If a young Jesus could have been transported from ancient Galilee to the Compton, California, of the late 1980s, I don’t believe he would have been dealing drugs with Eric “Eazy-E” Wright or spitting rhymes on a track like “F*** Tha Police” with O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson. And he might not have been among the hundreds of bobbing heads in the audiences that made their rap group N.W.A. one of hip-hop’s most notorious and influential groups.
But I do think that a young Jesus could have connected to the frustrations chronicled in their music and young, black lives, captured in the blistering blockbuster film “Straight Outta Compton.” I believe this because scholars say that Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown, was so small and rural that it didn’t get much respect from the urbane citizens of Jerusalem. Expectations for young men from Nazareth likely were low; stereotyping likely was high.
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