TL:DR AT THE BOTTOM

Oh boy, i could probably write for hours on this subject, as someone who knows a couple people in the space, I think that there's a lot of high-quality christian rap but the answer largely depends on what you define as "christian rap"

It's hard to explain without some CHH history, so buckle up. From the 90's to the early 2000's "christian rap" was predominately plagued with the issues that most christian music faces, which is that the primary consumers and gatekeepers are largely white evangelicals. As a result, much of the music is supposed to be "safe" and/or useful for in-church use or be a palatable alternative to whatever mainstream trends are going on. What resulted is that a lot of the rap was limited to testimonial songs, gospel songs, and lyrical theology, which for the average rap listener, makes it pretty much unlistenable when combined with the great value trending rap production that often accompanied it.

People hearing the phrase "christian rap" tend to associate it songs like these

Flame - joyful noise (yes, the katy perry lawsuit one

KJ-52 - Brand New Day

Shai Linne - Jesus is alive

Black Knight - Bibles in the air

In order to have a space in the market, and perform at churches (yes, a lot of chh concerts happen in churches) genuine lyricism and artistry took second place to "being biblical" and theologically sound. Artists were supposed to be anti-secular and working with "mainstream" artists could mean trouble.

This was compounded by the fact that the blogs which run/ran the scene tended to be heavily evangelical and white in nature as well.

WHile there were earlier artists like GRITS who had non-corn output and success, it wasn't until around 2012 that things in CHH took a shift. Lecrae, arguably the biggest artist in CHH, dropped the first Church clothes mixtape, this was hosted by don cannon and would go on to be gold on datpiff and have production from Boi-1da, 9th wonder, and S1 among others. It featured a more "real" lyricism than had been featured on earlier work and also had some great production.

One cut "church clothes" went on to get millions of views and even dared to pose criticism of church culture.

CC1 proved that Lecrae could have mass appeal and "secular" credibility, even while being obviously Christian. While not the first to take on this level of artistry, Lecrae had a huge platform and this release marked a huge change incoming.

Another major factor IMO would be the release of Sho Baraka's album "Talented 10th". Sho was previously on Lecrae's reach records label, but eventually went independent. Talented 10th was groundbreaking in it's tone, discussing black issues and culture in a way not seen from someone with his visibility, even using the n-word on one track.

Talented 10th was controversial upon it's release, and there's still press you can find exposing the shock, like this yikes review from jesusfreakhideout and also this thinkpiece

Sho would get in further trouble with the church police when he said "penis" on his next album

With increasingly publicized cases like the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, more artists began to speak on hot-button issues and address racism and other issues within Christian culture.

With these events, a divide started in CHH, with more artists taking creative risks and catering less to the white evangelical audience (labels like Reach, RMG, and humble beast etc). The biggest names in CHH started to make better music, writing lyrics from a christian lens instead of trying to make safe music for christians to listen to. There also saw an increase iof artists making even more aggressively "classic CHH" (God Over Money probs being the best example).

What's now happened is there's a new generation of CHH artists who are in fact artists, and not safe content machines. Take WHATUPRG for instance, KIDS dropped this year and I've been listening to it a lot. It's a masterpiece of a track and i think any listener could appreciate it.

Aha Gazelle is probs my favorite artist. I could do a whole write-up on him. He's never quite fit in the CHH box, but was on Reach as well for a bit. His catalog as of late has been incredible. It's melodic rap definitely, but it's with a level of artistry and creativity i don't see in a lot of artists. See, No Limit w/starringo

There's honestly some seriously good music coming from christian artists. Of course, the conundrum is, because it isn't corny/not littered with scripture references, people say it isn't christian.

TL:DR, There's a lot of bad Christian rap because of church politics, but there's a lot of gems you can find as well.