Writer: Chris Ahrens | Photography: Bil Zelman
Hip-hop is associated with the streets and, sometimes unfairly, their accompanying vices—sex, drugs, and violence. The edge that demands reality is sometimes drenched in blood, and blood sacrifice is exactly what the S.O.G. Crew are about—not a drop wasted but a debt paid, a king on death row, flesh hammered into raw wood, His pain, our gain, don’t play a loser’s game. So, yeah, there is violence and blood, but no street battles and nothing to dull the broken heart of a Savior.

    When not home with the family, Robert Ornelas is Battle Ax, Johnny Diaz is Revolutionary, Corina Gonzalez is DJ Siren, and Krista Lynn Rocha is Luminous V. Together they move mountains and conquer the deepest sea, a locked and loaded approach that opens prison doors and sets the captive free. S.O.G. is going to war. The battle lines are drawn. Pick a side or stand aside.

Risen Magazine: Hip-hop is often geared toward self-elevation, yet you seem to point away from yourselves.
Battle Ax: We’re just in love with God, man. We know so many people jacked up on drugs. It takes discipline. It takes humility, foundation, knowing who you are. This is my family’s ministry, bro. It no longer belongs to me. The little ones get up and dance when they feel like it. My sixteen-year-old son is a starting running back at his high school. People are starting to know who he is, and they know he’s with S.O.G. I feel like we’re accountable to our community, bro.

RM: It’s unnatural for so many people to know your name. They could transform you into an idol.
BA: It’s God-given influence, bro—you’re accountable to lead people the right way. That’s what I teach to the whole team. If you’re at Wal-Mart, you need to be accountable to Wal-Mart. One night we went to a little gig at the Rhythm Lounge in Long Beach. They were shouting, “S-O-G! From there, we took off and went to a little nightclub in Fullerton called Church. I didn’t know who was going to be there, but the whole place was filled with our friends. You have to have an attitude of like, clean, clear conscience, right when you straight step outside.

RM: DJ Siren, how did you get involved?
DJ Siren: I prayed to God to use me in a way that I wasn’t being used at my church at the time. I was a baby Christian and the church wasn’t teaching me how to evangelize. The Lord put us all together. Robert came to our church with Johnny and the church was blessed by their visit. It was a knitting together, and I wanted to help in any way.

RM: It doesn’t seem that there are a lot of women DJs.
DJS: Not too many. There is maybe one on the East Coast. There’re a few radio DJs, but not too many female stage DJs that I’ve seen. There was an element that God put in our eyes that we saw would help benefit the flow of music and what He wants.

RM: The musicians that influenced you guys musically are not always Godly in their approach.
BA: Well, it takes a whole lot of prayer. I think I’m so caught up in the mission and the calling. For about five years I didn’t listen to the radio or watch TV. I was just in the projects, praying for the prostitutes, the homeless… that’s all I did for about five years straight. My pastor was taking me to Mexico, to the prisons. When I came back, things had changed. I didn’t know the music, I didn’t know anybody. I knew how to rap, so I would go places. Now I have the attitude and I can be influenced by their music. But I’m in the Word all day, bro, that’s what it is. I have to be in the Word, literally twenty chapters a day, to make sure that when I’m around places where they’re smoking weed, or drinking, that we’re there for what God called us to do and then we’re out. We don’t allow it to tarnish us. I don’t know, bro, it’s just a trip, a new mission field, something that I never knew anything about.
    Years ago, in the early ’90s, my brother and I started a hip-hop rock band. We were doing all the local clubs, bars, backyard parties. It was growing, and all the different high schools wanted us. But I was on drugs—LSD, weed, alcohol, speed. I was out of my mind and I was always in jail. I was the lead singer, lead rapper, but they got tired of me and let me go. They were all bitter about it. I finally cried out to God, watching opportunity vanish. It’s harder now, but now we know who we are.

RM: Who have you opened for?
BA: We’ve opened up for Fat Joe, Wu-Tang Clan, mainstream Christian, mainstream secular. We’ve networked with Cyprus Hill. I guess basically everybody from underground hip-hop, to mainstream hip-hop. If you’re good in the eyes of the world, they’ll check you out. If you’re consistent, little by little, they’ll allow you in, but you have to come with the whole package, man. You’ve got to come with a media team. You’ve got to come with video and a street team and be in their face continually. Now, they’re saying, What are these guys about? We’re about Jesus. But you have to get in. Most people can’t even get in.

RM: Louis Armstrong’s father told him that to make it as a black musician, he had to be five times better.
BA: You have to be better, bro. For Snoop Dogg to stay and hear you… we open before all these mainstream people and when we leave, the whole crowd leaves. It’s a combination of good, and…for us it’s God.

RM: Do you feel you’ve influenced secular celebrities?
BA: There’s a pastor named Chuck Battaglia out of Orange. He has a restaurant, and we took my wife there for her birthday. He was doing all the Elvis Presley songs. He had a whole band, and everybody was dancing and feeling it. Out of the blue, he does the song How Great Thou Art. Everyone in the restaurant started crying. That opened my eyes. I thought, What if I could do some music without compromise and, boom, hit ’em with an altar call at the end. That’s been our strategy ever since. When we’re in Hawaii, we start out with some reggae. When we’re in the South, we start with that style. When you’re on the East Coast, you want to come out with an East Coast feel, on the West Coast, a West Coast feel. When we’re in Alaska, the only thing they know about our culture is from TV, so it has to be really mainstream. I found that when you hit ’em with what they like, they’ll accept everything else.
    We do media and talk to big-name media and… like Tyrese Gibson… all these people in red carpet events… there were a couple people who, I’m not going to mention their names, but they were like into Wicca. People have to realize that the devil has agents that are representing hard, and they’re throwing it into the cracks.

RM: I’ve noticed there are very few people who don’t want to hear about Jesus. On the other hand, not many of them want to hear about church.
BA: Us going into mainstream hip-hop or whatever, you can’t just go in there, because the people who came before us were kicked to the curb. We had to learn what puffs up the crowd, what doesn’t…listening to God, man.

RM: Have you guys ever been hassled for what you do?
BA: No, man, they all come up hugging us, shaking hands, they want to get my number and do songs together. Everybody’s caught up in the economy and it’s dragging them down. When I hear somebody say something negative about the economy, I think, Man, our group is the biggest group in the world, thank you Lord. It’s easy to give up, it crosses everybody’s mind every day. We’ve been at it every day for God since 1998.

RM: What’s the name of the new album?
BA: The last two years, we’ve been planning to release Where Legends Are Born, but we have this song, Jerusalem that everybody wants. We do it live—it’s our grand finale song, so we’re praying about changing up the whole game plan.

RM: Are you surviving on the ministry?
BA: Bro, we average about 150 shows a year. It helps out, we take up offerings, things like that. We have a street team that’s running and gunning with CDs.

RM: Where do you get your musical inspiration?
DJS: Alicia Keys, Lauryn Hill, Bob Marley, Sublime, No Doubt, P.O.D. My best friend follows a Depeche Mode tribute band. They don’t like hip-hop at all, but they come out to support and they like our music. We’ll take songs by Alicia Keys and flip ’em,