If you’ve been a fan of Trip Lee for as long as I have (or even if you haven’t), this new EP from Trip Lee might be a bit different. The project is – Brag Worship: For Your Glory Pt. 1. A rapper just dropped a collective album that he’s saying is a worship album? What does that even mean? Is he just trying to get clicks? I was able to chat a bit with Trip Lee. What I found is someone who is laser-focused on glorifying God and edifying the church.
My first introduction to this project was the album art. I had a lot of questions about the whats and the whys. I was able to talk with Trip about this. Also, I spoke with the graphic designer himself, Kevin Hackett.
Artwork Intention
Trip explained to me that they were both inspired by this “random book Trip owns,” Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. As they were coming up with visual ideas, Trip asked Kevin, “What if we had some different icons that went with each track?” Kevin took the idea and ran with it from there. So everything from the icons on the track list, to the etchings of the medieval music notes at the top of the art, to the cover itself, was spawned from this idea.
“Overall, an ancient feel is what we were going for. A lot of medieval works have a lot of care put into even a single letter. There’s just so much intention in the smallest things. So with how much focus they put on the words, I wanted to mirror that. My intentionality around the decorative lettering represents the initial spark for Trip, which was the intention behind his lyrics,” Hackett told Rapzilla.
I was also curious about the upside-down tree. After ruminating a bit on his thoughts, Kevin gave me a brilliant reflection.
“The upside-down tree coming out of heaven with Trip standing beneath actually represents the fruit of a tree. You see an exchange here to and from the heavens. This illustration represents worship as being the fruit of a life surrendered to God. Worship is part of the relationship we have with the One who gave us life. And I’m really proud of how all of this turned out.”
Literally at first glance, I’m already met with information that shows purpose, intention, and care. Kevin said that because he’s already able to think outside of the box when it comes to hip-hop visual art, it was somewhat easy to move with the visuals for this project. Trip Lee spoke to me about what it was like to make that shift for himself.
*The next portion of the interview will contain large chunks of Trip Lee and his thoughts in italics.*
“I’ll say this, because I think this is something that even for friends of mine, who knew I was working on this for a while, would forget and ask me. Again, this is a worship album.
I’m not rapping on this album. It’s not a worship hook, and then I’m going to do some verses. This is not that. This is a worship album. They’re all meant to be songs for Christians to sing together.
And it’s not like people can’t sing rap songs together, but…You know, they don’t fit in every context as well; sometimes there are too many words.
So this is that. A lot of it has come from my own life as a member of churches and helping lead churches. Because the music that we sing when Christians gather together is a very important part of what God is doing when Christians are together. You know, I think sometimes we think of music as an opener. The headliner is the sermon, and there’s a little opener before that. Oh, there’s a little icebreaker before the serious stuff or some fluffy stuff while people get to their season for the sermon. Where does the meat come? [We think] that’s where the word is a part of it…Like that’s where God is gonna really disciple you. And that’s not what the Bible teaches.
Applying it Biblically
The Bible talks about music as part of the way that God is growing his church. Part of how he gets his word into the life of his church. Colossians 3 says, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’. That’s one of the ways that we help each other to grow in Jesus. And when God meets with his people, He’s commanded us to sing. So that was something that had always been on my heart. It’s such an important part of what Christians do when they gather together.
I’ve been so blessed by great worship songs…and I always wonder, ‘Oh man, could I write some of those?’ And I want there to be all different kinds of them. I think people like, sometimes I can put worship music in too much of a box, and they can think “it only sounds like this,” or ‘it only sounds like that’. And so I’m like, yeah, if Jesus is a savior of all peoples, all nations, all tribes, then, you know, there should be as many cultural expressions of worship as there are cultures. So here’s my contribution to that space.”
As a worship pastor myself, I’m triggered when people use the word “worship,” yet they just mean music. Trip Lee had a lot to say about music being a tool for discipleship in our everyday lives. It’s not just on Sundays when we gather.
Worship as a Tool
“In every single part of our lives, we want to offer a reasonable service to God. Words in the Old Testament that the Bible uses for worship have to do with bowing down before God and recognizing his greatness, and in serving him. And that’s what every aspect of our life is supposed to be. As the church gathers, they are gathering to worship God together. If God is saying that this music that the believers sing together helps the word to get into us more deeply, then my prayer is that’s what it does.
One of the things I’ve seen as a pastor is that I never expected on Thursday morning for people to be driving to work reciting my points for my sermon. But there are songs that have God’s word in them and get the truth of God’s word stuck in your head, and it helps push it down more deeply. There’s something about music that has access to our whole person that sometimes just spoken word doesn’t. That, you know, music does have an emotional effect on us. Music does have a way of helping us to remember things. Melodies can point to the truth of beautiful imagery, can point to the beauty of certain truths. And so my hope is that these are songs that Christians can sing together and will impact how people see God in all of their lives.
Remember How Good God Has Been
I was looking at [the book of] Titus the other day, and Titus talks about us being saved, that God…He wants to purify people who are zealous for good works. My prayer is that as we remember how good God has been, what Christ has done in the gospels for us. The only response isn’t just singing about how good God is when the church gathers, but that it would produce in us a zeal for good works. As we look at this good God who does good all the time. He does all things well. As we go about our whole life, as we interact with our neighbors, as we interact with our families, as we interact with our coworkers, we would be zealous for good works in a way that continues to make much of who God is.”
To be clear, this is a different album. Even for me, knowing what it was trying to be, some of these songs and the way they’re constructed, took me a while to digest. One song in particular stuck out to me, though, and that was “Draw My Eyes.”
Draw My Eyes
“‘Draw my eyes’: That’s a song that features DOE. I’m so grateful for her being willing to be on this. She’s an amazing artist. That song, I wrote, when one time I went to church, and I was very distracted. You know, services start when we’re about to start singing. I’m super distracted. I’m thinking about all the stuff I didn’t do last week and I’m thinking about the people in the room, like, ‘Oh, I forgot to call him back…my bad’. You know, I’m thinking about what I gotta do next week. And I’m like, ‘Lord, help me to focus on you. I’m so distracted by all this stuff’. So I wrote down, ‘draw my eyes’ and wrote that song that day.
This is a ‘Lord, there’s so much going on. Life is hard, so many things are grabbing our attention’, song. And the bridge says, ‘You’re great, You reign, we know this, and when I don’t notice, it’s not Your beauty, it’s my eyes’.
So when I’m not blown away by God’s beauty. It’s not because he’s not beautiful. It is because there’s something wrong with how I’m seeing him. So it’s a plea like, ‘God, draw my eyes to you’.
How isn’t This Worship?
And this one, you know, this is the tightrope that I’m trying to even walk, with how the music sounds. I want there to be enough familiar elements for people who love worship music, while also wanting to bring in stuff that, to me, has no reason to be excluded from worship music. I remember I played one of the early songs for a friend of mine. He was like, ‘Oh, this is dope, but it’s not worship’. I was like, ‘Well, why are you saying that?’ [And he says] ‘These kinds of drums can’t be in a worship song’. So I think what I’m trying to think about is…is it something that distracts from us being able to worship Jesus together? Are these melodies singable? Is the truth of the gospel in this? Is it serving all of these purposes?
And if it is, then I like the idea of injecting some things into this music that we don’t normally think of from worshiping. So that’s one that I think has connected with a lot of people.”
Next, I verified that there is a full worship version of his hit “Sweet Victory” coming. Trip Lee then wanted to leave us with this challenging thought:
Final Thoughts
“I think one thing I would say is that we see all kinds of commands in the Bible to sing. You know, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song’, and we see ‘Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another’.
I want people to know that those verses are not for worship leaders. Those verses are for every disciple. If you are not singing, then you are disobeying a command from God. It’s important to him. And when God gives us tools to know Him better, to serve other people better, and to glorify Him more, we want to take advantage of those tools. So my hope is that, if the only outcome of this record is that it encourages more people to sing songs to God and to one another. That would feel like a success to me.”
What did you think of the new album by Trip Lee?
The post Trip Lee Wants Christians to Worship Together Freely [Interview] appeared first on Rapzilla.
Source: rapzilla.com
Original article: Trip Lee Wants Christians to Worship Together Freely [Interview]