LaRosa Johnson {dot} com

Over the weekend, while I was installing Windows 7, I had quite a bit of time to sit back & think. During that thinking, I think I had a bit of an epiphany, or something like that. It’s probably more along the lines of a personal revelation than anything else, especially given the fact that it’s a pretty obvious fact to most people.

What is that revelation? Simply put, you should use what’s going to work for you without worrying about the thoughts & opinions of others. If there’s something out there that works for you, then by all means you should use it, regardless of what people may think. For example, I still like & drink Kool-Aid at the age of 27, and I could care less what some of my friends may think. It’s a personal preference, it works for me, I like it, so I’m going to continue drinking it. Or a better example may be my use of the Microsoft Zune over the infinitely popular iPod from Apple. The Zune may not have the same cool factor, but for me it’s more functional and gives me a better experience than I would have if I owned an iPod.

Along those same lines, you shouldn’t try to make something be what it’s not designed to be. Of course, there will be people out there that think you should, for whatever reason; but I don’t think that you should. A Honda Civic isn’t designed to tow & haul stuff like a Ford F-150, so why would you even attempt to make the Civic perform the functions of the F-150? Instead of trying to make the Civic perform like the F-150, why not just use the F-150 and be done with it? That’s how I feel about some things. Some things are designed with a particular audience in mind, and it should be allowed to function in that capacity. We shouldn’t try to force it to be something that it’s not; instead, we should embrace it for what it is & use it for what it was designed for. At the same time, if you know that you’re going to do a lot of towing, skip the Honda Civic altogether and just use the F-150 because you know it’s going to be able to perform the way you need it to.

That’s the realization I came to this weekend. There’s been some stuff that I’ve been trying to push and use in a way that it wasn’t designed for. The problem with that is that I have the proper tools sitting right next to me; so, instead of forcing my screwdriver to be a drill, I just need to grab my power drill and use it to help me accomplish the job quickly & efficiently, especially when I know that it’s a better tool & I like it better anyway.

This has been a long time coming. Over the years I’ve said I would do it, but I always had an inkling of a fire to keep me going. This time is different though, I think I’m finally ready to end my “career” as a Christian Rap album reviewer. 2009 has been a benchmark year for me in many ways, with one area in particular being a highly diminished affection for Christian rap music. A lot of what I’m finding, at least in the style of rap that I prefer, is that it’s a lot of the same and it’s just boring to me. When it comes time to write reviews, I loathe them and usually push it off to a later date. I don’t enjoy it anymore, and I think with that it’s best to leave it to a younger generation that is more enamored with the music than I am.

In some respect, I’m not sure what this will mean for Trailblazin Ministries. At least for now, the site will continue to cover hip-hop music, but I don’t know if we will eventually cease to cover it and move solely to being a teaching ministry without the hip-hop slant. I’m still debating on whether I want to delete all of the hip-hop music from my computer. I don’t listen to it much and I still have them on CD, so it’s not like I can’t re-rip them if I want to give it a listen. It’s just a matter of doing it & deciding if I want to (it’s not like I’m hurting for hard drive space). I do know for a fact that long gone are the days of me supporting any & everything in the genre; instead, I’ll be a consumer who only supports the artists I personally like, which, at the moment, is very few.

With that being said, once I finish my stack of (long overdue) reviews for Sphere of Hip-Hop I’ll officially be calling it quits as an album reviewer. With that, I’ll also be all the more scarce in the Christian Rap community & forums, not that I’ve been all that active of late. It’s been fun. Grace & peace!