Take the Money and Rev. Run

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God makes his appearance in "It's Like That" as a savior for a man who had reached the end of a spectacularly successful but personally draining road. "I was spiritually bankrupt. Emotionally spent," Simmons writes. "My musical and financial successes were no longer enough. I needed for the pain to stop...I turned to God."

Material goods have not lost their shine for Run. "If God is not about giving you stuff," he reasons in the chapter entitled "Wealthy Mentality," "then why when God blessed Job he gave him more?" The process of getting material goods is who God is, according to Run: "God is a universal spirit that helps you help yourself." For Rev Run, the wages of sin may be death, but the wages of spiritual engagement is, well, good wages.

This wealth-friendly theology isn't original to Run.

The idea that godliness is akin to material well-being has been around at least since the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale began preaching "the power of positive thinking" in the 1940s and '50s. Perhaps its crudest incarnation came in the 1970s, when Rev. Ike began a radio ministry, selling bill-size prayer cloths so that believers' wallets would never be empty. Prosperity preaching has taken hold in the African American community as a way to provide passage out of poverty. "Wherever you have poor people, you will have prosperity preaching; its like playing the lottery," says one minister. Today, the name most often associated with prosperity preaching is T.D. Jakes, pastor of Potter's house in Dallas, who drives a Mercedes Benz and has his own line of Hallmark cards.

But it's not clear which is the higher value for Rev. Run, God or his bounty. While he's cleaned up his act, and there is something life-affirming in "Let's Stay Together Forever," off the group's new release, "Crown Royal" (check out the kids running around in their underwear in the video), the bulk of the album seems to be the latest play to revive Run-DMC's fortunes.

Like the whiskey it's named for, "Crown Royal" is a blend of quality tastes. Guest appearances from rap-metal stars Kid Rock, Sugar Ray, Everlast, Third Eye Blind, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit are there for the college crowd. For street-cred, the other half of the album features rappers Method Man, Nas, Mobb Deep, and Fat Joe. Collaborations are a standard formula used for artists who need to update their sound. But several of the guests here are on the media moralists' Top 10 list, and the God talk Rev. Run uses in his memoir is nowhere to be found. With tracks like "Take the Money and Run" and "Them Girls," one has to wonder if Rev Run is just a born-again hooligan.

It's going to take a lot more to inject spirituality into rap music. If Run intends to empower rap fans spiritually, he'll have to stop diluting his message. Or more simply, if a bit trivially put, as I watched Run perform next to Kid Rock on last year's MTV Awards, I couldn't help thinking, If Rev. Run wants us to see his spiritual side, shouldn't he stop grabbing his crotch?