KB is one of the new voices in the Christian hip hop movement, a revolution that is growing increasingly louder. His music began as a ministry to the kind of people living in the same hopeless culture that he grew up in. Reach Records and Christian hip hop leader Lecrae discovered his tunes through the buzz his ministry created, and the rest is history.

NewReleaseTuesday's Bill Lurwick chatted with KB about his Reach Records debut Weight & Glory and what it's like to be a missionary in the hip hop genre.

When you guys started the ministry I think it was called His Glory Alone. Is that correct?

You got it. HCA, which stands for His Glory Alone.

You and HCA connected with a couple of guys there. Tell me about some of the music you guys started creating. What was the intent of the music to begin with? Which direction did you want to go?

When I became a believer at 16, the guys that I was around, they all did rap. They were given opportunities to go into prisons and JBCs and things of that nature. I was seeing how effective it was to communicate with people in the language they understood, which is hip hop. I was like, “I need try this.”

I loved hip hop myself. I tried it every now and then, and as I was doing it, I found that it was something I could do well. From there it grew out of trying to evangelize. I started speaking to things that I saw in the world that needed to be spoken to.

It just became an expression of what was in my heart, and what was in my heart was the word of God. I was just passionately in love with the Lord. So it just flowed into the music that I made.

That was the original intent. We ended up being something that people enjoy listening to and were impacted by.

You got hooked up with Reach Records and Lecrae, right?

I did.

How did that all come about?

I was down here in Tampa. I was doing music just as a means of ministry. I didn’t really see it as something I would do seriously full time, but folks were taking videos from the things we were doing and putting them on YouTube. It was basically myself and a group of other brothers and sisters. They were just really serious about Jesus and made music about Him and served at our churches and hit the streets, things of that nature.

From the buzz and YouTube it landed on the Reach Records doorstep. I think Lecrae saw a video or something like that, and he inquired about trying to hook up with me when he came down to Tampa for a concert. We just went from there.

You’ve got 15 tracks on Weight & Glory, your debut project with Reach Records. Who is KB was your mix tape that came out last year. Is that right?

That’s right.

This is the full length project. What’s behind the title “Weight and Glory?”

"Weight and Glory" is representative of where I am in life right now. Essentially the whole album, which is reflective of my life, is about seeing God. Seeing God in the word in such a way that you feel it, not that it’s like checking off a list. Literally being blown away by God.

That’s where the weight comes from. You see the Lord in such a way that you feel it. The glory is because what you’re seeing is glorious. God is not boring, except to those who are blind to how amazing He is, because to see God is to be obsessed with Him. In my everyday struggle and joy, my duty and delight is to see God and feel His weight and savor His glory.

What I want to do is pour that on folks with this new release. His weight and glory.

It’s going to be a sure fired guaranteed hit because you’ve got Andy Mineo and Tedashii on it. Andy Mineo was with Lecrae on “Background.” So “Go Off” has to be a huge hit, doesn’t it?

It’s the first single and it’s been well received. I’ve enjoyed performing that. I’m looking forward to performing that on the Unashamed tour as well, which is going to be going coast to coast in a few months.

Is the song just a fun song, or is there some real depth to it?

I try to put depth to everything. Normally when you think about someone going off on somebody, normally they’re losing their temper or losing their cool. I wanted to take the phrase and redefine it as going off as in losing yourself, dying to yourself and behaving like Jesus.

In the second verse I talk about going off in the sense of being someone who gives grace instead of losing their cool, or being somebody that’s faithful to one woman when they can go off with three or four or several other women. So it reverses the idea that we traditionally think about losing ourselves.

We want to lose ourselves with Jesus and act in a controlled manner, not a wild one.

Let’s talk about the track that you did get to cut with Lecrae: “Church Clap.” Kind of an interesting title for a track. What’s behind that?

“Church Clap” is kind of about black church. Black church is very much a dialog. There’s a lot of going back and forth. There’s a lot of noise being made. There’s a lot of outward expression of praise, and what the song kind of addresses is that’s not all bad. That’s good.

The Bible commands us to praise and we want to clap and put our hands together before the Lord, but we want to do it in a way that we are celebrating the things that God celebrates.

One of the lines in there is “if I can make the whole church clap, but if there’s not a clap in the heavens, then that clap is just a clap.” So that’s what “Church Clap” is about. Lecrae and I teamed up to speak to the gospel realm and praise and also critique.

Thanks for hanging with us at New Release Tuesday.

I really appreciate you having me.