Other tattoos chronicle his story: "Dust Be My Destiny" is emblazoned on his left upper arm; his old neighborhood turf, "Skyview," wraps around his left shoulder, front to back. And, over his heart, the one word "Pain," appropriate to a young man once so dead to hope that one day seven years ago he swallowed every pill in his mother's medicine cabinet. He was 18.
But as the heavy bass thumps and Reiss begins to rap, what comes out
rises above the tattooed memorials to his past.
Instead, he begins rapping about Jesus Christ, a different way of life,
and a personal transformation still under way that has put Reiss, Christian
rapper, on a new course that was uncertain at first, but is slowly gaining
momentum.
In his music, he beckons old friends:
I'm the same brotha that was with ya when the guns bust
Hustle 'til the sun's up
But things then change, I ain't the same
Man, I got to keep my brain on things that ain't vain
Reiss would adopt an edgier stage persona, would drape himself in
jewelry if he had it, to complement the tattoos and better affirm his street
cred. But his music has not yet provided a road to riches. Reiss lives in a
one-bedroom apartment in eastern New Orleans with Johna, his wife of five
months. He is temporarily without a car. It was stolen.
So he raps at local churches, at youth revivals, in mission tents that
sprout on weekends in the city's housing developments. Sometimes, when a
distant church hears of him, he goes off to another city like Dallas or
Memphis, Tenn. Sometimes Johna moves through the crowds, selling her
husband's two CDs, "Godson" and "Flame of Fire." They are trying to make a
living.
They know that New Orleans has its share of rap success stories. Both
Percy "Master P" Miller's No Limit empire and the Williams brothers' Cash
Money Records have sold millions of albums nationally and, with Reiss, can
trace their roots to the city's sometimes bloody neighborhoods.
But what Reiss is trying to do is even more of a long shot. Christian
rap's share of the market is minuscule. And Reiss and a few others like him
-- people like Var-G, Second Samuel, Holy Remnant, the Oracle, Chosen One,
Foundation -- are confronting the type of rap that put New Orleans on the
map.
Together, they preach the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the
teeth of a bitter competing gospel of the streets.
They are outmanned. Certainly outgunned.
"The first time I saw a dead body was in a club," Reiss says. "First
time I saw gunfire was at a club -- bullets so close I heard them whiz by.
Hit the wall right behind me."
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Born in Houma, he moved to the 9th Ward on his 11th birthday. His mother, Donice Reiss, today a coordinator in the University of New Orleans' learning resource center, struggled more or less alone to raise Govenor and his little sister, Abigail.
His father, Governor Reiss Sr., lived in Mobile, Ala. A churchgoing man who shuttled between ministry and sales of one kind or another, he had a powerful influence on his son during those periods when the family was together.
But as Reiss entered his midteens, those days were past. Raising her two
children alone, Donice Reiss could not compete with the powerful
companionship and the blood loyalties that her son found on the streets.
A natural musician, Govenor began hanging out with rappers, particularly
one named Ricky B. He was a background dancer for Ricky, a part of his
entourage. At 15, he began to bring home money.
"He was good at getting money," his mother would recall. "And good at
spending it."
About the same time, Reiss said, he began to do cocaine and heroin.
He was kicked out of two Orleans Parish schools for fighting. Using a
relative's address, the family enrolled him at L.W. Higgins High School in
Marrero.
It was there, his mother said, that Reiss began to sense his gifts. He
explored his love for rap and began to write his own material. He was
elected drum major. He was popular. But, back in the east, far from Marrero,
he was still "living the life."
"I was selling drugs by day and clubbing by night."
Gangsta, Gangsta, murder, murder
as a youngsta that's all I heard of
I got to get money and a lot of it fast
These are the ghosts that come out of my past
Over the years, Reiss was arrested 11 times, all for misdemeanors, he
said. And yet, in the midst of such anarchy, there was an invisible line,
sometimes only dimly sensed, that he would not cross. He held part of
himself back.
"I'd hang out with robbers, thieves, jack artists," said Reiss. "... But
I was always able to walk a fine line between those who did that and those
who didn't."
As one who lived and preached the word, Governor Reiss Sr. stressed the resurrection. But when he was with his family in New Orleans, what the father sought to impress upon the son was the life-long cross of regret he carried from the shooting.
"I saw how it affected him the rest of his life," Reiss said.
But the plain truth is, the son was simply luckier than his father.
Twice, the younger Reiss said, he pulled a gun and fired it in sudden
confrontations. Nobody was hit, he said.
"I guess God was watching over me even then."
Reiss' youthful brush with his own mortality came a few months after his
graduation from high school. He was "speedballing" -- doing heroin and
cocaine -- when he heard himself begging a friend for more. The sound of his
own begging terrified and disgusted him, he said. "I sounded just like every
sick, strung-out addict I'd ever heard. I had become one."
Overwhelmed with self-loathing, "I saw myself walking out of the light
and into the darkness. I saw every bad thing I'd done to my mother. Every
memory was like a whip. All that goodness I'd had at Higgins, I'd snorted it
up."
"I went from something to nothing. I had no more hope."
Three days later, he went to the medicine cabinet, swallowed every pill
he could find and locked himself in his room to die. His frantic mother
summoned a friend who kicked in the door as paramedics raced to the scene.
Things were never quite that bleak again, though Reiss was far from
healed. A short stint in a detox program after his suicide attempt left him
physically clean, but still troubled.
Then, as he tells it, one remarkable day three years ago he happened
into "Club Love," a Christian nightclub for youths and young adults. It was
run by Bishop A. Michael Shaw's Perfect Love World Revival Ministries.
What Reiss saw astonished him: people onstage doing something novel --
Christian rap, church rap, Jesus rap.
Two things struck Reiss more or less at the same time. One was that he
could improve on what he was hearing. And, two, "I knew that's who I was,
that's what I was supposed to be doing."
Reiss stayed the night, then began to return, frequently. He went back
to his notebooks and began reworking the lyrics to his old songs about life
in the streets.
At first, his rewrites were primitive. "I'd just take out some words and
put in Jesus, Lord and God, stuff like that," he said.
But, according to Shaw, Reiss stayed engaged, became interested in the
church and then interested in digging into the meat of the Christian
message.
"Gov was hard-core, and it was interesting to watch his evolution," Shaw
said.
What clicked, Shaw thinks, was the revelation of something new to him
that night at Club Love. The place had the veneer of street life: graffiti,
lots of secular rap in addition to the Christian music, a familiar-looking
crowd. But it spoke to Reiss in the secret place he had always held back
from the streets.
"When he found he could do his music and still be a Christian, that was
his Damascus moment," Shaw said. "He could stop that battle within.
"Besides, the truth is, he could never be a very good criminal. There was
always that reservation, that reluctance to go completely to the dark side."
(SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
Your eyes and ears are spiritual windows
Stop living your life every whichever way the wind blows
You live by the gun, you die by the gun
He gave his only begotten son to die only once
I've never felt a love like this before
I left the dope he done hit me at the core
In the three years since that first encounter at Club Love, Reiss is
still trying to adhere to a new life.
"Is it genuine? Yes," his mother said. "Perfect? No."
"I was a baby in Christ, and I've done some backsliding," Reiss said.
One thing that he does not consider to be backsliding is the contact he
maintains with old friends from the Skyview neighborhood, his homeys from
the days of the all-night clubbing and hustle.
But the contact is different now. It's on his new terms.
Of her son, who always led with his heart, his mother says, "He never
made them feel he was not part of their life. He wouldn't live their
lifestyle anymore. But he wouldn't turn his back on them, either."
"Just because I'm here now don't mean that other person can't be here
too. It don't mean I'm better than him," Reiss says.
As friends do, they accept his new life, he says.
"They've never lost their love for me, never judged me. And as I've read
the Bible more, I've learned not to judge, which I've learned a lot of
people in church do. I've been judged more by people in church than outside
church."
These days Reiss looks for new gigs, trying to make a living off his
music and his reputation as a Christian rapper. It is hard going. His
professional life suffered a terrible blow in May when his friend and music
patron, Kenneth Taylor, owner of Skyview Music, died of complications from
routine throat surgery.
"Govenor is full of potential. But potential doesn't guarantee success,"
Shaw said. "But he's willing to work hard to see what's inside him come out.
"He seems to have made up his mind to try to live his life in a moral
manner. His marriage to Johna is a strong sign of that. I hope his future is
bright."
When he raps now, Reiss says he raps for people living as he used to
live, for people out of the light as well as those barely on the fringes,
who are constantly being called back into the streets.
"All they got is dope, killing, murder," he said. "But when they open
their minds and hearts and they know the Good News, they can know there's a
better way."
"Little Gov feels for people," his mother says. "Some of them are not
good people, but he always sees something good. He hurts now because he
knows they can escape, but they don't know it.
"He's trying to build a bridge so they can cross over it."
