Last fall rapper Sean Slaughter turned out his best effort yet, collaborating with fellow urban artist Mona J to create . Just Add Water. The beats are tight, the rhymes smooth and he continues to demonstrate good instincts.

Slaughter cooked some good danceable beats with the opening track “Recipe” and the fifth song “Traffic”.  “Move” is a more forceful rap, while songs such as “Get Away With You” and “Chasing Destiny” have distinct R&B overtones. If you want to feel these vibes you can click on Just Add Water and listen to the DJ spin this disc.

A premier emcee in the world’s fastest growing music genre Slaughter raps with authenticity and experience garnered in the hood as a teenager and young adult. Back in the day he was packing a gun, his hanging out with crack dealers, doing drugs and B&E’s. He had a taste of just about everything life brought to his doorstep.

His life was one of partying, “I had been drinking and smoking heavily, involved in some drinking and driving accidents. When I was at college I had a gun pulled on me but the bullets fell out. I have been in a lot of crazy situations,” he says. He flushed a football scholarship to Rhode Island University down the toilet with his partying and by flunking out.

He returned home and to the old crowd in the hood yet somehow in the midst of chaos he managed to graduate with high marks in sound engineering from an audio school. Upon graduation he worked on several projects with New York based rappers the Wu-Tang Clan.

Now for the side I have not told you about Sean Slaughter. He is the son of the legendary gospel singer Alvin Slaughter. In 1997 his father needed someone to travel with him to work on sound. At the suggestion of his wife Alvin reluctantly agreed to take Sean with him while he was touring. To hear Alvin tell the story is hilarious.

Not only was Alvin reluctant to take Sean but Sean was not exactly ecstatic about the idea either, “I didn't want to go but I needed the money. For two years I went on the road with him,” he says. Unknown to his father Slaughter was still involved in activities that in Sean's own words had the potential to destroy his father's ministry.

Slaughter says, "God had much grace on my pops and definitely on me. I hadn't gone to church in four or five years but when I started traveling (with Alvin) I was in church three times a week. I was in all kinds of churches, black, white different denominations. I saw the best of the best and the worst of the worst. I found myself changing, and I didn't know why I was changing. I started questioning what I was doing. It was as Paul says in the Bible (he paraphrases), 'I had scales on my eyes and now they have been taken off.' Sometimes you do things without thinking of the consequence or the future."

Not known to his family Slaughter continued to hang out with the wrong crowd when he was not traveling with his father. It all came to a head in 1999. “I got into an argument with one of my boys. We all wanted to be tough guys, (carried) guns and wanted to be thugs. I feared for my life because I didn't want to be shot, to shoot anybody or go to jail. That is when the realization hit me, 'I don't want to be in this man, this is ridiculous. About the same time I was contacted by a Christian rapper who wanted to buy some beats from me. I went to her house to sell her some beats and she gave me the Word (Bible),” he says. That day in February 1999 he decided to put his old life behind him and in his own words stopped running. He decided to put God in charge of his life.

A few years ago Slaughter returned to the Bronx of New York City to shoot the video “Narrow” the companion for his popular song by the same name. The video reflects on Slaughter’s adolescent years in Queens.

Along with his wife Kim Slaughter founded a growing ministry to youth in detention centers. Every month the couple visit, provide a concert and share their faith. 

Slaughter says about the youth in the detention centers, "These are kids who were born in the eighties (and nineties) whose first exposure to music was Hip Hop music. I have been able to use the music to catch the ear of the generation," he says.

Slaughter observes, "You will find some of the brightest kids in detention centers. They just hooked up with the wrong people, at the wrong place and at the wrong time."

"How cool is it for us to play holy hip hop for a bunch of cats that are listening to hip hop anyway? Hip hop and detention centers seem like a perfect fit. It is like a treat for them. We can go in, have fun and freestyle. Most importantly we can get across a message that, "You don't have to come back here. You can have freedom through Christ. It is something that I will do as long as I am on this earth," he says.

NBC recently features Slaughter and Mona J as one of their news items while they were performing in concert in New York’s SoHo district.

I asked Slaughter what he would say to those in more conservative church circles, who diss rap, urban and hip-hop music citing it as an unacceptable style of music for young people. His answer is immediate and succinct, “Lighten Up!” After we both burst into laughter he says, “A lot of the claims are unfounded. Those claims are often based on tradition, likes or dislikes. When you start referring to tradition, likes and dislikes as God that is when you have a problem. I don’t like country music, but that doesn’t mean all country music is from the devil. It is what it is.”

“I consider myself to be a pioneer of the holy hip hop beat because it hasn’t reached the height it needs to reach. Even though it has been around since the mid to late eighties we are still forming and shaping it. We are in the pioneer stage,” he says.

 January 2006

With April 2007 updates

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