Indie Tribe’s Calling? ‘Bigger Than the Christian Bubble’

After their March 12 performance, the Christian hip-hop collective stayed through the weekend and moved through the city with the same conviction they brought to the stage.

“Outside of the showcases and stuff, we’ve had a lot of opportunity to really interact with people on a human level, on a spiritual level,” nobigdyl. said. “God has just been placing so many situations in our way that He wants us to speak into.”

That mindset set them apart from the usual festival script. SXSW runs on buzz and momentum. Indie Tribe came in with a different agenda. They wanted to meet people face to face and be direct about who they represent.

For example, during their first day at the festival, a group of guys approached them looking for a strip club. Jon Keith turned the moment immediately.

“‘Nah, but you know who Jesus is?’” Keith asked them. “You thought we were gonna take you to strip club, we gonna take you to church.”

The line got a laugh, but the exchange didn’t stay surface-level. According to the group, the weekend kept opening into real conversations about faith. Nobigdyl. said they had opportunities throughout the festival to pray with people, talk about the Bible, and spread the Gospel in ways that “didn’t happen in years past.”

That mission sits at the center of how Indie Tribe sees its role in spaces like SXSW. When asked why Christian hip-hop has found traction at secular festivals, Keith said he thinks people are hungry for more than the culture around them is giving them.

“People are tired of the nonsense and the debauchery,” Keith said. “There’s a thing that people are quietly and secretly yearning for something more and they don’t even know what it is, but it’s there.”

For Indie Tribe, the goal is reaching people who have felt shut out of church language or written off because of how they talk and where they come from. Keith said the group wants to challenge both the culture and the church.

“We want to be disruptive to the world, but we also want to be disruptive to the church,” Keith said. “We want to wake them up.”

Nobigdyl. said that many people are “gate-kept from accessing the scriptures” because of “their culture, how they speak,” but they’re on a mission to make it more accessible.

“We like to make like the principles and the concepts of Scripture come alive and connect with people who may not be super theological or may not have come up in the Church or the Christian bubble,” nobigdyl. explained. “We believe that Scripture is relevant at all points in time.”

Now with SXSW behind them, Indie Tribe is focused on continuing their mission with their next endeavor: releasing their new album, Who Do You Say I Am?, on March 27.