In their early days, he and his group, the LAX Boyz, started off rapping in their garage, but later shared the stage with megastars such as Jay-Z, Chris Brown, B2K, and Twista. They recorded for Def Jam and Death Row. They had their own commercial and were all over BET.
“We were everywhere pretty much,” Isaiah told The Epoch Times, adding how they shot a big-budget production in a hanger in Long Beach when they were at their height. “There were really expensive cars and a lot of models.”
He and his crew worshiped that whole lifestyle; being a “playa,” glamorizing gangsters, hooking up with women was what it was all about.
He didn’t know it then but, as he later epiphanized, the whole deal was vile in nature. It planted “wicked seeds” inside him, he said, fomenting darkness through his “portals”—what he saw and heard—separating his spirit from God.
“Places I would be around, there was just really dark energy,“ he said. ”I remember going to different Hollywood parties. It was just like, drugs all in the open, it was escorts upstairs—they had an upstairs section with different rooms with different escorts in it—and it was just really demonic.
“They’re trying to bring you to a place where you end up messing with a man and things like that. I never looked at that myself.”
Now 32, the lyricist is unrecognizable, spiritually, from how he was before. Based in Texas, today he strives to enlighten listeners to truth amidst a stream of lies emanating from the media, Hollywood, and the music industry. People have become spiritually dead, the artist said. Isaiah wants to offer them hope.
Looking back at the industry, he sees many artists believing, by their own admission, that they sold their souls to Satan for money and fame. Their exteriors seem glamorous, yet a conflict over their souls rages within.
“They can’t sell their soul, but it does present a spiritual battle when you’re in that environment,” he said. “When you get to that place where you think that you sold your soul, all you’re going to do after that is completely keep diving into satanic ritual … to lift yourself, as far as fame or fortune [goes], because the devil can give you gifts. The devil offered the whole world to Jesus.”
But all the money in the world cannot buy eternal life. Nor fill the aching spiritual void in the heart.
“They continue doing things that fill their dopamine level temporarily,“ the rapper added. ”They continue to get more successful: more money, more money, more successful, and they’re never being filled. They never feel they’re complete.”
Out of the Shadows
Isaiah the “playa” was headed down a dark path. Plunging into drugs, drinking, and womanizing, he crashed hard. Yet hitting rock bottom was the catalyst for his awakening.His first foray into cocaine use was when he was 23, in a bar in Santa Ana. “I tried [cocaine] in a bathroom, my friend had some,” he said. “From that point, it changed my life.” It felt good. But the habit snowballed. Some nights vanished entirely from his memory. They thought all this was cool, that they were having a good time. By the time Isaiah was 28, he was selling.
His debauched lifestyle reached a fever pitch in 2019, when he was in a club and entered a drug- and tequila-induced rage. He believes demons manifested in him. He feared for his eternal self after that—feared becoming forever sealed in sin, forever separated from God.
Uncontrollable bouts of hard crying to the point of hyperventilating followed. Though Isaiah felt a spiritual change was right around the bend, he wasn’t quite there yet. The rapper then dove into drinking and drugs even harder.
But he heard the Lord calling, he said. He told his friends he didn’t know how much longer he could keep partying with them. Then, for reasons he can’t explain, Isaiah began watching sermons on YouTube, sometimes until 5 a.m., seeing the sun break the horizon.
Then, on September 16, 2020, something happened.
It was a miracle, he recalled.
“It was supernatural, man, the spirit of the Lord came into my room,” he said. “I felt the love of God, and I just broke down and really, really wept and wept and wept. ... And then I felt my desires change, because I came into submission under God.
“I felt my complete desires change, and I haven’t picked up a bottle since then. I haven’t had addictions since then. I haven’t cursed since then.”
Into the Light of Truth
Today, Isaiah seldom connects with his old crew from Long Beach. They’re still into the “playa” lifestyle, but they know what he’s doing is right, he says. Meanwhile, head to the grindstone, the artist continues making music.“The elite” running the country, the rapper says, are the front men of higher bosses, such as George Soros, the backer of Antifa, BLM, crime, and open borders. And who’s the boss above him? “Just the devil,” he adds.
Yet even the “Luciferian” elites remain candidates for salvation, according to the lyricist. It’s never too late.
They were lied to just as he was.
“People who’ve gone astray, I would tell them, if I could speak to them, that too far is not far enough for God to restore you,” he said. “You have to come out of that place that you believe the lie and come into a place where you begin to seek God for help, ask God for help.
“The thing is, we go so deep into these holes that we think that we can’t be saved. It doesn’t matter how deep of a hole that you’re in; you’re never too deep to be pulled out.”
The post-Trump era music scene has come a long way from “gangsta rap,” now tilting in a fresh new, conservative direction. It’s because people are hungry for something to nurture their souls, Isaiah believes.
“Especially because the music has become more demonic, so people are looking for an outlet,” he added. “And the outlet is us, because what we’re bringing is truth in the mist full of lies. In the mist full of darkness, we’re bringing light.”
He still tours and has his own podcast as well. The rapper now does public speaking engagements to share the truth and the Word with those who are still seeking.
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