Emmanuel Jal knocks some cents into 50 Cent

Emmanuel Jal, the Sudanese hip hop prophet/messiah, and possibly the next most important artist to come along since the great Bob Marley, is just one of many artists to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th Birthday concert in London's Hyde Park on 27th June.

Earlier this month, Jal implored 50 Cent and other hip-hop stars to stop glamorising violence. The Warchild rapper - a former child soldier in Sudan - has a track on his new album called 50 Cent, in which he calls for the end to gangster rap.

Emmanuel said: "The song 50 Cent came when I was in the UK and there's so much gun crime and knife crime. My cousin was arrested because he stabbed a white kid and for me that was so painful.

"I'm saying: 'You've come to this country, they've given you a chance whereby you can make something of your life and you're holding onto this?'

"But I say there must be somebody who's influencing this kid. Because they had formed a little group, they called themselves D Unit and what they do is they beat kids, they think it's fun, they call themselves gangsters, terrifying other kids."

He added: "Also the producer who produced my album, his son did a drive-by shooting in the Bahamas and he's in jail and what's his influence - he wanted to be a gangster as well.

"So I say it's going to be difficult to call 50 Cent and tell him about the situation so that's how we came up with the song.

"The world that is promoting the violence - we can't say it's the hip-hop artists, it's the record companies because they want to make money."

Emmanuel Jal's album Warchild is released by Sonic360 Records on May 12.

Visit www.myspace.com/emmanueljal