A genre infamous for excessive use of profanities and talk about alcohol, drugs and sex: rap. It's the "garbage" you're parents are always talking about. They don't understand it and give rappers no credit as artists. What your parents don't know is that rap music probably makes the most religious allusions of any music genre, especially the music of this year.

So far, 2016 has been the year of rap with the recent releases of Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo," Drake's "Views"and Chance the Rapper's "Coloring Book." Within these works, "The Life of Pablo" and "Coloring Book" contain multiple religious verses. Chance the Rapper has two songs on his album "Blessings" in which he says, "I don't make songs for free, I make em for freedom. Don't believe in kings, believe in the Kingdom," and "I speak to God in public."

It's weird to think that we live in a world where most people don't define themselves to a religion and it's not uncommon to know an atheist. It's not really something that people talk much about. The beautiful part about "The Life of Pablo" and "Coloring Book" is that you don't have to be religious to like them. You can listen to a song like Kanye's "Ultralight Beam" and listen to lyrics such as, "This is a God dream. This is everything," and appreciate the song as art instead of getting offended by it like so many people do today. Music speaks to so many different groups of people, rap in particular and has the ability to almost secretly share biblical stories. At first listen you wouldn't necessarily know that Kanye and Chance are rapping about God, but as you grow to like the songs more and more and really listen to the lyrics you understand what they're talking about and learn to, at the very least, appreciate their beliefs and actually listen to them.

I personally think that for rappers to rap about religion is a very risky move because so many people are turned off by it today, but at the same time it's also really cool that they are able to spread their beliefs in such a peaceful way. It's rare to be able to do something like that and it's something that has the ability to change the way many people think about religion.