Elevation Church’s senior pastor Steven Furtick heard from critics after praising his son Elijah’s rap album, which references guns, shooting, oral sex, and bragging about excessive amounts of money.
The 16-year-old Elijah, who goes by his stage name dothedash!, released a ten song album titled “TEEN MACHINE” on the first week of March. To his credit, with everything else he references, he doesn’t swear on the record.
During one video, Steven’s wife, Holly (Elijah’s mother), let people know that Elijah works at Elevation church.
During the intro track “All Cap!,” Elijah says that “all of the emotions and aspirations depicted in this audio recording are a genuine reflection of some dimension of the author’s experience or personality.”
“However,” the young rapper stated, “a majority of the events, achievements, and acquisitions conveyed in the lyrical body are in fact fictitious, exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek, or otherwise widely inaccurate—in other words the feeling is real, the rest is all cap.” “All cap” is a slang phrase referring to lying.
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After dothedash! explained how to decipher his songs, he wasted no time spitting controversial lyrics in the song “NO HOOK!” that caught the attention of San Diego based Christian rapper and one-third member of “Dream Junkies,” Ruslan.
In addition to making music, Ruslan has a YouTube channel that has racked up over 16 million views. Ruslan created his YouTube channel “to help people contextualize their faith and live God’s Dream for their life,” he said.
Ruslan created a video breaking down everything he heard in the Elijah’s song, a video that has been viewed over 221,000 times so far and explained that the video is not intended to blast the Furticks. Rather, Ruslan expressed that he’s genuinely concerned about what he heard.
At first, “No Hook” might seem like an innocent party song to most people, but if you listen closely to all the slang terms, dothedash! uses, you might think differently based on “Urban Dictionary’s” definitions.
Slowing the track down so he could unmistakably hear everything Elijah was saying, Ruslan pointed out that dothedash! let everyone know he was sixteen and told them that his “bro keeps a blicky.” A “blicky” is slang for pistol and is frequently used in secular rap songs.
Later in the song, Elijah makes gun-like gestures while rapping, “We lighting your block up like a cigarette.” Ruslan was confused how a white suburban kid who grew up in a 16,000 square foot gated estate in Waxhaw, North Carolina decided to rap about shooting up his block.
