Pitchfork

South Sudan refugee Emmanuel Jal was forced into the Sudan People's Liberation Army when he was six or seven years old (he doesn't know his age), reportedly carrying an assault rifle that was bigger than he was and fighting in the country's second civil war. With the help of a British aid worker he was smuggled into Kenya and eventually made it to London, where he became an internationally-renowned gospel hip-hop artist.

Warchild is Jal's second album with a wide commercial release, and it coincides with screenings of a new documentary about his life. A few of the CD's songs deal with the horrors he witnessed as a child. "Friends like Lual/ Who died by my side from starvation in the baron jungle and the desert plains," he raps on "Forced To Sin". "Next was I but Jesus heard my cry/ As I was tempted to eat the rotten flesh of my comrade."

But the album is less concerned with conflict in his native country than was his extraordinary 2005 collaboration with North Sudan musician Abdel Gadir Salim, Ceasefire. At the time of its release Jal was already popular in parts of Africa due to hits like "All We Need Is Jesus" and "Gua" (the latter a very nifty piece of pop which also appears on Ceasefire), while Salim was a multi-instrumentalist known for both his traditional and urban North Sudanese sounds. By uniting acclaimed performers on both sides of the civil war's divide, Ceasefire was a political statement at its core, and the music was transcendent as well, highlighted by Salim's stunning folk arrangements and oud playing.

On that album, Jal rapped in a variety of languages including Arabic, Nuer, and Kiswahili, but Warchild is almost entirely in English, and much of it concerns his struggles in the first world. Afro-pop jam "Baaki Wara", the most compelling track, is about groupies and sexual temptation. "My flesh and my spirit are always fighting/ This evening I met a lady called Daniela/ She is tall, beautiful with smooth skin like roasted beans /...Few hours later I met her friends Jamilla and Amila."

Hearing Jal speak on culture shock and sudden fame is more interesting (to me, anyway) than hearing him speak on his childhood-- although perhaps my cynicism comes from recent articles questioning the story of Sierra Leone child soldier Ishmael Beah. But both subjects are preferable to hearing him scold 50 Cent-- or, as his background singers call the Connecticut resident, "50 Cents." "You have done enough damage selling crack cocaine/ Now you got a 'kill a black man' video game," he raps. (Earlier in the song he worries, "You probably hate me." Um, probably not. It's a safe bet 50 is not going to make a fuss over Jal the way he has over Alicia Keys and Oprah.)

Jal isn't much of a rapper. He sometimes talks and sometimes flows, but mostly talks. His style is perhaps comparable to Diddy's, both in its lack of luster and its dependence on memorable beats to buttress the songs. But most of Warchild's production-- done largely by Bahamas-based Roachie, who also co-wrote most of the songs with Jal-- feels watered down. Roachie has diluted the African rhythms with lonely synths, shotgun blasts, and other generica of modern hip-hop. Suffice it to say, Salim is badly missed.