Two Bullets To The Head Couldn't Kill Him

Kneeling down with a gun pressed to the back of his head, the next sound Dan Otterson expected to hear was boom!

He should’ve died. A hit man broke into his apartment and pulled the trigger – twice.

“It happened so quick,” Otterson said. “He was right behind door when I walked in. I thought, ‘This is it. This is how I’m going to die. This is how I’m going to end up.'"

Otterson, a Southern Illinois University student, was selling drugs, and when his boss realized Otterson was ripping him off he sent someone to kill him.

He still remembers the hit man’s words: ‘I know who you are, and I was sent here to kill you.’

“The words are clear as crystal and I can still hear them today,” Otterson recalled. “The only thing on my brain was that gun, and that was it.”

Two shots to the head would kill most people. But God had other plans, Otterson said.

“The gun jammed on him,” he said. “Nothing came out of the gun. When it just clicked, he was as surprised as I was."

“That’s when I just barreled right through him and ran out the door,” he added. “Realizing I had a split-second opportunity to get out of it and run from him was almost like winning the lottery. You have an adrenaline rush like no other. I didn’t even feel myself just nail him.”

For Otterson, a Christian rapper known as Young Saint, the murder attempt was a life-changing experience. Afterwards, he took some time off to piece his life back together.

“You think you can’t be touched, and then all the sudden something like that happens,” he said. “All the short-term [drug dealing] doesn’t pay off in the long run. I need to be doing things differently.”

“I started building relationships with my family,” he said. “My whole life had revolved around myself. [The murder attempt] has shown me I really need to be there for other people as much as I can.”

Eventually, Otterson started rapping again, but this time for God.

“Initially, I was rapping about everything else everybody was already talking about – cars, girls, jewelry. I started thinking, ‘What am I doing this for?’ Some artists are glorifying a lifestyle that they have never lived. The record labels make it up for them. They never lived one day being broke or living in the ‘hood.’

“For me, glorifying a lifestyle that almost got me killed was pointless and stupid. I knew I needed to look at what I was writing and put a different twist on it for sure.”

That new twist isn’t exactly found within the traditions of religious music, which has become a struggle for Otterson, who is on fire for God and wants to spread the truth.

“In Christian music so many guys talk about glorifying God, and nobody ever says, ‘I’ve been where you’ve been,’” he said. “In Christian music people are too afraid to say they’ve screwed up. So there’s a chance for me to reach them and tell them that God can reach them, and no matter what they’ve gone through and done they’re not beyond God’s help.”

Otterson said in some ways he is disappointed with the church.

“If you don’t follow that social norm, church people look at you differently and I’m sick of that, personally,” he said. “Those non-conformers are people who can turn around and reach more people if given the opportunity.”

With his new album, "Under Construction," Otterson hopes to pave a new path and “break up the social norm of what people think about church and who Christians really are.”

“'Under Construction' talks about my transition from where I was to where I am now,” he said. “I wanted to shine the light on a lot of things in church that a lot of people don’t want to talk about, such as people being hypocritical and judgmental. People use church for a lot of reasons, but they don’t use it to go and talk to God. I wanted to be controversial. That was really my goal. It’s about going to build a relationship with God and grow in our faith.”

With Otterson, the lyrics are much more powerful than the beats. “Fake Church,” “Altar Poppin’” and “Individualistic” are three of his favorite songs that he hopes will spark change in churches across America.

He knows how important second chances are, and now that he’s received his he’s hoping to help others find their own second chances in Jesus Christ.