Mr. Del – The THRILLA from Memphis

The Memphis-based multi-platinum hardcore rap group Three 6 Mafia is best known for being the first African American rap group to win an Oscar for Best Original Song (“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from the film Hustle and Flow). It is also the first rap group to get its own note on the Memphis Walk of Fame.

But something the group doesn’t have, at least anymore, is Mr. Del. The former member of Three 6 Mafia, born Delmar Lawrence, walked away from the group to begin a Christian rap solo career.

Unlike many gospel artists, Mr. Del wasn’t part of a church choir growing up in Memphis and doesn’t even remember being particularly churchgoing. “I wouldn’t say I was a member of a church; I was dragged to church!”

After a Three 6 tour, however, Mr. Del had a personal encounter with God. “God was speaking to me and saying He wanted me to do the same thing I was doing then, but do it for Him. And I just decided to give my life to Him.”

While it wasn’t a difficult decision for Mr. Del to make at the time, “it was difficult maintaining it. Due to the lifestyle that I was leading prior to giving my life to God, there were a lot of people who were not exactly for the switch, for the change. I had to move from Memphis because of death threats. It was very hard on me and it was a trying time but through it all, God was keeping me faithful.”

The first step to launching his new solo career was to find someone to produce his first Christian album. “Once I did that, I started doing some shows, kind of got the word out about how I did leave Three 6, how I was pursuing this new walk of faith.”

Not surprisingly, the gospel music community looked quizzically upon the move. “It was not so much because of who I was,” Mr. Del recalled, “but because of the type of music I had been doing.”

Nevertheless, The Future, which EMI Gospel released in 2005, debuted at #15 on the gospel charts. The project was decidedly different from its cohorts on the charts. “Gospel music is for church, it is for the praise and worship setting, it is for the culture of a Sunday morning setting,” Mr. Del explained. “Hip hop, on the other hand, speaks about life and real issues, what you do outside of the church. That’s why I’m different. Gospel music is geared toward the worship experience of church, where hip hop or urban gospel is geared to what happens Monday through Saturday. My ministry is more evangelistic, based on the scene from which I come, and that is the streets.”

Mr. Del’s ministry stretches beyond the recording studio and performance platform. Every Sunday and Tuesday he is pastor of a church called the City of Refuge, formed out of a Bible study on the campus of the University of Memphis. “The City of Refuge is the ministry that God has given me to start here in my city. It speaks to the un-churched who are not as quick to subscribe to religion or to the regular church atmosphere, and helps them in their faith walk.”

Mr. Del acknowledges that young people who attend the City of Refuge know about his past fame as a member of Three 6 Mafia. In fact, his celebrity serves as a tool to encourage youth to pay attention to the message he brings.

This past June, Mr. Del followed up The Future and 2007’s Hope Dealer (Holy South) with THRILLA. It is the first of his projects to be distributed through Universal Music Christian Group.

One of the messages Mr. Del hopes to communicate through THRILLA, which stands for THe ReaL Anointing, is to let people know that “it doesn’t just stop at salvation, it begins at salvation. Religion tells us what we can’t do and what we can’t have. Relationship and Kingdom tells you everything you can have. I want people to know what they are entitled to and what they can have by being in God.”

Last year, Mr. Del also produced an album by a “supergroup” called Gumbo Red. “Gumbo Red was a brainchild of mine for a long time. The group consists of Canton Jones, Lisa McClendon, Ramona Jones and an honorary fifth member, Mali Music. The project was basically to combine all of our styles, all genres of music, in hopes to make an impact on the body as well as the unbeliever. We give real life stories, real life issues that will touch the core of the modern-day believer and non-believer.”

“I had enough faith in God to give up something that I thought was near and dear to me and I thought was worth something, and just basically trusted God no matter what in all circumstances,” Mr. Del says of his legacy. “I stood for God when it wasn’t popular, when it wasn’t cool.”

“I don’t know if all hearts are really turned yet, but when it happens, I believe that it will be because of the words that come out of my mouth, the anointing that people see and that souls are being saved from this vehicle which I’ve chosen.”

For more information, visit www.myspace.com/mrdelholysouth