Rappin' for Jesus

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About

Rappin' for Jesus, also known as "Jesus Christ Is My Nigga," is a 2013 hip-hop song and music video in which a pastor and his wife perform an expletive-ridden rap about Christianity.

Origin

On February 5th, 2013, YouTuber Brian Spinney, who describes himself as an Iowan father of two and a devoted Christian, uploaded a music video titled “Rappin’ for Jesus," which he claims to have produced many years ago as a high school student in collaboration with his pastor Jim Colerick at the West Dubuque 2nd Church of Christ in West Dubuque, Iowa. Within three years, the video gained over 10 million views and 34,365 comments.

Spread

On February 11th, 2013, the video was submitted to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it received more than 2,900 votes (88% upvoted) and 1,100 comments prior to being archived. The same day, the video was reposted on WorldStarHipHop.^[2] In the following weeks, a number of Christian news outlets and viral media blogs, including The Christian Post and The Daily Dot, raised skepticism over the authenticity of the music video, as further fact-checking confirmed that 1) there is no digital footprint of an Iowan pastor by the name of James Colerick on the web; 2) the church in West Dubuque, Iowa thought to be affiliated with Pastor Colerick shut down in 2004, according to the last news bulletin posted on its defunct website; and 3) the domain name for the church was registered on January 15th, 2013, about a month before Spinney had uploaded the music video to YouTube. On October 16th, YouTuber Tyrone Magnus uploaded a “Rappin’ for Jesus” reaction video (shown below).

On February 6th, 2015, SoundCloud user MajorLeagueWobs uploaded a mashup of "Rappin' for Jesus" with the 2014 hip hop song Hot Nigga by Bobby Shmurda, which gathered upwards of 105,500 plays and 3,500 likes over the next five months.