Nathan Feuerstein, or NF, is a 28-year-old rapper who just released his fourth studio album, 'The Search.'
A young white teenager from Michigan, using his initials as a stage name, emerges on the hip-hop scene; his rapid-fire lyrics reflect the wounds of a broken home; and his music quickly becomes a cultural phenomenon, earning a Billboard-topping album, triple-platinum single, and millions of fans around the world.
If you grew up in the 90s, you know this story well. It’s the story of Marshall Mathers, or Eminem (originally “M&M”), who captured the world’s attention with his Slim Shady and Marshall Mathers LPs.
But it’s also the story of Nathan Feuerstein, or NF, a 28-year-old rapper who just released his fourth studio album, The Search—which, like his last album Perception, has quickly topped the Billboard charts.
Like Eminem’s, NF’s story is
But NF’s music also represents a clear departure from Eminem’s. Slim Shady flourished over Dr. Dre’s bouncy, sometimes goofy beats of the early aughts; The Search is driven by the foreboding, dramatic trap beats popularized a decade later. Eminem often indulged in arrogant, comic takedowns of popular culture; NF tends to plunge inward—more in the manner of the Rhymesayers Entertainment roster—ruminating over his own insecurities.
And the biggest difference between NF and Eminem is at once the least obvious and most surprising: NF is a Christian who was originally signed to a Christian music label. But as he explains in one interview, echoing Flannery O’Connor: “I’m a Christian, but I’m just an artist … I just make music. I talk about my life, I talk about my faith. I talk about positive things that I’ve dealt with that have taught me things and I talk about negative things that I’m dealing with … I don’t make music for Christians. I make music for everyone.”
The sales can rise
Doesn’t mean much though when your health declines
See we’ve all got something that we’ve trapped inside
That we try to suffocate you know hoping it dies
Try to hold it under water but it always survives
Then it comes up out of nowhere like an evil surprise
Then it hovers over you to tell you millions of lies
You don’t relate to that, must not be as crazy I am
The point I’m making is the mind is a powerful place
And what you feed it can affect you in a powerful way
It’s pretty cool right? Yeah, but it’s not always safe
Just hang with me, this will only take a moment, okay?
Just think about it for a second, if you look at your face
Every day when you get up and think you’ll never be great
You’ll never be great, not because you’re not, but the hate
Will always find a way to cut you up and murder your faith
The video for the next track,
The pair of songs introduce us to NF’s relentless confrontation with his own mental and spiritual darkness and fallen self. Georges Bernanos wrote of “the bottommost foundation of man’s soul—the secret self-hatred that is probably the deepest part … of every life.” In most of the songs on The Search—from
But The Search is not all doom and gloom.Man, Pascal wrote, is both wretched and great—and he is great because he knows he is wretched. NF’s music isn’t just about the experience of suffering and sin; it’s also about the sheer grace of facing it and wanting to overcome it. Human nature resists grace, as O’Connor observed, “because grace changes us and the change is painful,” and The Search is as much about these painful changes as it about unchanging pains. In
While the music world is busy comparing NF to Eminem, a better point of reference for NF’s deeply human—and ultimately, Christian—search for grace in and through life’s darkness is Johnny Cash. There is a memorable scene in Walk the Line where a young Cash auditions for a record executive by singing a bland, predictable gospel song. The executive balks at the performance and offers a thought experiment: If Cash was hit by a truck outside, and had time to sing just one song before he died, would he really sing this? “Or would you sing something different. Something real? Something you felt?” Cash
The Search and its overwhelming success represent one of those rare moments when faith, art, and culture powerfully intersect. It’s an exciting thing to behold, and Christians, music lovers, and especially Christian music lovers should revel in it. God willing, it also signals a brighter future for other believers making music—and maybe even for those searching fans who figured a life of faith was out of the question.