ABSTRACT
Without drawing any blood from my becoming (save maybe aesthetic blood, sweat, and tears that accompany this level of creativity where to create is to live), I will offer myself as an imperfect sacrifice of the impromptu Gods. They call me Gilead7. An active MC since the late nineties with releases from cassettes to vinyl to CDs that have been distributed and are still being distributed nationally and internationally. They also call me Jon Ivan Gill, PhD student in philosophy of religion and analytic philosophy at Claremont Graduate University, littered with a past of Pentecostalism distilled through my own reflections before seminary and since transfigured irreparably through my stint at McCormick Theological Seminary and The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I embody the victory over the bifurcation between practitioner and academic in the area of hip-hop and religion. And it is from this vantage point and uncanny location that I am so grateful to speak to you, scholars of intellectual acumen that far exceeds my own. The becoming of the first Supplemental never left. And I have come to judge what the ivory tower says of hip-hop by the order of hip-hop itself.
