Urbansouls ― Reflections on Youth, Religion, and Hip-hop Culture

urbansouls foreshadows the Ferguson uprising by offering keen insight on the social and cultural situation of the greater St. Louis region. Written while serving as a youth pastor and community center director in the late '90s, Sekou theorizes on race, class and gender. urbansouls reads the religious sensibilities of hip hop as a meaning-making activity for those who have been alienated from society's traditional institutions such as the church. The book is written for all those who are interested in the plight of youth. Theologians, public policy makers, youth workers, and social service providers will be presented with eyewitness account of the conditions that urban youth struggle with on a day-to-day basis, long before the killing of Michael Brown.

Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is an emerging leader in the new Civil Rights Movement and an acclaimed activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and musician. Sekou was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Education and Research Institute at the time of Michael Brown Jr.'s killing, and traveled to Ferguson in mid-August 2014 on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the country's oldest interfaith peace organization, to organize alongside local and national groups. With the Deep Abiding Love Project, he has helped trained over five thousands activists in militant nonviolent civil disobedience through the United States. Born in St. Louis and raised in the rural Arkansas Delta, Sekou has studied at the New School, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard University. He lectures widely, including at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School, the University of Virginia, University of Paris IV - La Sorbonne, and Vanderbilt University. He is a former Professor of Preaching in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education, Chicago. In May 2017, Sekou released his debut solo album, In Times Like These. Recorded at the storied Zebra Ranch Studio, a barn in Coldwater, Mississippi, the album features the six-time Grammy nominated North Mississippi Allstars.