Lecrae reaches out to the sacred and secular

On Sunday, the Tower Theater seemed more like a church than a concert hall. To an audience of the faithful, Lecrae Moore came calling on the Lord's Day, preaching the gospel through hip-hop, as he has since his 2004 debut, Real Talk.

Known solely as Lecrae, the 35-year-old president of the nonprofit ReachLife Ministries has made a name for himself in sacred-music circles. His 2012 album, Gravity, won the Grammy for best gospel album, a first for a Christian rap artist. But he is reaching a secular audience, too: His recently released album, Anomaly, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. He's not hitting Taylor Swift numbers (Anomaly sold 88,000 copies in its first week), but the Lord works in mysterious ways, and with each release, Lecrae sells more and gets closer to pop heaven.

He can reach that wider audience because he creates stirring, contagious music to go with his ardent portrayal of God's word. Take his summer 2014 anthem "All I Need is You." Before pummeling beats and an ominous, memorable melody, Lecrae barks theatrical lyrics about "holding me down like bed straps to the psych ward/It's killing me, but you still with me when I fight hard."

On Sunday, rapping crisply to a young, racially diverse audience (some in "Yahweh" T-shirts), Lecrae based each song on chapters of his life and made his message clear: You can come from mean streets and find God. "I'm not a hero, but I know somebody who is," he growled during the pulsating "Wish It Wasn't True."

As a video of his life played behind him, rousing songs like "Welcome to America" and "Outsiders" were the soundtrack for his story, that of a slow transformation from troubled kid to enlightened adult, snags included. During "Good, Bad, Ugly," he rapped: "When I was in school, actin' a fool/ My soul got saved, my debt was paid/ But still I kept running off on my crew/ Sex on my brain, death in my veins."

But the sacred and the secular can mingle in ambiguous ways. When Lecrae jumped behind a podium to sing, with hard beats below his preachy words, he was as reminiscent of Marilyn Manson mocking the pulpit as of a preacher espousing its joys.