It's a difficult record to wrap one's head around. Perhaps most surprising, there's far more to it than just Jal's war experiences. The topic certainly comes up -- losing his mother and going to fight (the title track), stealing food from villages ("Forced to Sin"), even his eventual rescue ("Emma") -- but by and large, Warchild is about the man, not the child.

Oftentimes this man seems a little too wholesome, too well-adjusted to have come from such horrifying circumstances. For some reason, criticizing American hip-hop culture ranks high on his agenda: In "No Bling" and "Baaki Wara," Jal swears off the stereotypical rap lifestyle. In "Skirt too Short," he tells women to dress modestly. In "50 Cent," he calls out the eponymous rapper for encouraging violence: "You have done enough damage selling crack cocaine / Now you got a kill-a-black-man video game."

Jal's music is more rewarding when he grapples with larger political issues. In "Ninth Ward," he castigates America for its failures after Hurricane Katrina. In "Vagina," he calls out "Mister Oil, Diamond and Coal Miner" for treating Africa "like she's your prostitute." This man's background gives him unique insight into poverty, war, and the Third World, and he shines when he uses it -- we already have plenty of anti-rap scolds.

It's beyond debate that Emmanuel Jal is a unique artist. But judged only as a rapper, is he any good? If you took away the jarring dissimilarities to most of hip-hop -- the accent, the world-music production, the life story, the positivity -- would he still attract attention?

It's hard to tell. Jal is competent; his words flow together, and he does a good job of keeping his thoughts coherent and on-topic. That's better than nine-tenths of rappers do. However, he's far from a verbal acrobat, rhyming little beyond the end of each line and sounding kind of cheesy and preachy here and there. He's also too reluctant with his anger -- for God's sake, the catchy chorus to "50 Cent" begins with "50 Cent, I ain't hatin' on ya."

Still, a competent rapper who mixes things up musically, doesn't milk his childhood Eminem-style, stands apart from the crowd and offers thoughts on world politics -- that's worth a buy.