A few weeks ago, Tedashii released one of the most personal and vulnerable hip-hop albums this reviewer has heard. It wasn't birthed out of a man's struggles to escape gang life or a man's journey through drug abuse, prostitutes and strip clubs.

It is, however, about a man coming back to life. The album is titled Below Paradise and in it the Reach Records rapper wrestles with the concept of living in a harsh world with a loving God. 

Tedashii made an appearance recently at the YC festival in Canada, and I sat down with him to talk about the themes and inspiration behind his raw, deep and real collection of songs.

Now, you've just released the new album. For those who don't know, can you give a little backstory to the album?

Yeah, the album is called Below Paradise, and it's pretty much a journal over the last year of my life. A little over a year ago, I lost my one-year-old son. In his passing, honestly I just wanted to quit life--not necessarily feelings or thoughts of suicide--but just, I don't want to live again. I don't want to go another day without him. It took a while for me to get to a place that I could express what I felt, but once I got to that place, this album is what began to come out. So the album is really me wrestling with how do I reconcile living in a harsh world, but with a loving God.

I've had the pleasure of listening to the album for the past month, and I have to say it may be the most vulnerable piece of art that I've heard from an artist. It's incredible. When did the writing process for the album start?

Wow, thank you. It began probably late July of last year when I would just start jotting down ideas or random lyrics and a lot of those things were because of emotions I felt so I would just write a lyric based on what I felt in the moment. Either it fit a song or it didn't fit a song, but at least I could express something.
 
I wanted to talk about a couple songs from the album. The first is "Perfect." It has almost a John 9 feeling to it where the disciples asked Jesus, "Who sinned, this man or his parents that he ended up this way?" Was that the basis of the song? Was that thought about?

Similar. The verse was definitely thought about but the heart cry was for people, like when Jesus spoke to the disciples in that moment, the desire was for them to not focus on the sin but to focus on the greatness of their God. I want people to focus on the greatness of God, but with a desire to do so. I want their ground zero to change. I want their ground zero to be God's goodness and then their need of him, and that should inform how you view other people.

So is "Below Paradise" the evidence of God's work being displayed? That's what Jesus says, right? It's not about the man's sin or his parent's sin; it's about the evidence of God being displayed.

That's exactly it, because in midst of me trying to reconcile living in harsh world but with a loving God, I began to see God at work. Where there's temptation for me, frustration for me, here is God coming in and showing up with such amazing love, such an amazing grace that it blew me away to the point that it was like, "OK, I do love You, I will worship You." The beauty of that song is I can be as honest as I want to be about how you made me feel or how I feel toward God and God is God enough, big enough and strong enough to take that and loves me enough to sit in it with me.

The second song that when I played the first time, the tear came to my eye and I thought, "Here we go again." The song is "Chase" and it absolutely the most precious moment on the album. Talk about the song, how it feels to perform it and where your strength came from on that one because that is so vulnerable.

So I wanted to do something to honor him. The album in a sense is honoring to him; I dedicated it to him. That song was my ability to admit my desire to express my undying love and affection for him and then in some way allow people in so that they can see the genuineness of the wrestle. I think often times people want to shy away from pain. For Christians, some of us are afraid to admit we feel hurt because in some way we feel like that will belittle God in our life or we'll say, " Well God must not be big enough to handle that in my life." We don't to communicate that so we'd rather wear the façade. 

"Chase" was my way to shatter all those things. To sit like David did in Psalms and cry out, "Again will you turn your face from me, again will you hide your face from me, O Lord." Or to be able to cry out like Solomon said, "There's a season for mourning" and this is that season for me. That song was definitely difficult to do but I think that that's necessary.
 
Can you give us a rundown of who some of the special guests are on the project?

I'm blessed to have worked with David Crowder; Crowder's on the album. Britt Nicole's on the album, of course KB's on the album--Lecrae, Trip Lee and there's a guy by the name of Tauren Wells from Royal Tailor, he's on the album as well. A lot of people that I loved to include so that they could help accentuate some of the points I was making.

Is this album a type of therapy?

Every song was a way for me to express myself in a way that I couldn't to people face to face and even with saying it, people say, "I can't imagine what you went through. I don't know what I would do." And I go, "That's true, you can't imagine if you haven't gone through it but you can relate in the sense of loss and pain." Everyone's lost something or felt pain to some extent. The Bible is clear that all of us will suffer at some point in 1 Peter, so I'm more than willing to bear my soul so that it awakens people to those realities that you should take more note have the pain and suffering you have felt and learn from that and not run from it.

Talk a bit more about the grieving process for you. Were there any books you may have read over the time that really spoke to you and helped?

The Book of 2nd Corinthians has been good for me as far an encouragement; 2 Corinthians 1, Colossians (the whole book), but then for extrabiblical sources, I would say Safe In The Arms Of God by John MacArthur, A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. Then there's a book called Right Thinking, which was written by a guy who's not a believer, but it has a lot of biblical principles that friends actually opened and read for me and pulled out all of the principles and gave me book and said read the highlights. There's a lot of ways that I tried to just read to escape, so I just picked up books that we had around the house that had nothing to do with grief and I just started reading them. Creation Regained by Albert Wolters, and Nancy Piercey's book Total Truth--just to go somewhere in my mind other than what I was dealing with.
 
Thanks so much. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Just one last thing. I just want to thank people. A lot of people prayed, a lot of people gave and a lot of people cared from a distance. If it's just me involved, I'm still grateful. But because it involved my family and many people in my life--and people didn't just care about me but about my bride and my other kids, just life as a whole for me--I just wanted to say thank you to people and show my gratitude.