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Rapper takes life from chaos to Christianity

By Arleen Spenceley, Times Staff Writer
In print: Friday, June 27, 2008

Edwin “Godsent” Camacho, 30, prays during a service of Higher Hope International Ministries of Tampa. “He’s able to communicate that you could have made mistakes, but there’s a way out,” the pastor, Juan Garcia, says. Camacho performs his new brand of rap at festivals and churches.
	[KEN HELLE | Times]

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CARROLLWOOD — He stands up, steps back and shuts his eyes.

In the pavilion at Al Lopez Park, Edwin Camacho — otherwise known as Godsent the General — starts to pray. While he whispers, he lowers his head, folds his tattooed hands and lifts them up to his chin.

One hand says $treet, and the other says Chip$. Put them together, you've got the name of his old rap duo and a reminder of his old life.

Camacho, 30, a Christian rapper who lives in Logan Gate, grew up in Lorain, Ohio, as a kid who loved to sing.

Back then, Camacho could smell marijuana coming from behind closed doors, and he would come across bags of cash hidden throughout the house.

They belonged to Ivan Mazo, his stepfather, he said.

Mazo's drug deals won his family everything it wanted, Camacho said. It also won Mazo a prison sentence. So Camacho watched his family struggle. Everything changed, including Camacho.

• • •

"Who leaves home at 13, 14 years old?" Edwin Camacho says.

He did, so he could smoke marijuana, join a gang and drop out of school. He wrote music, performed as part of a rap duo and always carried a gun. He sold drugs because if he did, he thought, he would never have to struggle again.

He had everything, he said: music, money and all the marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and LSD his buyers wanted. Out of respect, he kept his business out of his mother's house and in his, a nice one on a lake. But she knew, he said. Seventeen-year-old boys don't get that kind of cash other ways.

"I told him, 'You've seen what my husband went through and you're going to turn around and do the same thing?' " said Camacho's mother, Soraida Rivera, 51. "He wasn't about to listen to me."

He had one son with one girl, a second son with another. He can't remember how many times police arrested him for driving without a license or under the influence or for violence. But he was too careful to get caught selling drugs, he thought.

"Eventually," he said, "you reap what you sow."

• • •

When a drug dealing friend was caught, as part of a deal with police, he gave them Camacho's name.

Charged with burglary, theft and two counts of drug trafficking, Camacho started his stay at Lima Correctional Institution in Ohio in 1998.

He spent 23 hours a day on lockdown, he said. He rarely shared his cell and spent most of his time bored, listening to a fellow inmate tell him to read the Bible. On the cold, concrete floor of his cell, he would kneel and pray and struggle.

"No TV, no roommate," he said. "The perfect opportunity to get to know your maker."

The chance to change again.

• • •

Camacho got out of prison in 2001, went home to see his kids and ate fast food for the first time in four years. He had two more sons before he moved to Florida.

"At first, he was still trying to act the same," said his mother, who moved to Florida before he did. "I cried to him. All of a sudden he said, 'Don't cry. I'm going to go to church with you.' "

He did, but his transition took time. He met his wife, Diana, and started a moving company. He was arrested in early 2006 for failure to pay child support and for domestic violence. Neither arrest led to a conviction. A mistake in paperwork made it look like he had missed a payment, he said, and neighbors had overheard a fight he had at home.

But he used both short trips to jail to preach to his cell mates, he said. He quit his rap duo, started calling himself Godsent the General and spent time writing the music he performs now. It became a Christian ministry.

Today Camacho works full time as a recruiter for the Tampa staffing firm Construct Corps, but his ministry is his passion. Sometimes he performs at detention centers with a ministry called the Lion's Den.

"The one thing I know kids are looking for is somebody who has been through what they're going through," said Bernie Rivera, leader of the Lion's Den. "He's turned his life completely around, ministering to the people in the places where he used to be."

Camacho also performs at festivals and churches, including his own, where his pastor says the message is well received.

"He's able to communicate that you could have made mistakes, but there's a way out," said Juan Garcia, pastor of Higher Hope International Ministries.

Sundays like this, when he isn't performing, Camacho pays close attention to the sermons.

At the front of the pavilion, one of the pastors speaks.

"Out of the messes we make for ourselves, God will take it and make something beautiful," she says.

Nodding, Camacho smiles.

Times researchers Caryn Baird and John Martin contributed to this article. Arleen Spenceley can be reached at aspenceley@sptimes.com or (813) 269-5301.