Finding a Way: Pastor Robert McCloud of Detroit

By Bob Marovich

Ask today’s Christian hip hop artists about their inspirations, and they will talk about artists such as Lecrae, Trip Lee, and Sho Baraka. But Pastor Robert McCloud is old school.  Coming of age during rap’s emergence as a popular entertainment form, his inspirations include Run DMC and LL Cool J.  Nevertheless, he is primed to join today’s Christian rap community.

The path between the rapper’s early days in Detroit and the present has taken many angular turns. Anticipating the forthcoming release of his full-length debut, The McCloud Project, on his own label (Concrete Records), Pastor McCloud spoke with JGM’s Bob Marovich about that path and about the gritty subjects his debut will tackle.

Born in Alabama, McCloud was a child when his parents migrated to Detroit. It was the heyday of the automotive industry and African Americans were leaving the South by the thousands to find a better life in the North. Besides seeking employment in the auto industry, McCloud’s father was a preacher—“a fire and brimstone evangelist”—who started out in the Church of God in Christ but gravitated later to a nondenominational church credo.

Despite his family’s religious background, McCloud did not exactly embrace church music as a youngster. “I knew that God was calling me, from about the age of five,” he reflected, “and I was in a church Boy Scout club, but I didn’t get into church music until my conversion.”

What he did listen to was rap music. It was 1985, McCloud was seventeen, and LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, and Run DMC were pioneering the genre. McCloud decided to try his own hand at rap and discovered he was actually quite good at it. “I was better than the average person,” he laughed. “Back at that time, in Detroit, there weren’t too many people that you actually heard doing rap music. It was all out in New York.”

When Detroit’s influential DJ Mojo told McCloud he was the best rapper in the city, the young man visited Def Sound, Detroit’s first hip hop studio, to make a record. Unfortunately, what he produced at Def Sound didn’t make much noise nationally.

At this point, McCloud was conflicted about his life’s purpose. “Even when I wasn’t in church,” he said, “I felt like a fish out of water, no matter how I pretended to fit in, because I could actually hear God’s voice calling me. After the age of ten, I told people I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up, but I didn’t know how exactly to walk with God. In my adolescence, I strayed away, but I could always hear Him calling. I felt this great conviction in my life. Even when I was trying to sell drugs, I felt very uncomfortable.

“One night, when I was 25, my father and I got into a heated argument. He told me I needed Jesus in my life and I told him I had gotten on my knees plenty of times, asking God to save me, but I never felt it, or at least I didn’t think so. My father laid hands on me and I was filled with the Holy Spirit on the spot. I’ve been on fire ever since.”

Within a year’s time, the newly-converted McCloud set about preaching. “I knew about four or five Scriptures and was out trying to win souls to Christ. I had that zeal.”

Although he abandoned his plan to dive into New York’s secular hip hop industry, McCloud did not abandon rap. He tried rhymes with a Christian sensibility and joined the Council, a five-member Christian hip hop group that toured and recorded. McCloud was encouraged further by pioneering West Coast Christian rappers the Gospel Gangstaz, T-Bone, and the Grits from Nashville. “You didn’t have a lot of gospel rap groups out during that time,” he added.

But the Council folded, and McCloud put music on hold to focus on pastoring a church.

He reentered music again in 2013, when a group of gangster rappers asked McCloud to appear at a Stop the Violence program in Detroit. “I reached out to a friend of mine who was really good at making the music. I liked the way he did things. He went into the studio with me to do some tracks, and after that, I decided to complete a CD. I’ve been in the studio since then, working diligently.”

The McCloud Project is now complete and slated for release on Concrete Records.

McCloud wrote the first single, “Find a Way to Love,” at the end of 2013. “I was hurting emotionally during that time,” he said. “Sometimes during your walk with Christ, you feel lonely. People turn against you. Your love is challenged. That’s what inspired the song.”

Although the song was “far from his favorite” on the CD, McCloud decided to release “Find a Way to Love” as the first single “because I let a friend hear the song and he liked it.” Not only did McCloud’s friend like it, so did his friend’s family, the church—even McCloud’s father.

McCloud is also singing on it. “I had never attempted to sing on a hook before,” he said.  “I don’t consider myself a singer. But everybody liked that song.”

The follow-up single, “The Afterlife,” is due out shortly. It reflects on the need for reconciliation and gangstas to change their ways.

Other subjects the pastor pursues on The McCloud Project include ministries corrupted through money (McCloud calls it “ministry versus money-stry”), the life-taking danger of the drug world, and a critique on how the church is slow to accept gospel rap.

“I believe that music is very powerful,” Pastor McCloud said. “Just like the minstrel cast the evil spirit away from Saul, I believe that music can make people feel better about themselves, it can touch lives. They can enjoy the message and get revelation from it, and get closer to Christ.”