Rapper Fresh IE could be pursuing a lucrative recording career in Hollywood, but instead the two-time Grammy nominee is “flying in the world’s smallest planes” to some of the most remote communities of the North.
He’s also finding his way to venues in the toughest sections of cities like Winnipeg to spread the Gospel.
Fresh, whose real name is Robert Wilson, brought his message of hope and radical conversion to Ottawa Feb. 24-26 where he led workshops and gave a concert as part of a conference for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth here Feb. 24-26.
About 100 youth, from First Nations, Inuit, Metis and non-Aboriginal backgrounds living in Ontario and Quebec, gathered at the National Arts Centre for the ROQ [Region of Ontario and Quebec] Youth Symposium, sponsored by the non-denominational Christian ministry Gathering Nations International founded and directed by Kenny and Louise Blacksmith.
The message of the rapper---and the conference---is that one does not have to become a slave to drugs or gangs or succumb to the temptation to suicide or violence. God can transform even the most unlikely person and bring forgiveness and hope, even someone like Wilson.
Fresh’s ancestry is half black---from Barbados---and half Blackfoot Indian. He grew up in a rough section of Winnipeg, barely knowing his mother and never knowing his father.
Once he reached his teens he got involved in armed robbery and home invasions. He got caught up in the life of gangs and addiction. He got caught and in 1998 while out on bail awaiting sentencing for crimes that could have earned him 14 years in prison, he encountered a blind bum. The bum was caught in the middle of traffic on a busy street.
Fresh told the blind man to get off the street, urging him to use his voice to guide him safely to the sidewalk. On his way home Fresh recalled thinking he did not want to end up like that man, and die all alone, no one to look after him.
At home in his apartment, the blind man’s plight, and his own looming prison sentence, troubled him. A little later, he noticed people outside his apartment with flashlights. He went outside to discover the local Neighborhood Watch were investigating a strange man sitting on his doorstep. The man turned out to be the same blind man Fresh had helped out of traffic. How did a blind man find his way to his doorstep at least 15 blocks away?
The man’s presence freaked him out and he ran back upstairs. “God, are you trying to tell me something?” he asked. “If you’re real, I need to know.”
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