Sudanese star EMMANUEL JAL has poked fun at modern hip-hop "gangstas" who rap about killing and getting shot - because he insists if they were real killers they wouldn't talk about their street life.
The 28 year old grew up as a child soldier in the Sudan People's Liberation Army and insists he'd sicken the toughest rappers if he told them about his violent life.
Jal, who is among the performers at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in London on Friday (27Jun08), says, "I don't take modern hip-hop as real... It's fake, like James Bond. If you really kill, you don't want to talk about it."
He tells USA Today newspaper, "I lived in war. Our village got burned, and I thought the world was ending... My grandmother and uncle were almost beaten to death."
Jal also watched his aunt getting raped by soldiers before he was hauled off to become one of them, and he spent five years fighting before a British aid worker came to his rescue.
He admits conditions were so bad at times when he was one of Sudan's 'lost boys', he even considered eating the flesh of a dead comrade, and lived on snails, snakes and rats to stay alive.
His hip-hop career began when the aid worker who rescued him was killed in a car accident: "My life was crushed so I started going to church and singing in a choir... Music was therapy."
See Also
