Balancing lyrical content and commercial appeal has always been a struggle for rappers, but for Reach Records artist Trip Lee the real journey has always been combining his love for God with his passion for music.
Lee is one of the very few hip hop artists around who infuses his religious passion (not surprising, considering he’s a pastor in his home of DC) into a genre that generally sways from the subject altogether. His newest album “Rise” was just released and he recently sat down with The Source to discuss all things “Rise” and hip hop.
Q: Has it been difficult juggling your religion and hip hop? Because of the opposite ideologies.
A: Yeah I don’t think so, one of the things I think with hip hop is people write about life from their perspective. So in the same way that be it a Lupe writing from his perspective, even a young thug writing from his perspective, everyone’s going to write from their perspective and so I don’t see it as some special thing I’m trying to do by making religion really prominent in my music. I’m just really writing about life from my perspective and I’m a man who loves God and it shows up in my music.
Q: So it’s about combining the two things, not viewing them separately?
A: Yeah absolutely man, absolutely. People try to box in too much and put it in its own genre is where we get problems. Really I’m just a dude who’s writing about life like everybody else but God is a big part of my life.
Q: What’s been the hardest part about your journey to become a pastor?
A: One of the hardest things is that for so long, rap has been my full time job. So actually now I’m a pastor in DC and one of the hardest things is the time it takes to make a record. I know a lot of people assume that you write a verse in twenty minutes and it’s good but really it’s a full time labor for perfectionists like me, so that’s one thing. One of the battles is just to be home in DC walking with the people from my church, something heard in people, doing all the things I do as a pastor while also trying to balance that with being on the road and work on my career in music. That’s probably the hardest balance and it’s something I’m still learning but the people in my church love my music. They’re really excited about it and they understand what it is I’m doing so I’m grateful for that.
Q: Do the people in church follow your new releases/website?
A: Yeah they do man, they actually keep up with what I’m doing and one of the cool things is whenever I’m going out on tour or if I got a new album coming out, they’ll pray for me and they’re just real supportive man, so just like sunday. It’s not like a lot of fanfare of the members of the church, they know who I am, they support what I do and they love me because I’m a regular person. But yeah some people will come by and say “Hey I know the album was springing on Vibe and I listened to it, I love it and it’s incredible.” That means a lot to me too because it’s not on some fan stuff, it’s supportive. The fans that I have in church usually visit us and come too.
Q: What’s your end goal for your music career? What type of legacy are you trying to leave behind once you’re finished?
A: I guess there will be two types of legacies, one musical and one more in how it affects people’s lives. The music part, I’m a dude who loves classic hip hop albums especially ones in the mid 90’s. That’s “Illmatic of course, already there’s “Reasonable Doubt” and even like a “Blueprint.” Just a classic hip hop record, as an MC I’ve always been semi-obsessed with trying to make a classic album myself. One of the things I love to do just as a gift to people, I feel like music is really a gift, man. People love it and enjoy it and it encourages them so I want to be able to give people a solid body of work that if you listen back to my records 10-15 years from now, you’ll still enjoy them and it’s a solid body of work. The other thing is I want my music to actually help people to think. To think about the stuff that’s most important to think about. To think about their families and think about their lives, to think about God and about what their lives are going through. I would hate if we see hip hop is good only to talk about party stuff and only to have a good time because art is the most powerful when the stuff is close to our hearts, you know? So I want people to listen to my music and just think about their lives. Some of my favorite stories from one of my fans is I had this dude tell me “I was suicidal, I heard this one particular song of yours and it changed my life because it opened up for me what life was all about.” And then he pulled up his shirt and he had a tattoo with the lyrics from the song and in his wallet he had a piece of paper he carried around for years, he had the lyrics from that song written on it because it so impacted his life. I want to make music like that, powerful enough to really touch people’s lives.
Q: Tell me about your album, “Rise.”
A: “Rise” came out monday actually, “Rise” is my fifth album and it’s kind of like a culmination of all my other records, what I’ve been building to. And I worked with one producer named Gawvi on this record and I feel like the sound we were able to create for it was so fresh. We listened to the radio and there was dope stuff but I wanted some variety and this album I want it to feel fresh. I didn’t want it to feel like everything else. I think we created a fresh sound where we kind of, being influenced by early 2000’s soul samples, we created our own vocal samples with this soulful sounds but it’s 2014. So I’m excited for that kind of unique sound and really it’s called “Rise” because I wanted to challenge people to rise, to kind of get up and live their lives.
Q: So does the rest of the album have that particular fresh sound or did you kind of switch it up?
A: Well there’s some songs where it’s most evident like a song called “Light’s On” with a real dope vocal sample, so like “Sweet Victory” where it starts with a lot of strings and stuff on it, but then there are joints like a “Manolo” and that was kind of a turn up joint. So I think about the whole album, you get kind of a particular feel that feels fresh which is what I was going for but I still want it to feel like current hip hop too.
Q: Who are some of your favorite influences, hip hop wise?
A: Jay’s (Z) probably the dude that, it may sound cliché to say he was the one who influenced me the most but listening to “Blueprint,” that was the first album I heard that made me want to write dope lyrics, not just rap on beats. I was listening to it like man, double entendres and his storytelling, on “Heart of the City” the way he just pulls you in and over the dope productions. Jay’s probably one of the ones that influenced me the most because he was able to be commercial enough where everybody loved him but the streets still loved him too, he kept it hip hop and that’s really influenced me a lot in the way I try to do stuff. But I feel like I’ve been influenced by, I’m from Dallas so a lot of southern MCs, Texas stuff to Outkast and Atlanta stuff but this being a level of all hip hop and trying to pull in all those different sounds to try and make my own unique one.
Q: Any shoutouts?
A: My record label Reach Records, and Lecrae and Andy and Tedashii and KB, all the dudes on the label I’m really grateful for and we’re trying to do this thing together. We got a squad and Lecrae just killed it with “Anomaly” and we got more on the way so I want people to keep looking out for us.
-Jagpal Khahera
