“I wanted it to be authentic. So how do you make it authentic? You go back to some of the roots… We were just hanging out with fans intentionally. We were at community centers and prisons and, we didn’t smell like green rooms in first class flights, you know what I mean? We smelled like sheep. And, and I just wanted to go get some more sheep dung on me.”
That’s Lecrae. For his tenth record, Reconstruction, he isn’t about chasing trends. He’s pulling the walls down, and building something solid on a foundation that doesn’t move. Right away I wanted to know why he chose to frame this project with a word that’s been loaded in recent years. For some, “deconstruction” has become synonymous with walking away from faith. For Lecrae, it means something else. “There’s just a lot of misconceptions and the rumor mill goes crazy like, ‘what does Lecrae mean when he says deconstruction’ on my last project? And really what I’m talking about is spiritual renewal. I’m talking about getting rid of some things that didn’t make sense. Some things that we have married into our faith that were never supposed to be married.” He leaned in harder. “Our Christian faith is not supposed to be married to our political system, regardless of what side of the aisle that you’re on. And so some of us need to deconstruct or tear that down outside of our faith foundations. Our Christian faith is not built on how many church members you have and how big your church is. I think we got to tear that down. You’re not more successful in ministry if your church is bigger. It’s not a healthier church if there’s more members. And then even just our walk. Right. We can’t just try to check boxes. Did you do your quiet time? Did you go to Sunday service? Man, this is not what this is about. So it’s just tearing some of those walls down and reconstructing on the firm foundation, which we never want to leave, which is Jesus.” That leaves room for the now what scenario that is this entry in Lecrae’s discography. “Man, what what what should be built here? What does the fruit of the spirit look like in our day to day lives now? And that’s really what the album is about.”
This album is an intentional journey and in the world of endless singles, it’s so refreshing to see this art form back front and center. “People don’t make albums anymore,” he said without hesitation. “I just had to listen to my fans, man. I had to listen to what they were saying, and they wanted more. they wanted concepts. They didn’t want me to follow the trends, they have grown up with me with albums like Gravity and Rebel and Anomaly, and I think I wanted to get back to that, but I didn’t want to conjure it up. I wanted it to be authentic. So how do you make it? Authentic is you got to kind of go back to some of the roots and like, okay, what were we doing? We were just hanging out with fans intentionally. We were at community centers and prisons… and that’s why the album feels the way it does. The last three years of my life was just being with the sheep.”
There is also a seasoned grown man energy all over this project, the kind you only get with years lived and miles logged. He laughed when I brought up being in our forties and how that likely effects the music as much as it does our worldview. “That’s absolutely right… I told my son, you’ve never been my age, but I’ve been yours. I’ve just seen some things. And if you trust me, I promise I got you. But you’re going to have to trust me because I’ve been here before… It’s just more in the rearview mirror now.”
And then there’s Atlanta. And then there are the names of his collaborators—Killer Mike, T.I.— and so many more. Lecrae grinned. “Yeah, I wanted to walk the talk and those are the guys that I’ve been walking with for years, So that wasn’t like a a call like, hey, you think you’d be interested? Both of them have a very high respect for me as a person. It’s mutual respect… They’re like, you’re really serious about this Jesus thing, but you’re always in the community and you’re not a charlatan. You’re not playing games, I gotta respect it, you know? I gotta respect that consistency. And we have good conversations. We can talk politics. We can talk Christianity. And I’m not afraid of that.”
The truth is Lecrae’s been ahead of the curve on collaborations for years. What felt groundbreaking back then is normal now. Christian artists trading verses with mainstream heavyweights, genre walls falling away, kids discovering music through Fortnite instead of youth group. “That’s right. You nailed it. It’s the democratization of music. I had a lot of convos with Forrest [Frank] before he really broke out. He was like ‘I just use social media. There’s no Christian bookstore. There’s no Christian Channel.’ It’s just like, oh yeah, it’s the same place where all the other non-Christians live. And, and he really taught me a lesson. I learned from him during that time period… It’s not like this siloed space… Coming In Hot went viral, not because we put it in a Christian box, but because we just put it out in the in the atmosphere. Will Smith used it, Kim Kardashian used it. And and then you let God change people’s lives with stuff like that.”
As our time wound down, I wanted to know where he’d point new listeners.“I love Holidaze with John Bellion personally, just because it’s a little bit of a left of center song. And, and I think it is something that everybody can relate to… we’re busier than we’ve ever been. We’re more anxious than we’ve ever been. And we keep trying to take these unsanctioned breaks, and think doomscrolling is like a break from the monotony and it’s like, no, you need to let it all just stop. Just stop and and don’t add a thing to take a break. You don’t need the liquor to take a break. You don’t need the doomscrolling. Then take a break. Just take a break. Go sit outside. So Holidaze would probably be the one.”
Lecrae has landed in the middle of real life, calling us to slow down, tear down the noise, and rebuild on something unshakable. Reconstruction is out now—listen here. And if you want to see every word from our conversation, watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.