Germantown Ave. pastor: Urban youth's decline tied to Lil Wayne's rap

Along this strip of Germantown Avenue where business is cheap and quick, prayer is its own commodity. Places of worship have staked their claim amid the take-out food stores, discount shops, abandoned buildings, and blue lights from a police surveillance camera on the corner, near Silver Street.

Inside the storefront Philly Open Air Church this mild Wednesday night, the youth-study Bible lesson is on the power of forgiveness, out of the book of Matthew.

The circle of nine - mostly teenage boys and young men - sit on worn couches in a conversation that turns to violence. Most of them, even the few girls, have been touched in some way by gunfire.

One girl, round-faced with braids, and swinging her foot, tells of a brawl a few months ago on Bucknell Street that left her 2-year-old cousin shot.

"And now she's crippled," she says softly.

In the back room of this North Philadelphia church, where the Sabbath is kept holy, about a dozen more youth read from the book of Mark by the space heater.

Hands shoot up after Pastor Jomo K. Johnson, wearing a navy hockey jersey and cargo pants, who despite his light beard looks younger than his 32 years, asks them to recount their dead. Among them, the three teens gunned down in Juniata Park by the stepfather of the boys they had arranged to fight.

In a city that so far this year has had more murders than days, Johnson puts his hope for urban youth in his faith in a higher being. And he sees their biggest threat in the embodiment of one hip-hop icon, whose likeness hangs in the church window like a "Wanted" poster: Lil Wayne.

"In the lives of the most vulnerable," says Johnson, "when they are constantly exposed to this philosophy through the words of music, it can, and will, and does, cause them to do things that they wouldn't normally do."

Johnson self-published a book four months ago titled Deadest Rapper Alive: The Rise of Lil Wayne and the Fall of Urban Youth. With more than 100 references, the tome is part bio, part thesis, part indictment. It is directed at teens, parents, and young adults.

In it, Johnson notes the unparalleled lyrical talent that has brought Lil Wayne worldwide fame and fortune. But over the rhythms and melodies, Johnson is almost grieved by the 29-year-old dreadlocked rapper's references to casual sex, misogyny, drug use, gun violence, and what Johnson calls a God complex. And in his hapless neighborhood, he says youth cling to every word.