Admit it. We love it when people fit nicely into our nice, little, preconceived boxes.

We’ve all done it, and we’ve had it done to us, whether it be race, gender, disability or some other distinguishing feature. People even dissed Jesus hometown. They said nothing good could come from Nazareth. When it comes to Christian hip-hop fans, we don’t all fit in that preconceived box so easily. We’re not all young or old. Neither are we all white or black. We’re male and female. We’re from big cities and small towns. And some stereotypes just don’t hold true.

To borrow a word from Lecrae, here are three misconceptions about fans in the genre.

1.  We love hip-hop as much as we love Jesus. This is definitely false.  Simply put, we know hip-hop can’t save us. Hip-hop couldn’t live a perfect life in our place and then ransom that life for us on a cross.  Jesus isn’t just something better to rap about than the regular themes in mainstream hip-hop. He’s our everything.

2. We’re aggressive.  The image of a battle rapper aggressively dissing another rap artist before a frenzied crowd comes to mind here. Because that’s the imagery some have of the hip-hop genre as a whole, it’s sometimes implied that CHH is no different. Admittedly, we can get a little rowdy, but David got rowdy enough to get his wife steaming mad, too. Conferences serve as a great illustration here. The same guys you may find bouncing around on the stage at night might be the same guys expositing deep Bible truth from Paul’s pastoral letters the next morning.

3. CHH is the only genre of music we enjoy. Christian hip-hop fans are not only Christian hip-hop fans. I love hip-hop, but I also love hymns. And, I’ll admit, I may have even tapped my foot to a country song once or twice in my life (don’t judge me). I put on classical when my kids do homework and Flame when we drive to the grocery story.  We know that the glory of God can not be contained in a single genre, even when it’s our favorite genre.

Jam The Hype would love to hear from you. What are other stereotypes of CHH fans?