When Dylan Phillips started working in the Christian hip-hop industry, he was too cautious to try to make it as a rapper. Phillips, who now performs as nobigdyl., started out as a road manager, supporting the careers of artists like Derek Minor. Minor eventually fired Phillips in 2014 in what was meant to be a friendly push into the spotlight.
That push put Phillips on a career trajectory that the pragmatic artist and entrepreneur had not set out to follow. Over the past ten years, he has become a successful solo artist and leader in the Christian hip-hop niche. Phillips has over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. His independent artist collective, indie tribe, hosts an annual festival in Nashville called Holy Smoke! His latest album, Seoul Brother, is a collaboration with Kato On The Track, an Atlanta-based Korean American artist.
In May 2025, Phillips won Fan Favorite in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest for the second year in a row—and this year, the entry that won was a recording of the song “imago interlude.” The video begins with a close-up shot of the rapper’s T-shirt, printed with the words “you don’t know jesus til you see him in your enemy.” The first line of the song is a confrontation: “Christian music or music that Christians use / To get their fix just another hit of the clicks and views.”
In “imago interlude,” it’s clear Phillips isn’t afraid of making his listeners uncomfortable. He hypothesizes that some Christians consume faith-based music while neglecting to love their neighbors. He’s not shy about wading into divisive political territory, rapping about wars and humanitarian crises:
I look for Jesus and I didn’t see him on the news.
Saw him in Palestine; the power lines were out of juice,
He was a 9-year-old; her body had been battered, bruised.
Saw him in Zion too, a missile through a tattered roof,
A father clinging to his child, pleading out to you.
Saw him in Kyiv and Moscow.
The bleeding won’t stop now.
“Imago interlude” also showcases Phillips’s eclectic musical vocabulary, infusing jazz harmonies and funk-inflected instrumentation with complex rhythm and dense lyricism. Artistically formed by an array of genres and scenes, his music resists regional classification.
The 27-year-old rapper grew up moving frequently—his dad worked in logistics for Walmart, so by the time Phillips was 18, he had lived in seven states. The near-constant movement allowed him to absorb the musical traditions of the West Coast, Appalachia, and the South. He remembers going to jazz clubs in California to watch his uncle, Grammy-winning drummer Derrek Phillips, perform with bands and combos. Those venues also introduced him to spoken-word and slam poetry.
Although Phillips’s parents are not musicians themselves, Phillips described them as “music connoisseurs,” filling their home with the music of Elton John, James Taylor, Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind, and a rotation of Motown standards. As a student at Middle Tennessee State University, Phillips studied music business.
Now, in a performing career he never expected to have, Phillips is reflecting on the shape of the Christian music industry and trying to carve out a new, sustainable space for hip-hop artists. He spoke with CT about how the world of Christian hip-hop is changing and what he thinks artists offer the American church in tumultuous times.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
The opening line of “imago interlude” is striking, confronting listeners with the idea that Christian music is being used for “clicks and views.” What were you thinking about when you wrote those opening lines?
Initially I was thinking about how Christian music shouldn’t just be for us. We shouldn’t be circling the wagons and making sanitized music to throw on for our tribe, something for Christian consumers to use as an alternative to other music when they want something for the kids. Christian music shouldn’t be something that we as artists use just to get a bigger and bigger platform or go viral.
It should have something to say for the culture and to the culture.
If we’re creating and if we think that God has crafted us and fine-tuned us to make this specific art that we are making, then there are people that need to hear the specific messages that God is sending through us.
So those lines were a critique of the individualistic, me-centered, capitalist idea that “Oh, I’m just making this music to go up the ladder.”
The shape of the industry has changed so much in the past 15 years. These days, going viral is potentially a career-making moment for artists. How do you balance the desire to find your audience and listeners with the conviction that virality and views shouldn’t be the primary driver of what you create?
I think it’s about continually recalibrating toward my belief that God is the greatest creator. I believe that he used art, conversation, and people to reach me in his kindness and love and mercy. He’s doing that for the world.
So whatever I’m doing creatively, I want it to reflect his excellence and the gift that he has given me. My job is to say yes to him and honor him in that, and platform and virality may come with that.
Platform is not the enemy, you know? I mean, in broad terms, there’s nothing more viral than the Bible. The Psalms are the most popular songs ever.
I always think, Can I make something that’s part of the soundtrack of a life walking with God?
And not every song is going to be as deep as “imago interlude.” Sometimes it’s a song that inspires joy in people, something they can go grocery shopping to.
The point is, am I chasing that platform, or am I seeing that platform as an opportunity to help people walk with God?
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You spent so much of your childhood moving across the country, and the different musical influences you’ve encountered show up in your music. You’ve also experienced lots of different church music traditions. How have those varied practices and sounds influenced your art and faith?
I spent most of my life in the COGIC church [Church of God in Christ], which is a Pentecostal Holiness denomination. In COGIC churches, the choir culture, the vocal and instrumental training, and the coaching in general, it’s incredible. The musicianship is actually crazy.
As a kid, I remember watching these 15- and 16-year-olds on the drums and keys. They seemed like adults to me at the time. And to this day I can remember the runs and rhythms they were playing. Stuff I didn’t even know was possible. And they were self-taught, mentored by other people in the church.
But while we were attending COGIC churches, my mom wanted us to try Awana. It’s not a COGIC thing, so she would take us to the Southern Baptist church across town on Wednesdays. Eventually I started going to the youth group there, and that’s where I first heard music by David Crowder, Switchfoot, and Lifehouse—CCM [contemporary Christian music]. I had never heard that stuff before.
It’s easy to dunk on CCM, but in my opinion, there’s a lot of really inspiring melody there. I learned a lot from it.
What’s it like to be a Christian hip-hop artist based in Nashville? Nashville is this musical power center, but country music and CCM are the dominant musical forces, and historically, hip-hop’s power centers have been in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, or New York. How has your location in Nashville influenced your work?
Yeah, Nashville hasn’t always been a power center for hip-hop. But, you know, the elements of excellent hip-hop music have actually always been in Nashville; it’s just that country music and Christian music get the front-page treatment.
The music history in Nashville is way more eclectic than most people realize. Nashville’s called Music City because of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Gospel music, blues, jazz, rock-and-roll, rockabilly, R & B, all of that is in the DNA in Nashville, and those are all predecessors to hip-hop, which is essentially a remix of those genres.
And there’s always been a rich Black cultural heritage in Nashville as well. There are multiple HBCUs [historically Black colleges and universities], some of which are 150 years old at this point. The Civil Rights Movement came through Nashville. A lot of the training for peaceful protests happened at Fisk University.
There is a hip-hop community here, and there actually is a distinct style. It’s very musical, a lot of melody, a lot of jazz, and that makes sense because of the history of Nashville.
You write lyrics about Christian music being “used,” sometimes hypocritically. And CCM does have a reputation for being positive, upbeat background music. Do you think Christian hip-hop is able to offer something that CCM generally doesn’t? Are there messages or ideas that hip-hop artists are willing to engage that tend to be watered down in other popular Christian music?
Yeah, I think there’s a very independent spirit in Christian hip-hop. On the whole, most of us are not signed to major labels, so we’re not part of this system that can lend itself to sanitization and being safe. Christian hip-hop can provide a less censored, less biased, prophetic voice.
I think about artists like Propaganda; he’s gonna say what he believes is beautiful and true regardless of what he loses or gains. He’s proven that over and over again. Jackie Hill Perry, she’s gonna do the same thing.
Lecrae is much more of a household name and accepted by the mainstream, but he’s obviously proven that too. He was No. 1 overall on Billboard at one point, and then he started speaking out about police brutality and lost some of that platform he had within CCM.
Christian hip-hop has this unique tradition and history. We’ve shown that we’re gonna say what’s beautiful and true, regardless of the consequences.
