.

NF's music is not just about the experience of suffering and sin;It is also the pure grace to face it and want to overcome it.Human nature resists grace, as O'Connor observed, "because grace changes us and change is painful," and The Search deals with both these painful changes and immutable pains.

In "My Stress," he longs for humility and detachment: "I am hostage of my own pride;The most important things of life for me are things that I know I can't buy ”;In "Time," a song for his wife, he admits his faults and asks for his patience;And in "Change," He embraces the long, difficult and painful task of getting rid of his old I."Last year, I felt suicide," he says at the end of the last verse."This year, maybe do something different like talking more with God".And this is not the only time in the album that reveals the Christian faith of NF as a cause of his hope.In "Only," admits: "I would like to pray more often and spend more time to my faith".In "Nate," he sings to his youngest self: "If you have questions or need advice, then talk to God, because he is the only one who listens to even when you think he doesn't do it".

While the world of music is busy comparing NF with Eminem, Johnny Cash is a better reference point for the deeply human search - and, ultimately, Christian - of NF of grace in the darkness of life.

There is a memorable scene on Walk The Line where a young cash audition for a record executive singing a soft and predictable gospel song.The Executive resists the presentation and asks: if Cash were hit by a truck outside and had time to sing just one song before dying, would you really sing this?“Or would you sing something different?Something real?Something you felt?Cash proceeds to sing "folsom prison blues", and the man in black is born, whose Gospel music led him to the mud with the marginalized and banned.

NF has followed its footprints, finding God in unexpected places and emerging as the black rapper for today's existential marginals.But instead of marginalized and proscribed in prison, it expresses solidarity with millennials and the Igens locked in their own minds.And instead of singing about murders, cocaine, and the death corridor sings about abandonment, anxiety, and self -destruction.He identifies with them in their fragmentation, expresses their frustration and points a higher terrain without moving the finger.

The Search and his overwhelming success represents one of those rare moments when faith, art and culture cross powerfully.It is exciting to see it, and Christians, music lovers and especially Christian music lovers should enjoy it.If God wants, he also points out a brilliant fruturo for other believers who make music - and even for those fans seekers who assumed that a life of faith was out of the matter.