New Christian artists push genre boundaries with rap, Afrobeats and R&B

A new wave of artists is transcending traditional notions of Christian music, drawing young global audiences to faith-based rap, Afrobeats and R&B.

Often boosted by social media, many of them got their start with independent labels or by uploading self-made songs to streaming platforms. Now, bigger labels and streaming services are catching on.

People are looking for “something soul-feeding, something forward-looking, positive,” said James “Trig” Rosseau Sr., CEO of Holy Culture Radio. “They find a sonic coziness, but then a message that is feeding that need.”

Interest in the music has proliferated since 2022, said representatives at Spotify and Amazon Music. However, breaking into the mainstream has been challenging for this group of mostly Black and/or African artists who are making music that can't always be defined and that hasn't been well-represented in the Christian music industry.

“Over the last two years, there’s something happening momentum-wise, and it still feels underground, but now it’s starting to get the visibility that it’s deserving,” said Angela Jollivette, who previously oversaw the Grammy Awards' Gospel/Contemporary Christian categories and runs Moonbaby Media, a music supervision and production company.

Christian rap’s star rose around 2013 when rapper Lecrae Moore won his first Grammy. Today, newer artists are modernizing Christian hip-hop. Florida rappers Caleb Gordon and Alex Jean are among those leaning into rap’s subgenres as well as Afrobeats, the popular blend of West African music styles. Nigerian Christian Afrobeats pioneer Limoblaze is now signed to Moore’s Reach Records label, and Afrobeats artists such as CalledOut Music and “The Voice UK” winner Annatoria are on the rise.

“I think the world is now like, we can hear ourselves represented,” Moore said. “To me, that is a picture of the faith. We’re a global faith.”

Dallas-based Ghanaian Canadian artist Ryan Ofei, a former member of Christian act Maverick City Music, pivoted to Afrobeats-R&B fusion, releasing his first solo album in 2024. He said the growing vein of Christian music is less “preachy” but still a “massive evangelistic tool” for nonchurchgoers.

“You can bob your head, you can have a long drive,” Ofei said. “But the whole time, you’re still edified, and you can still feel the presence of the Lord.”

Christian rap, R&B and Afrobeats artists say they want to write music they can play around their children — but without sacrificing the craft.

“I’m giving them sounds that are ghetto and cool, but not profane,” said rapper Jackie Hill Perry. She called Christian rap today less intellectual and more “vibe-driven” than when she started more than a decade ago.

Rapper Childlike CiCi got her start as a secular artist recording in “trap houses,” a term for drug-selling homes where some of hip-hop’s biggest names also propelled trap music to popularity. A few years after becoming a Christian in 2019, Childlike CiCi sought to make music she couldn’t find — rooted in faith but inspired by trap and its more aggressive counterpart, drill.

“When people think of Christian hip-hop, they expect it to just be like Kidz Bop,” she said. “I think it’s bigger than that. Like, the Bible is not Kidz Bop.”

Some artists found Christian rap corny at first. But London-based Limoblaze said Moore’s music transformed his faith “from a religious practice to an actual relationship with Jesus.”

Capitalizing on Afrobeats' global popularity and his own growing audience, Limoblaze met with Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon about three years ago. Months later, Amazon launched its first Afrogospel playlist, he said.

“I think Christian Afrobeats is slowly but eventually going to be on a mainstream level, at least in the African music scene,” said Limoblaze.

Compared to mainstream counterparts, streaming numbers for these subgenres remain smaller, but their fanbases' dedication is outsized, said Lauren Stellato, programming lead for Christian and gospel music at Amazon Music.

“These young artists and young fans are bringing faith into sounds and spaces that they really already live in,” she said. “The audiences are responding to it because it feels natural.”

Some artists have collaborated with popular Christian acts like Forrest Frank, and Christian rap is breaking into secular, mainstream spaces. Christian rappers Gordon, Jean, nobigdyl., Hulvey, Jon Keith and GAWVI performed at the 2024 Rolling Loud Miami festival. Months later, Rolling Loud gave a solo set to Christian rapper Miles Minnick, who spoke this year on a Grammy panel and performed at a Super Bowl event.

Churches have long resisted acts that veer from tradition, like Kirk Franklin's modern gospel sound in the 1990s, said Emmett G. Price III, dean of Africana studies at Berklee College of Music. Price added that although there is still resistance, newer artists are important because “you don’t have a homogenous Black church.”

When traditional worship songs don’t resonate, there’s nothing “ungodly” about wanting God in other music, Moore said.

Artist CèJae said her R&B songs are still rooted in the Bible, but they also explore personal themes like heartbreak and struggling to pray regularly.

“We don’t get the feeling part sometimes,” she said of traditional gospel. “Or if we do, it sometimes seems like a recycled message.”

U.K.-based alternative artist Sondae said the sonic diversity helps people find music they can connect with — whether that’s gospel, Afrobeats or contemporary worship songs that appeal more to white audiences.

“I feel like God has blessed his harvest in such a way that there’s different flavors of fruits popping up everywhere, and everyone’s getting blessed,” he said.

Christian rap, R&B and Afrobeats artists still lack the same industry buy-in, financial resources and radio exposure contemporary Christian and secular artists have, said Jollivette, who is working with the Recording Academy to develop a rhythm and praise Grammy. Some have won in existing faith-based Grammy categories by competing against artists with vastly different sounds.

Christian music is also a lyric-based term, so categorizing artists in a “generation that doesn’t really draw genre distinctions” is challenging, said Mat Anderson, senior vice president of label strategy and operations at Sony Music Entertainment's Provident Entertainment.

Observers say the quality of Christian hip-hop and its counterparts has improved over the years, but skeptics remain.

Christian rapper Torey D’Shaun said on rapper nobigdyl.'s podcast that even rap he admired artistically didn’t resonate at first. A Kendrick Lamar lyric led D'Shaun to faith after hearing his East St. Louis upbringing reflected on Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city” album, with parallel tales in Los Angeles, he said.

“We should be allowed to make denser music than youth group music,” said D’Shaun, a member of nobigdyl.’s indie tribe rap collective

CèJae said streaming representatives have told her more platform playlists would help the genre take off, but there's not enough Christian R&B music yet. Anderson from Sony Music said that’s starting to change.

Still, in a self-focused industry where it can be hard to make money and break out, Hill Perry said it’s important to heed the Bible’s call to humility. She advises artists to avoid obsessing over numbers and practice humility daily, which will translate into their careers. Limoblaze agrees.

“It’s such a resolve for me, knowing that whatever is going to happen is going to happen because of the Spirit of God and not because I am powerful, talented,” he said.

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Christian rapper and influencer Lecrae Devaughn Moore photographed in Atlanta on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)

Christian rapper and influencer Lecrae Devaughn Moore photographed in Atlanta on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)

Christian rapper and influencer Lecrae Devaughn Moore photographed in Atlanta on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)

PARIS (AP) — A French prosecutor on Tuesday made public the identity of a 79-year-old man accused of raping and sexually assaulting 89 minors over more than five decades, launching an appeal for witnesses and possible victims in what authorities described as an unusually sprawling case spanning multiple countries.

Grenoble prosecutor Étienne Manteaux said the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, also acknowledged killing his mother and aunt, prompting a parallel investigation.

Laveugle was placed under formal investigation in February 2024 for aggravated rape and sexual assault of minors and has been held in pretrial detention since April 2025. Laveugle had worked in schools, as a private tutor and as a cave exploring guide among other roles, the prosecutor said.

The serial rape case hinges on writings investigators say were compiled by the suspect himself in a digital “memoir” found on a USB drive by a relative, and later turned over to authorities.

Prosecutors say the texts — described as 15 volumes — enabled investigators to identify 89 alleged victims, boys aged 13 to 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, from 1967 to 2022.

Manteaux said the suspect’s writings describe sexual acts with minors in multiple countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, the Philippines and India, as well as the French territory of New Caledonia.

He added that he chose to publicize the man’s name to encourage other victims to speak out. People under investigation in France are not normally named.

“This name must be known because the goal is to allow possible victims to come forward,” he said at a news conference.

Authorities set up a hotline and released photos of Laveugle over the decades, and said anyone who believes they were a victim or has information should contact them.

The prosecutor said investigators had hoped to identify all alleged victims without a public appeal, but found that the documents often contained incomplete identities, complicating efforts to locate people decades later.

“We thought we would be able, internally, to identify all the victims,” Manteaux said, but “we realized we were up against a wall.”

Manteaux also said the suspect has acknowledged smothering his mother to death when she was in the terminal phase of cancer, and later killing his 92-year-old aunt.

Regarding the aunt, Manteaux said the suspect told investigators that “because he had to return to the Cévennes (region of France) and she begged him not to leave, he also chose to put her to death.”

France is still reeling from the Gisèle Pelicot case, one of the country’s most shocking recent sexual violence trials, in which a husband was convicted of drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her over years. In both cases, investigators say, a digital trail proved decisive — recordings and files in Pelicot’s case, and the USB drive in the Grenoble investigation.

Manteaux emphasized the need to move quickly in investigating Laveugle's alleged rapes.

“There is urgency,” he said on RTL radio, citing the suspect’s age and the difficulty of tracing victims across 55 years.

Investigators said the alleged assaults occurred in France and in foreign countries, where authorities say the man worked as an educator.

He spent many years in Morocco working as a tutor for low-income families, where he is suspected of abusing at least 10 victims, the prosecutor told The Associated Press in a written statement. Laveugle's stays in Morocco spanned from 1974 to 2024, and he was living in the North African country when he was arrested upon a return trip to France.

Laveugle lived in Algeria in 1967-1969 and 1971-1975, where he worked as a teacher and is suspected of abusing at least two children, the statement said.

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Akram Oubachir in Rabat, Morocco contributed to this report.

FILE - General view of the city of Grenoble, southeastern France, Sunday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, File)