Tedashii – Living with the End in Mind

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

TBGB had a chance to talk with, and learn more about, Christian rapper Tedashii, whose new release, Blacklight, is currently riding high at #2 on Billboard’s Top Gospel Albums chart.

Originally from Houston, Tedashii Anderson was born to an African American mother and Samoan father. His mother’s eclectic musical taste made an early impression on him. “I grew up with my mom playing anything from blues to country to jazz to pop,” Tedashii explained.

But there was one music style that was not part of his mother’s music collection: hip hop. “There was no hip hop in the house,” Tedashii laughed, “and if there was, I snuck it in and hid it in places she couldn’t find it!”

Tedashii set out to make a career in communications or journalism. “I was a fan of two men. One was Ted Koppel and the other was Tavis Smiley. I wanted to be like them in some way. I was always a fan of a person who could talk for a living and get paid for it. Those two men were doing the very things I wanted to do: travel and speak for a living.”

The young Houstonian also had art in his soul. “I love writing poetry. I love writing short stories. I love doing spoken word and was always trying to dabble in theater and acting. At one point I considered myself a thespian.”

In high school, Tedashii took part in one-act plays and talent shows.  He also played football – “if you grow up in Texas, you have to play football!” – as well as basketball, track and power lifting. “I was trying to do other things besides sports. I wanted to be well-rounded.”

He got his first exposure to Christian hip hop while studying at the University of North Texas. It was there he became a Christian. “The guy who actually told me about Christ and the Bible and shared the gospel, he was one of the first to encourage me to write rhymes for the Lord,” Tedashii explained. “But I really wasn’t doing it until I met Lecrae and Sho Baraka.”

Tedashii was introduced to his soon-to-be Reach Records label mates through Sho’s brother, Dhati Lewis. Lewis, now a pastor in Atlanta, was then head of Plumbline, a college ministry on the campus of the University of North Texas. Tedashii, Sho Baraka and Lecrae were part of Lewis’ campus ministry and became roommates. “We did the whole college thing, and in the midst of it, music came out of us…just being who we were.”

The trio named their early music partnership “116 Clique,” after “a nickname a bunch of us in college ministry gave ourselves. It’s based on Romans 1:16. When we decided to do music, 116 Clique fit who we were. It fit not only our attitude for music, but our attitude for life.”

How does one define the 116 Clique style? “It’s southern, because we were bred in a southern environment,” Tedashii said, “although Sho Baraka is very East Coast-influenced. It’s brash and in-your-face sounding music. At the end of the day, however, our goal is not to emphasize how we’re different but to communicate to a larger audience that we are a movement.”

Although Tedashii started out by guesting on a Lecrae project, he eventually recorded his own material. His sophomore CD, Identity Crisis, made it to the top ten on the Christian and Gospel charts. It’s happening again with Blacklight, an album Tedashii describes as about “living with the end in mind.”

He said, “As I read the Scripture and look at people in my life that live for the Lord, there is a motivator beyond selfish gain. It is to see Christ, to see God, to someday be in Heaven with Him. If we hold fast to that truth, that truth will affect how we live day to day. If we live with the end in mind, we’re encouraged in our good times as well as in our hard times and we know what we’re aiming for.”

“Riot” is the album’s first single. Tedashii describes it as “not really something typical of me, but it’s definitely who I am.” Other strong tracks on Blacklight include “Dum Dum,” “Reverse,” and “This is the Life.”

In addition to guest appearances by Tedashii’s Reach Records colleagues, the album has a global flavor, with cameos by London’s S.O. and Jennie Norlin of Sweden.

Now that Blacklight has been released, the next few months for Tedashii will be about album promotion; participating in “Man Up,” a label-wide group project for the company‘s non-profit Reach Life Ministries; “and home life! Getting used to home life again!”

I asked Tedashii if Reach Records is becoming the Motown of Christian hip hop.

He laughed. “That’s pretty good. That’s true! When you mention Motown, things that come to my mind that definitely correlate to us are that they were a group, even though they were individual artists, and that the label had cohesiveness to it. So I think that’s true!”

For more information on Tedashii and Blacklight, visit http://www.reachrecords.com/.