Still in Rotation: Jesus Freak (dc Talk)

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Still in Rotation: Jesus Freak (dc Talk)

Still in Rotation is a guest post feature in which talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

I first heard of A’driane Nieves through her searing blog post, “America’s Not Here for Us,” about what she said to her son asked, “‘Mom-are we still slaves? Do people still hate us, African-Americans?'” Seeing her read the piece during BlogHer 2014’s Community Keynote was even more powerful, and I’ve been hoping to have her over here for a S.I.R. ever since. Even if I have pickles in the fridge that are older than the artist/writer/activist known as addyeB…

Jesus Freak (1995)

by A’Driane Nieves

In 1995, U2, Nirvana, Seal, and Nas released a monumental album together.

I’m kidding. They didn’t. BUT, if they had, it would sound like dc Talk’s Jesus Freak, an album made for Christian teens who were into grunge, R&B, rapcore/hip-hop, and alternative rock, but needed some Jesus in the mix to make head banging a form of worship. It was a breakthrough and unexpected album that permanently altered the landscape of contemporary Christian music; which at the time was heavily dominated by the pop sounds of artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Steven Curtis Chapman. Stylistically, it was unlike anything group members Toby Mckeehan (tobyMac), Michael Tait, and Kevin Max had done in their career. While their previous albums were largely rooted in pop and hip-hop, all 13 tracks on Jesus Freak are hybrids of the group’s musical influences in pop, classic/modern rock, R&B, and hip-hop. In interviews, the group often described title track off the album as an “experiment” with the grunge sound that dominated the music scene, designed to “speak to a generation” of youth Christian and non Christian alike. Their experiment paid off- Jesus Freak climbed both the Christian music and Billboard charts, and quickly became one of the best selling Christian albums of all time. Hailed by critics, it won the Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album 1997, the group’s second.

I was part of that generation dc Talk wanted to speak to through that album. As a new Christian youth at age 13, it became a soundtrack that defined the early years of my fledgling faith during junior high and the beginning of high school. I grew up listening to artists like Prince and had a love for hip-hop, but I also secretly enjoyed Guns N Roses. I was starting to discover classic & alternative rock when grunge emerged from Seattle and took over the airwaves. Like most teens my age in the mid ’90s, I quickly succumbed to it, while also thoroughly enjoying the strange yet amazing mix of alt rock, hip-hop and R&B that existed.

What was missing though, was music to help me navigate discovering who I was as a young Christian. I wasn’t big on Gospel music, and contemporary Christian music mostly bored me-like I said, for someone who was a Prince fan, I found the CCM scene pretty stale. But Jesus Freak became the album that shaped me during that time as both a Christian and teenager. It helped me embrace being the nerdy Black girl who liked rock music and was an outsider at a school where I was one of the two Black students in attendance. It helped me worship and connect with God in a way that felt true to who I was at the time. Tracks like “So Help Me God” enabled me to sing lyrics like

“Won’t You take my heart,

Won’t You take my soul

Won’t You make me whole again,

You, You’ve got what I need, and You never retreat,

Unto You I will concede

So help me God to put my faith in you,

So help me God before I come unglued

Call it my addiction, I can’t get enough of You

So help me God to put my faith in You.”

The album help me explore my thoughts on topics touched on throughout it: atheism, race and racial justice, the complexities of friendships and relationships, doubting faith, struggling to live a Christian lifestyle, and many others.

It went from being an album to an identity, becoming both a challenge and a declaration that emboldened me to be more accepting of my emerging faith and being labeled as a “Christian” when doing so (especially at my school) wasn’t the “in” thing to do. I adopted Jesus Freak as a nickname and signed all of the notes I passed to friends throughout the school day with it. When the self-proclaimed “Satanist” crew did a lip sync to Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” during drama class in 8th grade? My self-proclaimed Jesus Freak friends and I felt it was our duty to balance things out by head banging and moshing our way through Jesus Freak’s title track for ours. (Our drama teacher found all of it pretty hilarious, and looking back, so do I. Ah. So young. So impressionable. )

Now at 32, I haven’t abandoned my faith in God, but the type of Christian I am has evolved into something much different than the one I was back then. I’m nowhere near as heavily into Christian and Gospel music as I was in my teens and even 20’s. But there are some albums from both genres that I go searching through my iTunes library for when I need to feel grounded and connected spiritually-especially during pivotal seasons in my life. Jesus Freak continues to be the first one I always go back and rock my soul out to.

♪♪♪

A’Driane Nieves (or addyeB) is a USAF disabled veteran, writer, artist, and activist passionate about social good. Her mother says the first song she ever sang along to was Prince’s When Doves Cry. She was 2, so she considers this as evidence that she’s been a proud Prince fan since birth. When she’s not elbow deep in caring for her 3 kids and talking tech with her futurist husband, she’s painting, writing, or heavily involved in a project related to mental health advocacy. She’s rarely on Twitter these days, but just launched a new site addyeb.com, is self-publishing a book due out in February titled Art+Words: Finding My Voice Through Motherhood, Story, and Paint, and enjoys sharing all the links related to social and racial justice over on Facebook.