The pastor who has been working with entertainment mogul Kanye West said recently the 42-year-old celebrity almost gave up rapping, which he allegedly called “the devil’s music.”
Speaking to Jeff Durbin of the Apologia Studios podcast, Adam Tyson, pastor of Placerita Bible Church in Santa Clarita, California, said West told him during one of their conversations he was struggling over whether to continue making rap music following his conversion to Christianity.
“One time, [West] told me that he wasn’t going to rap,” Tyson recalled. “I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘Well, that’s the devil’s music.’ I said, ‘Hey, man. Rap is a genre. You can rap for God.’ I think he was already thinking about it a little bit, but I just definitely said, ‘Hey, bro. I think you need to use your talents that God’s given you and use that platform for God.’”
Earlier this month, Tyson, who has been preaching brief messages at West’s “Sunday Service” events, said the rapper approached him this spring and told him he had been “radically saved.”
Since their initial conversation in May, after West attended a handful of services at Placerita, Tyson has been leading weekly Bible studies, first in Los Angeles and now in Cody, Wyoming, where West recently purchased property.
“The fruit that I’m seeing is he’s no longer continuing in some of the sin patterns that he was before he came to Christ,” Tyson said. “Right now, every day, he is living and walking with God, so from what I can tell, there’s no reason for me not to encourage that and be a part of that.”
“I’ve spent enough hours with this man to know God is at work,” he added.
Relatedly, the trailer for West’s upcoming film, “Jesus Is King,” dropped last week. The movie is set to debut in IMAX on Friday. The trailer referenced Mark 1:15, which reads, “In the words of Jesus Christ, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel.’”
West’s album of the same title, he tweeted Monday, will debut the same day.