"Jesus Freak" is a song by the American contemporary Christian music group DC Talk.

It received airplay on both contemporary Christian music and alternative rock stations, formats that rarely interact.

After the success of DC Talk's third album, Free at Last (1992), which was based primarily on hip-hop and pop oriented songwriting, the trio decided to innovate their style.

[10] In order to bring the hard-hitting reality of their message to the mainstream, DC Talk combined the raw lyrics with guitar-driven grunge-rock.

"[11] "Jesus Freak", which follows a "three-part repetitive" song form that is common to the rock genre (i.e. chorus, verse, bridge), opens with four acoustic guitar scraps, establishing the time signature (4/4) and the tempo (roughly 107 bpm).

[14] The second portion, rapped by McKeehan, describes the story of a street preacher who, "stood on a box in the middle of the city and he claimed he had a dream".

[12] Musically, the song has been described as alternative rock and grunge,[3][4][19] with many reviews noting a similarity with the sound of Nirvana.

[23] "Jesus Freak", which served as the lead-off single for the album of the same name, was released in 1995 to alternative and modern rock stations, the band's first venture into these radio formats.

[7] Entertainment Weekly editor Laura Jamison, in a review for the Jesus Freak album, said that DC Talk, "successfully, if derivatively, combines textured vocals, aggressive guitar, and solid songwriting, especially on [...] the raucous title track.

"[20] In a review of "Jesus Freak", the Chicago Tribune said "In considering the group's artistic merits, it's time to bury the over-burdened label 'Christian band' [...] DC Talk deserves to be judged by a different standard.

"[5] In addition to "Colored People" and "Between You and Me", "Jesus Freak" was considered instrumental in breaking DC Talk into the mainstream.

[5][27] Various versions of "Jesus Freak" have appeared on several DC Talk official releases, including the band's greatest hits album Intermission.

[30] The Christian rock band Newsboys recorded a cover of "Jesus Freak" and released it on their 2010 album Born Again.