God Gotta Afro. Religion Gotta Question

Rapsody is omnipresent. She’s on podcasts being interviewed, serving the flyest Afrofuturistic looks while casually dropping knowledge about Hip-Hop culture. She’s on the Billboard 200 charts with music that resonates with real Hip-Hop heads. She’s writing essays addressing how journalism is reduced to quick clicks, and she’s on stages rapping from her new album, God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops.

“What happens to culture when the work that requires the most context is competing with the work that produces the fastest click?” — Rapsody

Her omnipresence affects me on a deep, personal level. I’ve woven my way across Hip-Hop, touching almost everything, before settling into a comfy space as a journalist. And that’s my problem. Words and I have a complex relationship. Whatever life throws at me, I feel compelled to write about. Usually, when I hear a new album, I already have a preset formula for what I want to say. I even got tight when I first heard the title of her album, thinking I already knew what I’d write.

Once I dove into the music, everything shifted.

Lately, I want readers to feel like they’re peeking into my life as I perceive culture. Though the struggle to obtain more readers tempts me to pen shorter articles just to keep your attention, Rapsody is right. The naked truth is what’s needed in journalism, so buckle in.

I found myself with too much time on my hands during the pandemic. I was deep in my creative bag, and I ended up publishing a small collection of poetry titled Is God A She. Though my pen was on fire, the process changed me. It’s also why Rapsody’s new album hit me with some unexpected feelings.

I no longer consider myself a Christian, though I respect others’ devotion to their higher authority. While writing my poetry collection, I wanted to proceed with caution when dealing with God. I have many friends who are theologians, so I called some to ask their opinions on the gender of their Most High. Every single person said that God doesn’t have a gender. I even received new information on a scripture where wisdom is given a feminine persona, existing alongside God when humanity was created:

“Wisdom calls aloud outside; she raises her voice in the open squares.” — Proverbs 1:20–21

Wisdom is portrayed metaphorically in this verse, shown as a female presence asking people to stay away from foolishness. Still, to say the words out loud—God gotta Afro and Gold Hoops—would feel sacrilegious if I were still a Christian. Even saying the words Is God A She once made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t even bring myself to say God Is a She. I had to position the words as a question, not a statement. These are the situations I find myself in as a journalist, trying to explain the complex intersection of my emotions and this music.

I keep revisiting Rapsody’s lyrics:

“Know it sting to know the truth / know that God look like me” — Rapsody

I started deconstructing from the Seventh-day Adventist religion about 30 years ago. I always had questions that no leader could answer. On a church trip I was forced to go on, I stared out the window and asked God questions during the six-hour drive. My response was silence and mental images that reminded me of Egypt. There were no books or therapy groups back then to help me deal with the betrayal I felt leaving the religion of my family.

Later, at a gathering with a small group of lesbians, I heard of God as the feminine divine for the first time. Ideas that supported their claims were still hard to come by back then. Over time, the concept grew on me like ivy creeping up the side of an abandoned building—quiet and persistent. I’m a Black woman. I shouldn’t feel so uneasy about thinking of God as a Black woman. It shouldn’t be a stretch to consider a God that looks like me, but the sting Rapsody speaks of still hurts.

The conversations I had with my pastoral friends left me wondering if I’d truly deconstructed from religion, or if I’m just afraid of offending friendships built on ideas that no longer serve me. Many of them admitted they default to He/Him pronouns even when they fully recognize God has no gender. Curious about how many others navigate this psychological tightrope, I dug into the history of Black female artists for inspiration. Even when asserting their own divine worth, the lyrics often lean on the traditional masculine framework:

“If I am a reflection of Him, then I must be fly” — “The Truth” by India.Arie

“I hear so many cry for help
Searching outside of themselves
Now I know that His strength is within me.” — “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” by Lauryn Hill

“But I am protected by a higher authority
The positive always overrules the minority.
I keep my head up, my feet on the ground
I look at the sky and I never look down.” — “Evil That Men Do” by Queen Latifah

“I’m not a God, I’m a human, but I am a reflection of the divine.” — NO THANK YOU by Little Simz

God rocking an afro and gold hoops evokes powerful images in my mind: civil rights activist Angela Davis; advocate for homeless LGBTQ youth Marsha P. Johnson; singer, songwriter, and activist Nina Simone; the Oracle in The Matrix; and my momma. This imagery is entirely counter to what surrounds us in most societies.

Most Black female rappers stop short of affirming that God is female. Pastors and reverends know God isn’t male, yet they still default to He/Him pronouns. I couldn’t even affirm this knowledge without anxiety. An artist may get close enough to an elite music catalog to earn the label of “God MC.” Yet, inside Hip-Hop culture, artists still default to words like Goddess and Queen when describing a divine woman. Why?

“Because if God is a woman, we have some serious explaining to do about how we treat Her.” — Starla Carr

Fortunately for all of us, lyrics are a perfect place for self-reflection and reclamation. Rapsody’s travels to Ghana and Johannesburg set the precedent for this album; she utilized the trip to think about how religion and history have been rewritten. Her interview with Rob Markman finally gave me context for why I still feel so uncomfortable about the female divine:

“So we go to the Ashanti region, we get up at 5, 5:30. It’s a 5-hour drive… It’s a beautiful sunrise, we’re in the continent. So I’m just allowing myself to be where I’m at. And on the radio, it’s this westernized, white gospel music playing and I’m like, ‘I am in Accra, Ghana, why am I listening to this?’ Like, it just takes me out of everything. This is not what I want to hear.” — Rapsody

The programming I’ve experienced from religious trauma feels like being trapped in a fantasy I can’t escape. This is some Matrix sh*t. I’ve done extensive research into societies like the Twi and Kwa, which have matrilineal descent systems where women hold leadership, and where property and political office pass through the maternal line. I’ve studied how successful African queens led their people out of bondage and into wealth and prosperity. Even closer to home, the matriarchs in my own family created miracles I was privileged to witness—like my great-grandmother living to the age of 103. More importantly, I feel the power of the God in me with every word I write.

It is the weight of counterculture that is responsible for my unease. People say representation matters, but creation can only come from the vortex of things we are exposed to. Rapsody’s creation fuses neo-soul and rappity-rap, embracing the funk of the past and the Afrocentric positions of the future. She is intentional about the music she has gifted us—and there’s the added bonus that you can dance to it.

If she is bold enough of a prophet to see a future where women hold their divinity like a mic, I can too.

Written by – Starla Carr (@werdwerkdapoet)