Beats are the driving force behind Dante’ Pride’s soul. The syncopated sequences and rhyming lyrics filled this Decatur, AL native’s head during his high school days in class, at church, while driving, and everywhere. The preacher’s son tried to ignore the pull he felt to the music deemed controversial in the traditional church of his childhood. Every time Pride ran from his calling, God pulled him back with unsolicited gigs and opportunities. Pride himself says, “My calling is to help reach lives, both young and old, and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Growing up as a pastor’s son…

Beats are the driving force behind Dante’ Pride’s soul. The syncopated sequences and rhyming lyrics filled this Decatur, AL native’s head during his high school days in class, at church, while driving, and everywhere.

The preacher’s son tried to ignore the pull he felt to the music deemed controversial in the traditional church of his childhood. Every time Pride ran from his calling, God pulled him back with unsolicited gigs and opportunities.

Pride himself says, “My calling is to help reach lives, both young and old, and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Growing up as a pastor’s son in a traditional church, I didn’t really like church when I was younger. But after giving my life to Christ at a young age, Christian hip-hop was one of the things that helped to change my whole life. I now laugh at the fact that as a little kid I imagined being a worship singer, but ever since 2nd grade I KNEW Christian hip-hop was what I wanted to do. I remember my second-grade teacher giving me my first Christian hip-hop album —. I’ve been on this journey since I was 12 years old. I’m not perfect and I’ve never claimed to be. But I have a testimony of the things Christ has done in my life and of the struggles he’s helped me to overcome. He saved me, changed me, and I don’t plan to ever stop walking with him.”

For Pride, who grew up listening to traditional gospel and worship songs, his introduction to Christian hip-hop and rap came through Canton Jones and Lecrae. Pride’s interest in Christian rap coincided with his cousin, the person who nurtured him and helped him grow in the faith, leaving the church. Feeling hurt and betrayed, Pride searched for a way to express his anger.

Music became his outlet.

As time and life experiences grew Pride from a boy to a man, he found his voice — a voice that did not appear in his first songs.

“I wrote my first song, ‘Lose Myself,’ when I was 12. It didn’t say anything about me. I wrote it based on what I thought people wanted to hear, not what I wanted to say. I laugh when I hear it now,” Pride said. “My music was a lie.”

But as he began to write truthfully, opportunities followed. Through the years Pride has had his music played on local secular stations, opened for artists such as Canton Jones, Pastor Mike Jr, Kierra Sheard, LeAndria Johnson, and Dante Bowe of Maverick City, and landed gigs across the southeast states of America all the way to the Bahamas.

“What I want people to take away from my music is that I’m not perfect. No one is. I fall from grace every day, just like everyone else. But, although we aren’t perfect, God still loves us. And where you are i not where you will always be.” That’s the message that I want to spread everywhere.