JGivens on the inspiration of his Donald Trump line on Lecrae’s ‘Misconceptions 3’

One of the most memorable rhymes on Lecrae’s popular posse cut “Misconceptions 3” named Republicans’ nominee for the 2016 U.S. presidential election – Donald Trump.

“They shocked to see us, like Donald Trump up in a taqueria,” JGivens said in his guest verse on the track from Lecrae’s Church Clothes 3 mixtape that dropped in January.

At Legacy Conference 2016, JGivens told the story behind the line in an interview with Rapzilla.

“I started that verse with that line,” he said.

Donald Trump Disrespects Latino Community

And he wrote that line because, “[Trump] made me mad because of how he talked about the Latino community.”

“Once [Trump] said, ‘We’re going to build a wall for those people not to come over here and bring drugs and gangs all in here,’ I was like, ‘What do you mean those people?’” JGivens said.

When Trump announced his presidential campaign on June 16, 2015, his speech shared plans to make Mexico pay for a wall to be built on America’s southern border. His motivation to build this wall offended many.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best,” Trump said. “They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting.”

Trump defended his comment amid criticism, saying it was “deliberately distorted by the media,” and continued to connect immigrants to crime.

“This dude’s kind of racist,” JGivens said. “He’s kind of a bigot. Why isn’t anyone standing up for these people?”

He said his desire to stand up for Latinos inspired the “Misconceptions 3” line.

“It means so much as a minority group when another group stands up for you,” JGivens said. “I can say, ‘Black lives matter,’ but when I have you saying it, it’s like, ‘Yeah, they get it, too! They’re standing up for me. We’re standing up for each other.’ So it was important to be a black male and say, ‘Yo, yo, that dude’s talking about Latinos. He’s wrong.’”

JGivens said when he lived close to a Latino community, fights between blacks and Mexicans moved him to study Spanish. He hopes more Christians seek to learn about people who are different than them and, as a result, create unity.

“We spend so much time as believers worrying about if we’re right — we’ll just say in the whole race thing… If we just pick someone else and stand up for them and just learn their story and forget about our own, I think that would be super dope in the church,” JGivens said, “and we’d be able to show actually what this cultural thing of the Gospel and unity and unifying people and drawing people to God actually is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that when it gets political on our country. The church seems to split up.”

If you missed Misconceptions 2, you definitely need to check it out.

David Daniels
David Daniels
David Daniels is a columnist at Rapzilla.com and the managing editor of LegacyDisciple.org. He has been published at Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, CCM Magazine, Bleacher Report, The Washington Times and HipHopDX.
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