SPEAKER_01 0:15

All right, welcome everyone to the first ever episode of Testimony Tracks. Today, on our first episode, I have the great honor of introducing you to a very, very special guest. This is Christian Hip Hop, number one listener, someone in the top 1% of LaCrae listeners for 2025, telling you nobody listens to music like this guy. He's a young up-and-coming theologian, someone that I think is gonna blow you away today with his knowledge and wisdom. The great man known for wearing his purple leather jacket everywhere he goes, none other than Everett E. Money Mahler. Welcome to the show, Everett.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, hello, thank you for having me. It it's an honor as the actual host of the show, the one who had the idea of testimony tracks and signed this man as the co-host because he has more experience than I shall ever have with podcasts. Thank you, Father.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, I guess we should have said for those listeners that don't already know us well, Everett is actually my son. We're embarking on this podcasting journey together. So, Everett, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Well, okay. First, I think shouldn't we like talk about like why we had this idea?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Why do you want to do this crazy thing and try to create a podcast?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Well, I've growing up I've liked music, but I I have also listened to podcasts, my favorite three, and the only three podcasts that I've listened to are The Deep End with Le Cray, The Bible Project with Dr. Tim Mackey and John Collins, I think is that his name. And then Creative Control with No Big Deal. And I had this I had this idea for creating a podcast for for people's testimonies, especially Christian rappers who are gonna be guests later. But first, before we have Christian rappers as guests, I you to get to know the hosts for this podcast and our testimonies. The reason why the name is Testimony Tracks is because this podcast is a place to just talk about our testimonies.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

I feel like it might be a little bit of an understatement to say that you like music. I mean, you've been known for walking around our neighborhood on your nightly stroll singing very loudly or riding your bike singing loudly. More than once we've had to ask you to turn it down or put some headphones on.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah. My favorite gifts are speakers and headphones.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So well, let's let the audience get to know you a little bit more. You said this is about testimonies. Tell us a little bit about your story. Where do you want to start?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Well, start off with my birth. I don't remember, I know I was born because if I wasn't, I wouldn't be here. That's a good, good uh assumption, yes. So after I was born, I've grown up, especially in the most strongest, not I don't think that's an overstatement, but it's definitely been a really strong community I've had in my schools, my church, my neighborhoods. As right neighborhoods pro, I moved to where I am right now when I was five. But both neighborhoods, I've had great communities. In my school, I've had a great community. Everywhere I look, people are there for me, they cherish me, they love me, and they support me in my ideas, especially this man, the co-host. I've like I said, I've always grown up with music, whether that be at six or seven years old, when I was listening to uh Veggie Tales Cine Songs with Larry, or in my young tweens between ten and thirteen, when I was listening to Matthew West and the News Boys.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Well, don't forget, I tried to start you out right with Skaw.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

I mean, you were a big five iron frenzy fan for a while. I was a big five iron frenzy fan. And then I moved on to mainstream music, which we'll talk about later. I still love them, they're still really good artists, but I come to the realization that Christian Rap is one of the most inspiring uh genres out there with a bunch of authentic artists talking about loneliness, depression. One of my favorite artists is actually called the champion of the knownly, shout out to John Keith. I've always tried to be a man after God's own heart. That means wanting the best of my friends, loving them, which I believe can be telling them the hard truth of if they're doing wrong or not, and actually guiding them towards what's right. I have grown up in a Christian home. Unfortunately, I do not exist without brokenness, and I've too soon I did realize that the world we live in is a broken world, which makes sense we see all this evil out here. I feel like at 811, this is actually a funny story. I decided to get baptized because I crossed an intersection with three seconds left to spare. I started at three and got to the end at zero, and I don't know that I just felt like God nugged me after that, and that's why I decided to get baptized.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Cause you were afraid that if you hadn't gotten through that intersection fast enough that you could have gotten hit by a car.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Yeah. I could have gotten hit by a car. I didn't understand traffic rules of thumb back then, but I felt like I had to get baptized after that experience. It was after, I think, a swim practice or a swim meet. But after I got baptized, things just went downhill. I know it seems odd that after you get baptized into a loving community of brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, that your life just starts getting worse and after I got baptized I started having thought doubts God existing because I've been on a path in loneliness, and I feared, even though I had a strong community around me, that's putting me everywhere I go, I feared that if I was vulnerable, which is what this podcast is meant to be, people being vulnerable. Well, I feared that if I was vulnerable, people would reject me, because I've seen that often.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Did you think that things would get easier after you were baptized? I w I mean I was young and naive back then. As opposed to now where you're very, very old.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

As opposed to now where I'm not very old, but I've matured. I feel like back then I believe this lie that thing that life would go swimmingly as ABC 123.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

So did that make it harder when you felt lonely or when things got difficult because you thought I'm baptized now and I I've been saved and I've got this great community, like I shouldn't be feeling this way.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, I mean that's a part of it. I felt God, why I'm the Holy Spirit is inside of me. Why am I feeling this way? What is wrong with me? Why are you doing this? Is this a test? How do I stay rooted in this faith through all of this? It was really a tough time in my life for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So how did you deal with that when you were feeling down, feeling lonely, feeling like maybe God was not close or had abandoned you in some way? What what did you do or how did you how did you deal?

SPEAKER_00 9:07

We all the second world calls them coping mechanisms, but I've you know like just spiritual encounters, I've learned that God puts people through tests, especially in the book of James, it says, fear not, brothers and sisters, when you're facing trials of various kinds, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance. So that was a trial of some various kind, and so the testing of my faith didn't produce perseverance then, though I didn't understand it back then, I definitely did persevere. God did walk through the hard time with me. I feel like he needed me to learn that to understand his calling for me to open up and share with others about my faith and what led to me trusting in him. So I feel like it was a God-given opportunity. He followed everything in the Mosaic God, but he was before Moses. In the time of Abraham, he sacrificed every day, he repented every day. It still the Satan could not be actual Satan, it just means accuser in Hebrew, adversary. Job's adversary had Job suffer because the adversary thought that Job was righteous because God was giving him the cookies and milk, the sweets in his life, and if God took away the sweets, Job would get all fussy and curse God, which we see is not the case in the book of Job. Job trusts God, even though he does cry out, ask God why this is happening, and after Job's trust, God does replenish his things. Everything Job owns gets doubled after this time in his life. So we do see this in the Bible. So it does seem like that God uses these encounters for good. I mean, he is a good, righteous God, but he's still just when it comes to the evil in the world. So I feel like that's my understanding of all this now, even though it might not have been my understanding of it when I was going through it.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

And after you had been wrestling with this phase for a while, is when you discovered Christian rap?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

I mean, yeah, you could say that, but before that I did mention I started listening to Imagine Dragons, thinking that their music, it is good music. They do share their loneliness and depression, but unfortunately it's not a Christian message through their idea of pain in the world. It only really made my life worse mass and dragons. One day I went into my room and sitting in my bed crying for like an hour straight, started having thoughts about what the world would be like if I did not exist. Um started having suicidal thoughts and I mean Gen Z is called the anxious generation, and I can attest to that. I know there are others like me that have suicidal thoughts in their life. But yeah, my loneliness just got worse as I puberty just got quote unquote better. I was thirteen now. I'm fifteen now, but I was thirteen then the story when I had suicidal thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

So you heard Imagine Dragons talking about their own struggles, and that resonated with you. You heard something in it that you could connect with, but it wasn't enough, I guess, to help.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Do you want to talk about anything else that you tried at that time or it wasn't God? Um I did try therapy after I mean I told my parents about suicidal thoughts, which ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening and wrestling with suicidal thoughts, it's really good to tell your parents they know what's best for you, even though it doesn't seem like it at the time. So I told mom and dad, and they put me through therapy. I still didn't really want to be vulnerable with my therapist, so that kind of not the point of therapy is meant to be vulnerable. So yeah. But are you gonna talk?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

It's a heavy moment. Um, yeah, I mean to be clear here at Testimony Tracks, we do believe in therapy, so yes, please um get the help that you need. I do think that therapy is a very important part of this topic and and something we do believe in. But it's not all we want to talk about today, because you do feel like you also were able to connect with God and hear different messages through some of the Christian music you started listening to, and that's also a part of your story.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah. Um doing the the I did slip deeper into loneliness. But remember, earlier in my testimony, I did mention that I've loved music ever since I was God knows how old I was when I started listening to music one years old. I don't know, but he God met me with something that I didn't love most, which is music. This is Christian rap. I mean, I knew it existed because I've been listening to the church crap like a lot since 2019. One of the only Christian line dances, and then in 2021, I think, is that my first year at Impulse? Um, which is in ACU leadership camp. I got introduced to more of LeCrae's songs and Tadashi. And so I didn't know these people existed, I didn't know that they were as famous as they were, but I heard like God's voice, God calling me to explore this genre of music, and so I did. I looked into what albums these songs came from, and then I looked past the albums and just started listening to the artists in particular, and then throughout two years of listening to Krishna hip-hop, my artist playlists just started getting longer and longer as I just started getting accustomed to new artists until somewhere along the end of the first year I started listening to Nobuck Dillon, John Keith, and Mogbey the Iceberg, otherwise known as the Indy Tribe. John Keith especially is known for talking about his suicidal thoughts and his time with depression and loneliness through his music. He has a great message. He's very vulnerable, he's not called the champion of the lonely for nothing. His music reaches out. It definitely did reach out to me because I felt his pain. I heard his story. Christian rappers' stories were not the first time I was like, dang, there are actually people in the world that are actually like like me, like they're Christian, but also gone through really hard times in their life. Like most Christian hip hop artists were fatherless, like Rena Kutna Cray, Andy Minio, KB all had absent fathers. John Keith grew up in the church, but had suicidal thoughts like me. So I felt like I found my people, and I felt like God called me to this genre because I was one of them.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

And what did that mean to you, finding that type of community or connection? How did that impact you?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

I felt less lonely. I felt healed, restored. These outer stories felt to me like my story in a way.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

And it sounds like that's one of the things you have valued the most is the vulnerability and honesty and authenticity and the lyrics.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Mm-hmm. I I'm not stopping you, the viewer, from listening to music you think is good because it has good production, it's a the g good artist, popular artist. I'm just saying one of the best ways to like music is music does reach out to your soul, and it does something like other things doesn't do, it's powerful. It can save you and especially through Christian rap, which it saved me. You can definitely find yourself in artists, whatever artists there are. I'm not stopping you from listening to Tana Swift just because she's got good production, but I don't like her mainly because her story isn't not at all like mine. And so I don't connect with her story.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Careful ever, we don't want to turn the Swifty mob against the podcast too early.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah, no. I'm no I'm no, I'm just saying you can listen to Taylor Surf me. I'm fine with that. I just think one of the best ways of listening to music is feeling connected to it. You can still there are other ways you can still listen to it just because it's good, just because it has great production. And hey, Taylor Surf's music does have great production. It's just I did not see myself in her music. I did not connect with her message. But I did connect with the message of Christian hip hop.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

How many Christian hip-hop artists are you keeping track of their monthly Spotify listeners right now?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Okay, so this is a funny thing. At the start of this year, I did start keeping track of monthly listeners to see Miles Minnes' claim that Christian rap is the new mainstream to see if that is true. And it does seem to be true, but I throughout the years I have accumulated.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Um let's see. Dramatic pause.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Uh sixty-three artists followed on Spotify and all Christian hip hop.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

So how long are some of the playlists you put together on Spotify?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

How long are some of the plainists? I have a plain list. Christian rap all editions from 2000 to 2025. Description, an entire culture I did not know about. Welcome to the wonderful world of Christian rap. It's 145 hours long in 45 minutes. But that's not the longest. Of course not. 207 hours and 33 minutes. Only 207.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Only 207. So I guess it's fair to say you're a super fan.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

I am. I mean, it saved my life, so how can you not be such a fan of something that makes you feel good?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Alright. Well, thanks for sharing so much about your story and being so vul vulnerable with us, if that's a word I can say. Pronounce correctly. Vulnerable. Vulnerable. Authentic. Yes. I appreciate you starting out our podcast. Uh, I'm sure we'll have some great guests to come, but it's nice to start out making our very own host, our first guest.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yes, and I feel like a second um testimony will be just as great, if not greater, than mine. Definitely not greater.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Um not sure we can rank testimonies, but hopefully we'll have some fun. Yeah. Alright.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Anyway, that's it for this episode.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I guess that's a rap. Thanks everyone for listening. It's not a rap, but a W rap. It's a rap. It's a rap. We're gonna have to come up with some good rap on this.