When John Cook was 4 years old, he witnessed his father commit suicide.  It was tragic and traumatic and could have scarred him for life.  In order to save his mind and his future, God was going to have to do something special for this young boy, so that he didn’t have that memory etched in his spirit, questioning God and determining his fate.  Then, at 7, his mother got sick with Sarcoidosis, a potentially fatal sickness that could have been the final nail in a little boy’s hope for a life of happiness and possibility.

Until one faithful Sunday, John and his mother went to church.   When the Altar Call was made, John watched his mother move to the front of the church to be prayed for and he bore witness to an event that would shape his life and his father forever.  He saw his mother get healed.

“She got healed that day and I knew it without a doubt.  I knew it by the way she moved and came back to life.  Before she wasn’t as alive or as able to move and so I knew that God had healed her.  From that point on, I wanted to talk about God!”

But there were so many distractions in the streets of Flatbush in Brooklyn, NY.  Luckily, one of those distractions was rap music.  “I grew up around members of ABC (a young rap group that had great success in the early ‘90s with such songs as ‘Playground’ and ‘Aeisha’) and rapper Special Ed lived in my hood.  I really felt that if I could be a part of the music, then all of the things that I had been through would disappear.  So, I was reading the Bible and listening to rap music.  I knew that they could co-exist.  I wanted to give God the opportunity to live IN me!”

John felt that music could do what preaching couldn’t do for some people, penetrate their hearts and move the limits that some people placed on God.  “Sometimes, people hear the word and it can go in one ear and out of the other.  Music sticks with you!”  John felt that music could get through the hardest walls, including the members of the church.