Interesting musical turn from the modern: The Reformed Rap.
What drew my interest was this quote by Anthony Bradley:
Reformed hip-hop is a theologically driven masculinity movement. It says no to the prom songs to Jesus in CCM, no to whiny emo Christian music for hipsters, and no to empty, shallow, individualistic Christian music lacking theological content produced out of Nashville.
And then I thought of those orthodox churches (not the Eastern Orthodox), which gradually surrender their music to the very songs they've once called shallow...they would be no better than shallow, beginning it emotionally until it spread through the whole essence of a man.
Though hip-hop rap is very wordy than others, providing the advantage of content building, I am not too impressed when I browsed through an example of Curtis Allen's Heidelberg Catechism song, which is more repetition of the title than anything theological. How would one over come the aggressive masculinity obsession in a style whose essence comes from it.
I would put it in the Entertainment-Education category, still, it is very distracting, especially when I try to be serious in focusing on the meaning of the Westminster's Catechism when it's sung by Curtis. And the speed of Marcus Gray's Who Can Pluck Us, while I may try to keep up, is tempting me for unecessary aggression, I doubt it is possible to have a pious "music" in this way.
However, I'll give them credit for being calvinist...perhaps a tool I'll throw into the modern Christians who's so crazy about pop Christian songs to sink them to a point of turning around, though not for myself.
Prom songs to Jesus...ha...that is certainly a fresh term for the CCM.