Brad Mathias is president of Bema Media LLC, the parent company of iShine, the world’s largest preteen Christian media group in Nashville. He can discuss the hiphop genre of Christian music.

Dr. Layli Phillips is executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women in Wellesley, Mass. She was formerly the associate professor of women’s studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she is also a faculty affiliate in the African-American studies department. Her teaching and research are on women and hiphop, womanism, black feminism and black […]

Dr. Dawn-Elissa Fischer is an associate professor in the department of africana studies at San Francisco State University. She teaches courses on international Black popular culture, information technology and visual ethnography. She was the education outreach coordinator for Stanford University’s Hiphop Archive and the founder of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention. She works with youth in […]

James Scandrick directs the Institute on Black Church Sacred Music and Worship at Nashville’s American Baptist College.

CEO, pastor and rap recording artist Del Lawrence, aka Mr. Del, was a member of a secular – and explicit – rap group, Three 6 Mafia, before he became a Christian in 2001. Since then, he says, he has been rapping for God. Lawrence leads City of Refuge Church in Memphis, Tenn.; records with EMI Gospel; […]

Alan Lamar Patterson, aka AL P, got a law degree from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University and then became a minister. He is a staff member of Mount Corinth Church in Houston, where he directs the monthly Friday Night Live, the Happy Hour of Power.

Efrem Smith serves as the President and CEO of World Impact in Los Angeles, Calif., a urban missions organization committed to the empowerment of the urban poor through the facilitation of church planting movements and leadership development. He also served as founding pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minn. Smith co-authored The Hip-Hop Church: […]

W.P. Middlebrooks is a lay minister and rap evangelist at People’s Place Church in Pasadena, Calif., affiliated with the Church of God in Christ. He has developed Christian hiphop events and clubs through his Youth United for the World ministry.

Marianne Novy is a professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote Reading Adoption: Family and Differences in Fiction and Drama, a book about adoption themes in literature.