Collision Records artists Christon Gray and Swoope are currently on their The Northern Lights Tour, which will continue until the end of the month (January 27-31). Jam the Hype caught up with them to ask a few questions the Christian Hip Hop community wants answers to. The Ohio-natives spoke on Billboard success, art, a possible collaborative project, the High Society Collective, WLAK, advice from Lecrae, and The Northern Lights Tour.
In 2014, Christon Gray and Swoope both recorded career milestones. One of their many 2014 achievements was infiltrating the mainstream arena. Christon Gray’s School of Roses charted at #5 on Billboard’s R&B Albums chart. Swoope’s Sinema hit the #4 spot on Billboard’s Rap Albums chart. Swoope spoke on various circumstances that keep the billboard-charting artists humble.
“Yea, the success is kind of hard to grasp when you’re not living a necessarily successful lifestyle,” Swoope said.
“I think when you start talking about charts, numbers, awards, that immediately gets intellectually linked to what we know of success. Who is getting numbers, charts, and getting awards? The Drakes, the Jay-Zs, the Lil Waynes, the Kanyes, and we are not living that lifestyle so humility is an inevitable consequence of that. You may wake up and get a tweet or Instagram post about ‘School of Roses did this’ and ‘Sinema did that,’ but you still need to take the trash out, help your wife clean the house, and you still have to go to work. So, a small portion of humility is inevitable just via external circumstances. I think internal humility comes with a plethora of prayer, solid surrounding fellowship, cats to disciple you, and kind of keep you grounded and things like that.”
