Shopé decided to go to a church retreat at age fourteen because a girl he liked was going to go.

“I was in this room and we were supposed to be praying, but I didn’t really pray. I was just walking around, counting the tiles on the ceiling, not really paying attention. My heart skipped a beat in one second, I can’t tell you why other than saying it was the Holy Spirit. It all came rushing in. The gospel I’ve heard for the past fourteen years, that I had really paid no mind to, it just all made sense. I understood why I was a sinner, why I wasn’t ‘good enough,’ why porn was wrong.”

He fell down crying and when he got back up he knew something was different.

“I left school on Friday as one guy with my dudes, come back on Monday and I’m a whole different person.”

Shortly after that, he started listening to Christian hip-hop. Out of all the music he listened to, the song that stuck out most to him was “My Story,” by Da’ T.R.U.T.H. “To hear that East Coast form of rapping that I loved so much, I hadn’t heard it done like that before.” Da’ T.R.U.T.H. speaks about his background and how he was raised in the song, and Shopé felt like he and Da’ T.R.U.T.H. were very similar in that way.

“I thought, maybe I can create this thing I love listening to so much. Low and behold, I actually had a skill for it which up until that point, I had no idea about it.”

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