(uplifting music)
- You know, the Lord works in mysterious
and amazing ways, right?
So a couple of years ago, I saw this video
of this hiphop artist explaining gospel,
and it really spoke to me,
especially because I thought,
you know? Young people may not listen to me,
but this guy is reaching a whole new generation.
So I did some clicking around and found out
he's an artist called Propaganda,
and I instantly became a fan.
Fast forward a couple of years.
My wife and I are sitting at a film premiere
and she points down the aisle and says,
"Isn't that that guy, Propaganda, that you like?"
I said, "Oh my goodness."
I ran up to him and I said, "Look,
"I don't usually do this, but I am a huge fan of your work.
"I love what you're doing."
Well, we instantly became friends,
and out of that, we had the opportunity
to go to a radio station and sit down with Prop
and talk to him about his life, his work, his faith,
and about changing the world.
- I'm really happy to be here tonight
with somebody very special I want to introduce you to,
and I'm actually meeting him for the first time.
So we're gonna learn together
about Propaganda.
♫ The pain that guides us
♫ The strings that tie us
♫ The coincidence that proves to us God's existence
So from the soil that grew in Jim Morrison, Tony Hawk,
NWA, Snoop, and Kendrick Lamar
grows another LA native, Propaganda.
What do you say about Propaganda?
He's a poet, political activist, husband,
father, academic, and MC.
With LA flowing through his veins
and armed with a bold message,
Propaganda has assembled a body of work
that challenges his listeners with every verse
and reaches across the spectrum of pop culture.
From aggressive battle raps to smooth introspective rhythms,
Propaganda's music will cause you to nod your head,
but most importantly, it will stretch your mind and heart.
I mean--
- [Propaganda] It's incredibly uncomfortable to hear
it when you're sitting there. - I learned a lot about you
in like three sentences.
- [Propaganda] Yes, Ma'am.
- But I really appreciate that last part,
stretching your mind and your heart.
- Stretch your mind and heart, got to.
- Thank you for being here, Prop.
- What up? What up, y'all?
- So everybody's got their musical preferences,
but what I'm always looking for
is excellence, right?
So I'm clicking around the internet
and I see this video that you and I talked about,
Don't Listen To Me, and Be Present,
where you're in this house,
and I didn't know, watching it,
and this is what I loved about it,
I didn't know that you were a faithful guy.
I just knew that I loved what you said,
fish out of water, the goulash that is you,
all that kind of stuff.
And then I saw your GOSPEL video,
which a lot of people have seen.
And then I saw your I Am Second testimony.
And I was like, "Ah, aha! He's a faithful guy."
What struck me about that whole experience was,
in Exodus 1:8, you may remember this,
it talks about the Kingdom of Egypt,
that there was a time when the Pharaoh didn't know Joseph,
that enough time had passed
that Pharaoh didn't know Joseph.
You are speaking into a culture of young people
that don't know like the faith message at all.
When I came across that, I was just
really struck by, here's a guy doing something different
and I instantly became a fan of your work.
And so is that sort of your experience,
that a lot of people have kind of met you that way?
- I think, in recent years, yeah.
Prior to sort of poetry and sort of the YouTube world,
I was just in sort of just
the hiphop kind of battle rap scene,
and so people kind of knew me as that,
just like an underground rapper.
You know, the GOSPEL video, the I Am Second video
definitely sort of changed the trajectory,
where people's entrance to me was poetry,
and speaking on like the things of God.
- For a lot of people
that have a specific idea of what Christian music is,
is hiphop Christian music?
- Well, hiphop is hiphop.
And, you know, Jesus ain't die for hiphop,
he died for people, you know what I'm saying?
Like any other genre, somebody puts
their personhood, and their faith, and their beliefs
into whatever they do.
So country music isn't Christian music, it's country music.
There are Christians that do it, you know what I'm saying?
And hiphop itself,
depending on who you ask and what day you ask them,
is much more than a musical genre.
It's a more of a cultural expression
that came out of
a sociopolitical and economic state that
the nation is in.
- But hiphop can be Christian.
- Absolutely, just like any other thing can be Christian.
So like all of the lights and cameras and stuff
are plugged into something.
So that's the utility.
The electricity, the outlet is a utility,
and whatever you plug into that
becomes whatever it is.
So as an artist who's doing hiphop,
hiphop is a utility,
but the artist plugging into that might
or might not be a Christian.
- I heard a musician, Jake Hamilton,
say something that really struck me.
He talked about the fact that God is the creator
of everything, right?
And so that means God created every kind of music,
and just because it's not your kind of music,
doesn't mean it's inherently bad.
Sometimes rap obviously has a bad name
because people have,
you know, because there's been so many bad actors
in the genre, but that doesn't make it inherently bad.
- Yeah, I have a worldview that believes
that there's no sphere of the universe
that God's not sovereign over.
So all music, all art, all beauty is God's.
So all of it is God reflecting, right?
Evil exists in the hearts of men and women,
you know what I mean?
But, I mean, I'm trying,
help me understand how the content of
hiphop is any different than like Hotel California,
you know what I'm saying?
Or any other musical genre where people are just
telling their soundtrack of life
that is sometimes full of incredible debauchery,
you know what I'm saying?
The racial undertone of that is like,
well, hiphop's made by black people.
So somehow or another,
we have to give this a caveat like it's wrong,
but it don't have to be wrong, you know what I'm saying?
How come nobody's saying that about any other genre,
you know what I'm saying?
So I would say that, again, when you're creating art,
you're either creating art about the light
or about what the light is shining on.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
In that sense, every album is
ultimately, actually telling God's story.
- You're speaking light and life
into a whole new generation of people
that haven't maybe heard that message.
They're not hearing a lot of positive messages.
How does that feel?
- Man, you know what?
- To be a role model like that.
- Yeah, you know, I still take a sort of
workhorse sort of like point of view where it's like
a lot of times you can't see the forest for the trees,
as not to say that I don't take
the responsibility, like I don't take it lightly,
and I'm not incredibly grateful for it,
but it's always,
I'm taken aback when someone says,
"Hey, yo, you know, I've never thought about
"life, the gospel, or anything like this
"until I saw you working them stories."
It's like, "Wait, what? Wait, me?" You know what I'm saying?
- That's because you're a trailblazer and you're the first.
Other people came after you,
but you took it into something new,
which is what God does.
You took it into something totally new
that hadn't been done before, you know?
- Well, I mean, yeah, I wasn't the first
like Christian rapper, but, you know,
on the other hand, yeah, I had to walk the--
- You're the first you.
- I'm the first me.
I'm the guy that walked my lane, yeah.
- So how did you know you were gifted
in the world of words?
- That's funny, like I still wonder, you know?
- Obviously, you were born this way,
but when did you know?
- You ask my father, it's the fifth grade talent show.
It's like I danced to Bobby Brown's like Ghostbusters song,
you now what I'm saying? - Oh, not Ghostbusters.
- Oh, man, I was killing it,
and I couldn't figure out for the love of me
why the teachers made me go last, right?
I was like, "Why I got to go last?"
And then somebody finally told me
it's 'cause you're the headliner.
And I was like,
"Oh, so that's a compliment?"
So I ain't knew, you a fifth-grader, you don't know.
I knew that I could come alive on stage then.
I just got bit by the bug, yeah.
- I don't know if you'd be comfortable with this label,
but sometimes I think you're a sarcastic Christian
in the sense that... - I am.
Yes. - Right?
- Yes. - Are you cool with that?
- Our sarcasm is a gift from God.
Yeah, I totally agree, yeah.
Satire is I feel like is a lost art.
- And then there's this other element of your work, which is
sort of cultural commentary.
You're looking up, you're asking us to look at ourselves,
both as faithful people and the larger community.
- Yeah, I minored in intercultural studies,
and then I went and got
a teacher credential in social sciences,
so I still really think of myself as
like a sociologist in a lot of ways,
in that a lot of my music is just commentary,
of culture, of life, and sometimes of myself.
- Some people love the spoken word,
you do spoken word, you do music,
and people loved one or the other,
they want both, and you were saying that
you have to have both.
- It's two sides of the same coin,
it's like asking a parent to pick
which kid they like better.
I would never like choose.
They are both 100% me, and they both serve
the type of messages and things and art
like I desire to create.
- Can you do a couple lines from maybe
whatever spoken word piece
that you love or that you're thinking about right now?
- I was recently told I was too creative,
that I was not quite centered enough,
and, "The peeps we trying to reach
"wouldn't understand your speech."
I told them, "It's cool, it's not a issue.
"I ain't so judgmental, thanks for your advice.
"I'm just not afraid of heights."
- So talk about that a little bit.
- Yeah, so that, again, was a true story.
Was asked to be a part of an event.
We're trying to be a Christian organization that had
reached into a general market
and they wanted to be evangelistic in their approach,
and the music, or the poetry that I present
oftentimes isn't,
it's not a very direct, if you will,
because that's just not the way I write.
So it's not like a very direct, up-the-gut,
it-is-what-it-is gospel presentation.
Most of my poetry is not.
In the interview process of being on this,
one of the elders kind of called me and said,
"We love your work, but it's kind of not...
"We're looking for stuff that's a little more evangelistic,
"and we kind of feel like it's almost like
"it's too creative."
And just the phrase was like,
"What?"
Like you know what I'm saying?
And it inspired a poem, and I was just like,
I felt like what I heard
wasn't like concern for the brand,
I heard fear,
and I was like, "You're just scared.
"Whatever it is, you're scared."
So that's why I was like, "Man, I'm not afraid of heights."
- Would it be fair to say you've got
a little John the Baptist going on there?
- Maybe, you know what I'm saying?
- Maybe not the locusts. - Yeah, that's disgusting.
- And the honey, right?
But the idea that you're unafraid to sort of
speak into the culture what you see.
- Man, I'm not afraid of the culture,
you know what I'm saying?
And a lot of times, people use that as holiness,
but I'm like, "It's not holiness, you scared.
"You're scared that whatever they are
"or whatever you think they are is gonna
"like somehow, by osmosis, get on you."
It's just not the message of scripture,
it's not the message of Jesus,
and it's definitely not the message
that I put out in my music.
But it made me realize
some of the fears that were in my own life,
you know what I'm saying?
So I'm like, "You scared,
"but you scared like the rest of us."
You know what I'm saying?
"You scared like I am."
I'm scared to be mediocre.
I'm scared to not ever reach a certain level of potential
or success in my career.
I'm afraid I'm all talk.
I'm afraid, you know what I'm saying?
So all of the things that I realize, like,
yo, I'm just as afraid.
- Let's talk about somebody who's faithful,
they're struggling with something in their life.
Give me a song or a spoken word piece
that's an example of how you try to address that.
- Yeah, well, I did a song called I Ain't Got An Answer.
And it was essentially about like
y'all having no idea what to do as a parent.
You upset, and like, you know, just being like,
I am clueless, I have no answer for you.
I don't like making music that ties up
with a neat little bow at the end,
because life's not a sitcom, you know what I'm saying?
It don't wrap up in 23 minutes,
and you have all the answers, everything,
it just don't work like that.
I still got questions about things that I'm like,
"Man, I have no idea why I went through that."
I dunno, you know what I'm saying?
- Especially as a dad.
- Yeah, you know, especially as a dad.
- Of girls.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
- Oh, jeez.
- You're a father, you've got girls,
how does that affect all this?
- Oh my gosh.
I realized a number of things.
I realized I had actually bought into
gender role patriarchy that I didn't know I had.
Quick story, my eldest daughter,
when she was in second grade,
she got pushed off the monkey bars.
She was crying, but she was crying
not because she was scared, but she just,
for the love of her, couldn't figure out
why another person would do that to her.
Just having a daughter made me sort of have the wherewithal
to be like, well,
you never know what that little girl is going through.
Maybe she was having a bad day.
Is she your friend, you know what I'm saying?
You don't want to lose a friend.
I just know that wouldn't have been my response with a boy.
Like with a boy, I'd be like, "Wait, he did what?
"He pushed you off of what?
"And what did you do?" You know what I'm saying?
Did you teach him he can't do that?
- Oh, I know what you're saying.
- Do you understand what I'm saying?
But just realizing like, why?
Why is it so easy for me to think that for my boy?
Why couldn't I say to my boy like,
"Yo, maybe homie was having a bad day."
You know what I'm saying?
Like why can't you just, you know what I'm saying?
So I just realize, having daughters
that I actually thought about the world in a much more
obtuse way than I
was willing to admit.
- You have an agenda. - I do.
- And your agenda, as I see it, is to speak,
like to speak positive, to speak good into the world.
As an artist, we all have that thing, that passion.
My passion is talking to people like you.
What drives you?
- Man, it's a T-shirt that we made
because it came from lyrics, but it's real,
like I'm not the artist, I'm the canvas.
- Ooh, I like that.
- Yeah, the Lord is the artist, you know what I'm saying.
I got to be who I am, I got to be what he made me.
To me, it's culture-shaking, you know?
And if you can get to like the fountainhead.
The fountainhead of culture is like virtue,
so if you have like virtuous like
men and women at like
the mouth of like the river of culture then downstream,
politics, music, and stuff like that, and education,
all that changes down there.
My attitude is that, how can I shape this up here?
What can I throw into the river up there,
that when it gets downstream, you know what I'm saying?
I can look back and be like,
I may not have any plaques on my wall, but
I tell you what, that's my plaque,
the fact that like this law is now passed or
this institution is this.
- You did what you were called to do.
Yeah, you did what you were called to do.
I mean, recognition comes from there.
- It comes from up. - Not from out there.
- So what's most important for you
as far as your message in your music?
- People asking me like, "So what sort of like
"high, theological, doctrinal issues you working with?"
I'm like, "Fam, I'm still trying to love my neighbor, Dog."
I'm still on number two, you know?
Love God and love neighbor.
I'm still working on number two.
You understand what I'm saying?
I don't know if I've moved past freshman year yet.
Yeah, there's a bigger picture of like
there is a God and that God loves us, but like,
more specifically, man,
let's learn how to be better humans,
you know what I'm saying?
- We working on it.
- We working on it.
- For parents that are watching, and they're thinking,
"Okay, I should introduce this guy to my kids
"if they don't already know about him, why?"
- You know what?
Wow, that's crazy,
I don't know if I'd have an answer for that.
Because I actually make music that's more for the parent.
- That's interesting.
- Hiphop doesn't have to be a youthful thing,
you know what I'm saying?
I talk about mortgages,
I talk about like having preteens,
I talk about paying bills,
I talk about like adult things.
- It's like Seinfeld, but with music.
- Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
I think that
it's sort of a misnomer that like hiphop has to be
a youthful thing, you know what I'm saying?
I feel like I'm talking to it,
I rap like an adult because I am one.
You know what I'm saying?
- But for young people that are fans of yours
and who are inspired by you,
can you leave them some advice?
I mean, people that say they see your work
and they go, "You know what?
"I want to follow in that path."
- Absolutely.
Yo, I would say, yeah, like
what my mom used to say,
"Be who you is, because who you ain't ain't who you is."
- Boy, it's so good.
- A million grammatical errors, but it's wisdom of the ages.
- Yes, it is.
- You just got to be the person
the Father has made you to be.
- Okay, so let's pivot just a little bit.
Racial tension has been a big subject
for the last couple years,
with the Black Lives Matter movement,
I don't even need to detail that,
everybody in America knows that.
A lot of people complain about it, they point fingers,
you actually do something about it,
and I want you to talk about it
because it's important for people to know what you're doing.
- Yeah, so a considerable amount of my work is
directed towards sort of systemic injustice,
and I think it all really just boils down to like,
how do we be a better neighbor?
Like you love your neighbor,
and sometimes loving your neighbor means
you got to understand your neighbor.
So as a believer, if I'm gonna talk about justice and race,
I can't go straight to reconciliation
without skipping truth because
that's not real reconciliation,
that's just flattery. - No, it's inauthentic.
- It's inauthentic and it's not real, right?
But I can't just stop at truth
because then we're not trying to reconcile.
So what I believe my heart is to say
it's got to be both.
It's reconciliation through truth.
So truth means you have to acknowledge
racism is real, we have a very real history of this.
Of course, black people ain't
the sole purveyors of suffering.
What did you think, that just when slavery
and Jim Crow stopped, all of a sudden,
everybody was singing Kumbaya?
- Everybody's happy, we're good.
- It's all good, like there's no residue of that.
That's like looking at a woman who's been beat for 20 years
by her husband and be like,
"Hey, but he stopped hitting you,
"so you need to stop complaining."
We would all think that that's ridiculous, right?
We would all say, "No, no, no, no, no.
"He needs to make this right."
So the truth is,
no, listen, we have real things we need to deal with.
But it's for the purpose of getting to reconciliation.
- People feel powerless to do anything.
So they watch you and they say, "Great.
"I'm gonna like what Prop said on Facebook,
"I'm gonna like it on Instagram."
But can you give,
like give people one thing that they can do, tangibly,
to take a positive step in that direction, in life.
- Yeah, make some friends.
It's super easy, make some friends.
You know, make some friends that don't look like you.
- What do you think the Church in America,
just speaking to the Church, what can be done better?
I'm kind of asking globally here.
- Yeah, I kind of think
we could stand to be a little more honest about our
shortcomings, our mistakes, our failures,
where we drop the ball,
and being willing to say, like the scripture says,
"I see through a glass dimly."
I don't have this figured out,
I'm running at the cross just like you are.
I am not what I want to be.
You know what I'm saying?
And I think that if we could, as a body,
just kind of embrace like what the cross says about us,
you know what I'm saying?
The cross says about us is that you're hopeless,
like that's the worst thing,
the worst thing anybody could say to you
is not worse than what the cross says,
which is you're hopeless,
there's nothing you can do about it.
You know what I'm saying?
- Thank you for saying that.
Hey, Prop, thanks for being on the show.
- My pleasure, man.
♫ You are receiving life
♫ Yes, life
♫ This is the Gospel.
♫ God, Our, Sins,
♫ Paying, Everyone, Life.
(lively music)
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