My rhymes are fly, my beats are sick
My crew is big and it keeps getting bigger
That's 'cause Jesus Christ is my nigga.
Where the hell do we start with this one...
With layabouts scourging Iowan streets,
The church decided to get down and onto the beats,
So the pastors said to the kids all bored,
Fancy a nice little rapping ditty for the Lord?
Brian Spinney made it for a high-school project,
In collab with his pastor, it was too new, too high-tech;
Go worship at the 2nd West Dubuque Church of Christ,
To learn all your stories and rites.
Rappin' for Jesus was a satirical attempt from a fictitious Iowan church's outreach team, created by Pastor Jim Colerick, to engage young people with religion by describing the life of Jesus through rap. Generally suspected to have been uploaded to YouTube as a hoax.
Tropes in Rappin' for Jesus
- Blasphemous Boast: Explicitly condemned by Mary Sue; she doesn't blaspheme or brag.
- Church of Saint Genericus: The 2nd West Dubuque Church of Christ. note
- Drugs Are Bad: "If you do drugs and think you're cool, you need to come to Sunday school!"
- Eagle Land: The song takes a brief moment away from rapping about Jesus to show Jim, Sue, and their other friend pledging alliegence to the flag.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Mary Sue mentions that she doesn't cuss, and one of the lines in the song is "let His love pop a cap in your butt!" Subverted in the fact that she and her husband both say the n-word multiple times, which (especially for non-Black people) is almost certainly a cuss word.
- Happily Married: According to Pastor Jim, Mary Sue is the light of his life.
- Hypocritical Humor: Mary Sue claims not to blaspheme, but this comes almost right after she says she "turns the other cheek" and sticks her ass in front of the camera. To say nothing of calling Jesus Christ... well...
- Innocently Insensitive: Jim and Sue are, at worse, trying the slang they hear from kids and their music. This leads to them using the n-word, albeit in the conversational/reclaimed way as opposed to the insulting; but coming from two old white people, it's bound to come off as racist.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: He's an honest, caring, peace-lovin' nigga like me.
- N-Word Privileges: Subverted. Jim and Sue are white, but Jesus Christ is their nigga, obviously.
- Painful Rhyme: 'So I gave my sermon an urban kick / My rhymes are fly, my beats are sick.'
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The whole point of this.
- Speaking Like Totally Teen: The worst extreme of this; specifically, an older white couple mistaking a certain word in rap songs for just another teen slang term.
- Take That!: The Pastor not only claims, "I rhyme better than Notorious B.I.G."; but in the next verse implies that he might be in Hell for living in sin.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Name-dropped by Mary Sue; complete with a shot of her rear as illustration.
- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: The mismatch between this and the subject matter provides much of the amusement.
