Exclusive video: Jewish hip hop artist 'Y Love'

What makes music kosher? Int'l artist, Y-Love, represents a Jewish music reality that is all about content and not to be judged by its genre.

By LEADEL.NET
Y love 311 (photo credit: leadel.net)
Y love 311
(photo credit: leadel.net)
Yitz "Y-Love" Jordan is an internationally acclaimed artist who has shared the stage with Matisyahu, has been interviewed by Conan O'Brien, and quoted as a "mystic lyricist". Such a list of accomplishments shows that Y-Love is on his way to global hip-hop fame, thus checking off another positive example and positive word in the name of Jewish peoplehood.
"I'm trying to make hip-hop that accents positivity."
With a mission statement that reads 'using hip-hop to elevate, not to tranquilize,' this spiritual, rapping guru exudes the brighter side of the hip-hop music scene.  "I make Jewish hip-hop and trying to change the world at the same time."
Based in Brooklyn, NY with an undeniable love for Israel, Y-Love (Yitz Jordan) is front and center in a trending hip-hop revolution.  Y-Love's unique style reveals his inner-neshama (soul), a spicy interest in ancient languages, and his passion for Jewish scripture - all of which are accounts and reflections of his strong Jewish identity and life-choice to convert to Hassidism. 
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Born in Baltimore, to non-Jewish parents, Yitz “Y-love” Jordan's fascination with Judaism began when he was a child: "I wanted to be Jewish ever since I was seven years old, I saw a commercial that said, 'Happy Passover from your friends at Channel 2' and I went drawing six-pointed stars on everything at my mother's house."
As he grew, so did his passion for and interest in the Jewish culture. He later converted to Judaism and went to study at a yeshiva in Israel. It was then that he first came up with the idea of rapping Jewish rhymes. 
"Jewish music is music created by Jews to communicate Jewish concepts to a Jewish heart to a Jewish soul.  If that music is hip-hop, dance hall, salsa, meringue, country, whatever, it's all about the content and I hope that the religious world one day will wake up to it."