KROSSWERDZ Sydney meets at 6PM on the last Saturday of the month (except December) at Embassy
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The KROSSWERDZ Sydney Story
The very first KROSSWERDZ “Hip-Hop Church” Service happened in Sydney on 27th May 2006 at Petersham Assemblies Of God Church (who kindly allowed the use of their Sunday School room). There were 28 people there.
Before KROSSWERDZ started there was already a network of Christians in Hip-Hop known as InDaMidst that mainly connected online, at Christian Music Festivals or BBQ catchups when someone was in town travelling.
For a while there had been discussions about doing more regular events so when InDaMidst members from Perth, Odd1Out (Projex & Marksman), were going to be in Sydney it was the perfect opportunity to start doing KROSSWERDZ.
There was no template on how to do a Hip-Hop service. The aim was simply to bring a love for God and Hip-Hop together. It seemed natural to sing some church songs, have guests Odd1Out perform some tracks, have someone share a testimony and have a freestyle rap cypher. Coincidently, there was even an ABC TV crew there filming a freestyle documentary that Marksman was in.
Before long it made sense as a Hip-Hop ministry to rap rather than sing together and so the concept of Hip-Hop Praise was developed.
After doing the monthly services for a while connections with other churches and ministries led to getting involved in numerous outreach and youth events.
On the community side with some of the crew working or volunteering at Street University in Liverpool a weekly training night for Breakers (Bboys/Bgirls) began. This led to supporting, sponsoring and eventually hosting jams for the Breaking community.
There were Emcees in the crew who were looking to release projects so in 2009 the KROSSWERDZ Recordings (KWR) Record Label was launched. It would go on to release a sizeable catalogue of albums, EP’s and singles including artists from the KROSSWERDZ community in other parts of the country.
With a strong Graffiti presence within the community it inevitable that a Graffiti Crew would emerge and KROSSWERDZ Artists (KWA) was formed made up of writers from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Germany.
In 2011, not wanting to get too comfortable with doing the same thing and also wanting to strengthen links between the homies around the country the first UPROCK Christian Hip-Hop Summit was held. The aim was not only to connect but also to upskill and so International Guests were invited to be a part of it. Unexpectedly, that would prove to be a catalyst for the community to become an international one.
Everything started with a Hip-Hop Service in 2006 and it wasn’t clear where it would go from there. Since then there’s been a Service/Jam every month (except December). Things slowed down a bit in 2019 to every second month but 2020 will see momentum pick up again as KROSSWERDZ goes into its 15th year, moving forward under God’s guidance as always.