Music trio DC Talk is categorized and marketed under the genre "comtemporary Christian." However, that doesn't make DC Talk member Toby McKeehan particularly happy.
"We honestly wish that the term contemporary Christian didn't exist," says McKeehan. "It's unusual to list a musical genre based on the lyrical content or where a person's faith lies. Courtney Love is a Buddhist, but you don't see Hole records under `Buddhist rock' charts."In the contemporary Christian market, the guys are superstars. The group's 1992 disc "Free at Last" has gone platinum. The band's latest album, "Jesus Freak," debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart and was certified gold. Its first-week sales topped 85,000, giving it the biggest first-week sales of any Christian album. The video for the disc's title cut was directed by Simon Maxwell, better known for his work with Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana.
DC Talk was first pegged as a contemporary Christian rap/hip-hop group. However, while the lyrics still contain the same messages, the group's sound has evolved into a combination of alternative and hard rock, funk and folk. McKeehan calls it "schizophrenic pop."
This has helped the band cross over into secular territory. But McKeehan looks at the contemporary Christian label as a hindrance to total mainstream acceptance.
"We just wish people would pick up our music and listen to it with an open mind, rather than immediately thinking `Oh, this is Christian,"' says McKeehan. "That's not shrugging our faith in God, but it's opening up slightly to our artistic side and hopefully we've created a piece of art here."
DC Talk began when friends McKeehan, Michael Tait and Kevin Smith met at Virginia's Liberty University. McKeehan studied political science, Smith studied literature and music, and Tait was studying music business.
The three were all in different groups making different kinds of music. However, they combined talents to record a demo of McKeehan's song "Heavenbound" and later signed with Nashville's Forefront Records.
While the group met prejudice from secular listeners unwilling to give Christian music a chance, neither is everyone in the Christian community ready to embrace Christian songs delivered by way of hard-rock and rap music.
"You can't put a box around God and say, `You can't talk about God over a fuzzbox guitar,"' says McKeehan.
"Rap is a vocal that we chose to use more often in our earlier work," he says, "but we felt like we'll use any one of an arsenal of vocals to get a point across whether it's screaming on a track, whether it's whispering, whether it's singing a lead part or singing harmony. We obviously are a group that has some sort of message or social consciousness that we're trying to get across and we'll use any type of vocals to get our point across."
Lyrically, "Jesus Freak" steps out to address racial equality and acceptance. The group has already toured South Africa and plans to go back later this year.
"We are living integration," says McKeehan. "We're guys that became friends and decided to start a band. It wasn't like some industry guy created a group and said (affecting a huckster voice) `Two blond-haired white guys and one African-American. Great!"'
However, McKeehan says the band has just recently figured out how to successfully blend their personalities musically. He calls the group's first albums disjointed and the last two good collaborations.
"That's the task of DC Talk: `Can we come together onstage and have Michael, Kevin and Toby create one painting together?"'
McKeehan says that DC Talk is not made up of ministers. It's just three guys who are Christians trying to make artistic statements by what they're going through.
When musical artists who began their careers on the secular side speak out about their own Christianity, he says, it helps create acceptance for acts still in the Christian market. He cites as an example techno artist Moby, who came up through the British rave scene but in interviews discusses being a devout Christian.
"Moby has gone about it the right way - rather than come through the subculture of contemporary Christian or whatever," says McKeehan. "If we had it to do all over again, maybe that's where we'd be - believers - in the big system."