Kokane grew up with family members who were Muslim and family members who were Christian. Both religions have different beliefs and ways of portraying their religious leaders. In an episode of Myths Exposed, the West Coast rapper shares his earliest memories of a portrait of Jesus on his auntie’s wall.
“Every time we’d go to the house, there’d be this white man on the wall with stringy hair,” he explains. “Every time I would look at the picture, it’s like the white dude would just follow his eyes. It’s like ehhhh. No bs. That scared the shit out of us. My auntie used to say, ‘That’s Jesus on the wall. That’s Jesus, baby. That’s Jesus.’ I’d be like, ‘Dang, white Jesus is scaring the shit out of me, Auntie. What the hell?'”
Despite his fear and confusion at the image, Kokane‘s auntie promised that Jesus could help him.
“She was like, ‘Look baby, that white Jesus on the wall, he’s gonna heal you,'” he recalls her saying. But Kokane was having none of it.
“I was a little shorty,” he says. “I didn’t wanna tell my auntie ’cause back then, your aunties and your grandmas, we was raised in the black household, they would whip your ass if you got outta line. So I just dealt with it.”
But then he laughingly remembers when the family was watching The Exorcist and the television was right next to white Jesus staring them down.
“I guess it freaked me out because you know what I’m saying it’s just like c’mon man, a picture actually looking at you,” he says. “That freaked us out. It was a lot of things that scared me. The Exorcist movie was a very scary movie, but I would say white Jesus on the wall, I had nightmares about white Jesus on the wall at my auntie’s house for a whole year. A whole year. Every time I woke up in the morning, I see white Jesus’ eyes looking at me. But on the real, white Jesus scared the shit outta me.”
Kokane has some words of wisdom for how others can approach similar iconography in their family members’ home.
“So if you are in a black household or a brown household and you got white Jesus on the wall, immediately throw that picture out in the garbage,” he shares. “Because it’s a myth!”