Earlier than Dontae Ralston ever preached a sermon or stepped on a stage, he knew survival. Not the type that will get romanticized in music movies however the actual sort, uncooked, painful, and relentless. His childhood wasn’t framed by bedtime tales or after college packages. It was formed by habit, betrayal, poverty, and gang life. He was promoting dope earlier than he ever realized find out how to hope. Numbness grew to become his solely safety. “I wore trauma like armor,” he says, “and referred to as it regular.”
However buried within the chaos God was quietly planting seeds.
Ralston’s formative years was a cycle of silence and self destruction. Ache raised him. The streets taught him find out how to transfer, find out how to survive, and find out how to preserve his feelings buried beneath the floor. “Loyalty with out function results in destruction,” he says, a lesson he realized too many occasions. He had heard of God in church however by no means actually met Him. “Church felt like tradition not covenant. I stated ‘Amen’ with out understanding what I used to be agreeing to.”
It wasn’t till his life hit a wall legally, spiritually, emotionally that one thing shifted. Going through time for trafficking, balancing fatherhood, and battling guilt he didn’t know find out how to unload, Dontae was outwardly steady and internally breaking. “I used to be functioning however barely. I used to be making strikes in enterprise however I had no peace.”
It was in that breaking level that he surrendered.
HOG MOB (Hooked On God Ministry Over Bizness) wasn’t born in a boardroom. It was born on the corners, those most church buildings keep away from. Based by West Coast rapper and minister Sevin, the ministry shaped to achieve males like Dontae: wounded, gifted, misunderstood, and looking for redemption past faith.
“HOG MOB isn’t a label,” Ralston says. “It’s a way of life. It’s a brotherhood of males who got here out of trauma, habit, incarceration, and damaged properties. We don’t simply rap. We disciple.”
Ralston credit males like Sevin, IV Conerly, and Zaydok for displaying him what it appears wish to be stable, Spirit led, and surrendered. “They didn’t simply train me, they lived it in entrance of me.”
As HOG MOB grew, so did its attain. Their music hits laborious, heavy with 808s, laced with theology, and dripping with authenticity. “We go the place the Church gained’t,” he says. “Prisons, restoration facilities, neighborhoods society gave up on.”
Out of the identical heartbeat got here Mission West, Ralston’s nonprofit targeted on transitional housing, reentry assist, and life abilities for individuals battling habit or making an attempt to rebuild after incarceration. “We stroll with individuals from detox to discipleship,” he says. “We don’t simply hand out a flyer and disappear. We keep linked.”
From the cell blocks of San Quentin to the streets of California’s hardest neighborhoods, Dontae and his crew are sowing seeds day by day. “Solely heaven is aware of how many individuals we’ve impacted. Hundreds, in all probability. However I’m not counting numbers, I’m counting souls.”
For Ralston, this isn’t a hustle. It’s a calling. And it’s private. He shares the story of Scooter, a younger man he mentored from childhood who handed away at 22. “He wasn’t blood, however he was household. That loss broke me, nevertheless it additionally jogged my memory why I do that. We could not at all times see the transformation in full, however we plant the seeds and belief God with the remainder.”
However the work isn’t straightforward. “One of many hardest elements is watching individuals flip ministry into advertising and marketing,” he says. “Too many are chasing clout as a substitute of the cross.” And on a private degree, Ralston admits the toughest half has been confronting his personal sin. “Wanting within the mirror and realizing I used to be the issue. However my spouse’s forgiveness and God’s mercy confirmed me grace in 3D.”
Nonetheless, he by no means wished to stop. “I come from a spot the place giving up will get you killed. That very same mentality applies to this mission. I didn’t survive all that simply to fold now.”
What retains him grounded is accountability and submission. “I keep within the Phrase not simply to show however to outlive. I speak to God greater than I speak to individuals as a result of most individuals solely see the floor. When my thoughts will get loud, I shut all the things down and go serve.”
His religion isn’t performative. It’s protecting. “I didn’t simply survive the streets, I survived myself. Faith didn’t attain me, however Jesus did. He met me in the course of my mess.”
“Therapeutic begins with humility,” Dontae says. “Repentance is the actual flex. You don’t should faux perfection to be accepted by Christ. Carry Him your mess. He already is aware of.”
And to believers? “Don’t neglect the place you got here from. Don’t let salvation flip into self righteousness.”
When it’s all stated and executed, Ralston desires to be remembered as somebody who stayed stable. “I didn’t fold for fame. I didn’t water down the message. I went again to locations most individuals ran from and pointed individuals to Jesus.”
Proper now, he’s launching a nationwide jail tour beginning with Angola, San Quentin, and Donovan State Penitentiary. He’s additionally increasing Mission West into new cities and dropping music that speaks not solely to the ache however to the promise.
The whole lot he’s constructing is about affect not picture.