In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we spoke with a recently engaged couple within the Christian hip-hop industry to reflect on how artists (and individuals/couples in general) balance life, work, and faith.
See what Reflection Music Group artist Deraj and his fiancée, Yasmin, have to say!
Jam The Hype: How long have you been together and how did your relationship begin?
Deraj: Yasmin and I have been together [officially] for a little bit over two years. Yasmin and I met in person for the first time in Tampa at a concert that we went to. We are about three hours away from each other, so it is hard to get time to meet up. We met there and also connected on Facebook, getting to know one another from there.
JTH: How does your faith affect and influence your relationship?
Yasmin: We see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. It makes our relationship easier and our level of compatibility is super-high because of something like that; your faith has to be on point. If we don’t see eye-to-eye, then we might have some issues. It plays a huge role in our relationship and we are pretty good in that area.
JTH: Yasmin, how did Deraj propose?
Yasmin: He took me back to the spot where he initially asked me to be his girlfriend. It was at a small church with small red doors, stained glass; it was the cutest thing. When he asked me out, he did in a symbolic way like he was presenting our relationship before the Lord. He brought me to that same place and did that same type of thing, saying “I want to walk with you for the rest of my life. I want God to be with us and to be our forefront.” He took it back to that place.
JTH: How does the distance from each other affect your relationship?
Deraj: It’s hard.
Yasmin: From a certain vantage point, it does help with communication. We can talk about so many things. We don’t have the luxury of seeing each other like other couples do, but we do get down to talking about a lot of things. We have so many heart to heart conversations and talk about so much, so it is super helpful.
JTH: How have you been overcoming the challenges of sexual temptation?
Some great advice in this. It’s beautiful to see a godly relationship, especially considering our society’s hook-up culture.
Thank you JTH for doing this. As a man in a relationship it means a lot to me to see what the other Christians are saying about tough subjects.