When did Christian Rap Begin?

The Early Origins of Christian Hip-Hop

The Christian hip-hop movement started, at least as far as we can tell, in the early 80s. There were a few artists that came out then. The first artist was on Polygram Records, I believe it was something like 1982.

Then from him, you move on a couple years, and in the 90s you had DC Talk, and you had the Gospel Gangsters, and a few other artists. But the group, I guess, that really started the movement to the level that we see it at today in terms of being commercially successful, theologically sound, high-quality music, was The Cross Movement.

They were a group based out of Philadelphia in the late 90s until the early 2000s. They signed the first major distribution deal for Christian hip-hop, as far as we can tell, and they mentored and discipled a lot of the top Christian hip-hop artists that are out now, including Lecrae, Flame, Shaolin, J-Sun, and others.