Luda's Release Embraces Jesus and Junk

"Maturity is a beautiful thing."

So says Atlanta rapper Ludacris, whose fifth album, Release Therapy, debuted recently at No. 1. Other words he's chosen to describe his latest creative effort? Wisdom. Balance. Intelligence. "Going into the studio to make Release Therapy, I felt like a wiser, more intelligent person," he says on his Web site. "To me, part of being a complex person is a balance of many things. On this record I talk about striving, silliness, sadness, sex, salvation, amongst other things."

And several tracks on Ludacris' latest do bear witness to growing maturity. Unapologetic lyrics claim allegiance to Jesus Christ and illustrate the perilous plight faced by runaways. In fact, there's enough praiseworthy material on Release Therapy for it to start undermining the preconception that rap necessarily has to be raunchy.

An Unexpected Altar Call
Rap artists' CD liner notes often include shout-outs praising God. And Ludacris' are no exception: The Almighty tops his thank-you list. Then this Crash star, whose real name is Chris Bridges but who often goes by the shortened moniker Luda, takes things a big step further. "Do Your Time" (which encourages incarcerated rappers to persevere) testifies, "I'll definitely die for Jesus, 'cause He died for me."

In the back of my mind, I wondered whether such a strong and specific faith reference was just a fluke. So I kept listening. And listening. I got all the way to the last track, "Freedom to Preach," before Luda answered that question definitively. On that song, Bishop Eddie Lee Long gives a breathtaking altar call. He paraphrases 2 Corinthians 5:17, saying, "If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away." He also challenges his audience to leave sin behind: "When everything becomes new in you/It's time to stop the killing/I said it's time to stop the stealing/It's time to stop disrespecting our women/... Wherever you find yourself right now, you can confess/And you can tell God, 'I'm sorry/ ... I ask You to forgive me.'"

It's safe to say I've never heard such a stirring spiritual charge on a secular rap album. Luda's own response? "Lord, please forgive me for the mistakes I've made." Significantly, he also believes that God might choose to use him as an instrument to speak to others. "I'm just speakin' my truth, 'cause I heard it sets you free," he raps. "And my conversation's with God/Even though He speaks through me." (Ludacris clearly understands that his platform provides the power to shape what people believe.)

Less spiritual but still powerful is the cautionary tale "Runaway," which tells tragic tales of three girls who mistakenly thought they could deal with physical and sexual abuse, substance-abusing parents, and hopelessness by running away. "Little Lisa's only 9 years old," Ludacris narrates, "Forced to think that hell is a place called home." It's a place where one of Mom's boyfriends is "tryna have his way, and little Lisa says, 'Ouch!'" Ludacris doesn't offer solutions, but he definitely wants us to display compassion for powerless children entangled in desperate plights.

Carnal "Genius"
Those songs prove that Ludacris (or any rapper, for that matter) has the capacity to rise above the common hip-hop clichés that mostly major in drugs and drink, violence, misogyny, and self-indulgence. Which makes it all the more frustrating that the remainder of Release Therapy is altogether given over to carnal excess. Instead of turning away from irresponsible and demeaning sexual behavior, track after track positively celebrate the lust of the flesh—as well as other unhealthy appetites.

Three songs in, I stumbled across a jaw-dropper of a lyric. It comes from "Money Maker," which just enjoyed two weeks atop Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. After encouraging a woman to "shake your money maker/Like somebody's 'bout to pay ya," Ludacris spits out a line that would be right at home in a Mad magazine dirty limerick—or a porn film soundtrack. I'll spare you the gritty details, but I will tell you that he tries to rhyme genius with penis.

My initial reaction was spontaneous, incredulous laughter: He's really rhyming those two words? But this sad lyric is anything but funny. It does, however, encapsulate Luda's worldview: Sex is the ultimate path to meaning and gratification. So while "Runaway" laments a child who's been sexually abused, "Girls Gone Wild" finds Luda boozing up women in order to take advantage of them ("And I'm gonna pour Patron 'til I get 'em in the zone/And I'll get 'em all alone 'til I make 'em wanna bone"). "Woozy," meanwhile, demonstrates the rapper's penchant for picking up women at the club and taking them home for a casual hook-up ("Slow grind and slow jams when I'm feelin' yo' booty/We'll hold hand and hold times when I'm up in that coochie").

Add to such sensuality a load of profanity (about 40 uses of the f-word, plus milder profanities), frequent alcohol and marijuana references ("If you take two puffs of this dro, it'll give you satisfaction"), and a smattering of gangsta-style violence by guest rappers, and the Release Ludacris offers is anything but spiritual, or even therapeutic.

Maturity and Integrity
What are we to make of the gap between Luda's lyrics about repentance and sexual obsession? On the one hand, he rightly believes a relationship with God is important. And his expression of faith is no fuzzy thing, either, as he recognizes Jesus died for him.

On the other hand, Luda's conception of sin seems dangerously stunted. Over and over, Scripture calls believers to a standard of behavior that looks radically different from the world (Ephesians 4:17-24). The Apostle Paul says simply and unequivocally, "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity" (Ephesians 5:3). Luda's exaltation of frequent and casual sex fails that test miserably. Simply put, his understanding of the purpose and place of sexual expression in life seems wholly removed from the faith he claims.

Sadly, that disconnect between stated faith and embraced behavior is becoming the norm, not the exception, in our culture. We live in a world where what we say we believe and what we do have little correlation with one another. And as a result, Ludacris seems perfectly comfortable singing about Jesus one moment and bragging about his sexual exploits—and exploitation—the next. Biblical teaching, in contrast, helps us see that genuine faith leads to integrity, wholeness and consistency.

So if Ludacris, aka Luda, aka Chris Bridges really wants to inject maturity, balance and intelligence into his music, he'd be wise to listen again to Bishop Eddie Lee Long's clarion call to repentance—a call that recognizes that our faith and our behavior should not and cannot be separated from each other so casually.