Emmaunuel Jal admonishes 50 Cent
Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier in the Sudan turned international rapper, tells the final call about some of his experiences and hat he thinks about American hip Hip.
"What made me brave is American hip hop, says Jal in his heavily accented English. Someone come and say to me, They have to rob for them to eat. So I would try and picture, how does America look like because I've never been there. So for me when I look at it and look at my situation I was a child soldier, we never had food, we raid villages and we take the food and we eat ... So I said, OK, let me testify."
And while he was once inspired by American rap, he uses the CD to also criticize some rappers glorification of violence, sex and crime, most notably on the song "50 Cent", which urges the multiplatinum rapper to stop promoting songs that might encourage Black-on-Black crime. The chorus: "Now 50 Cent I ain't hating on you, still I think it's my civic duty to warn you, you're being played brother man, you're being played by the man."
"I sometimes ask myself, you say you're a gangster, you deal drugs, you kill people, Jal says of 50 and other rappers of his ilk. If you're a real killer, it's not fun talking about killing people. It's hard ... participating in killing someone is hard because human life; it doesn't matter who you are, there's no one can say, I'm hardcore, I kill people. Somehow, someday it will burst in you.
You can't be a gangster until you die, adds Jal. (50) should do something different, and maybe going back to the community because if we don't do that, if we don't save this generation then it' going to be a genocide, especially on Black people."
Jal is trying to help those afflicted by the violence with the Gua Africa foundation, designed to aid war survivors rebuild their lives. With Sudan still in turmoil with the violent Darfur conflict, Jal is trying to solve the problem the best way he can: with his musical contributions.
more on Emmanuel Jal here
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