Andy Mineo Raps About Christ. Just Don’t Call Him a Christian Rapper.

Blending the rhymes of the Lord with the hymns of hip-hop, an earnest young musician seems poised to conquer the mainstream. But will listeners look beyond the labels?

Photos courtesy Squint

Andy Mineo was ten, maybe eleven years old, dead tired, laying out on the pieces of cardboard he and his best friend Ryan had spent the last few hours breakdancing on. As they recovered, the instrumental version of a song came on the boombox — they would buy CD singles with a dirty, clean and instrumental version of a track for $3.99 because, as kids, they couldn’t afford to shell out $15.99 for the full album. They decided to rap to the song. The two started writing down rhymes on the cardboard beneath them.

Shortly afterwards, Ryan bought a computer microphone and a program called Cool Edit, and the boys started recording themselves. Andy, now a twenty-six-year-old touring hip-hop artist, remembers the moment with Ryan in their hometown of Syracuse, New York, when he first heard himself on the beat they recorded, as the moment he fell in love with rapping.