It requires no research at all to state confidently that most songs written about the war on terror have been against it. To claim hip-hop, among all musical genres, has offered the most resistance is harder to quantify, but not much of a stretch, either.
It’s certainly been the home of the most crackpot theorizing, reaching a low point a couple of years ago when rapper Jadakiss demanded, “Why did Bush knock down the towers?” Jada later recanted, saying he only meant Bush didn’t do enough to stop the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Whether that was because the song (“Why”) had stalled in the charts, or because Jada had already squeezed enough publicity from an unforgivably tasteless gimmick, has never been settled.
Such moments, however, are why a line from a new hip-hop tune called “Don’t Understand” almost leaps from the speakers. Over an ominous, Southern-inspired production comes a challenge to Jadakiss, antiwar activists, journalists and anyone who has used the words “Iraq” and “quagmire” in the same sentence: “I got a question for y’all/What you think, we gonna let another building fall?”
The song is by an artist named Pyro. And if the sentiment is shocking, learning Pyro’s true identity may make it less so. He’s a 21-year-old Marine corporal named Michael Watts, who has served two tours of duty in Iraq. Watts wrote “Don’t Understand” after returning from a furious three-day battle in Najaf in August 2004, disgusted at media coverage of the event.
“My goal with this song is to make people understand–not only all the reporters and media, but even all the hip-hop stars–exactly what’s going on in Iraq,” explains Watts in a Texas drawl, from his current home at Camp Pendelton, Ca.
“Don’t Understand” is part of a new CD called Voices From the Frontline. Due April 25 on the punk label Crosscheck Records, it features hip-hop songs (and a couple of R&B numbers) recorded by American troops who have served in Iraq.
The compilation is the brainchild of Joel Spielman, a Los Angeles producer who got the idea on Veterans Day two years ago, while watching an HBO documentary called Last Letters Home. Moved by the final missives from veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Spielman found himself imagining how immediate the music made by soldiers might be.
“I thought, ‘I really need to hear something from someone who’s there right now’,” Spielman recalls. “I just had a vision of a CD that almost had a pulse.”
His original plan to make a disc with “folk music, gospel–a whole parade of things” quickly changed when he learned of a thriving hip-hop underground in the Armed Forces, with many soldiers in Iraq battling each other on the mike during their free time. Tracking down these MCs proved difficult, however, until Spielman was contacted by Frankie Mayo, the founder of Operation AC, a charity that has sent air conditioners and other items to the troops.
Mayo is the mother of Sgt. Christopher Tomlinson, a sergeant in the Army’s PLT 300th Military Police Co. The Delaware-born soldier is also a hip-hop artist who goes by the name Prophet. He would help Spielman locate other rappers among the armed forces, and serves as a narrator on Voices From the Frontline.
His song “One Hour Before Daylight” features vocals that were actually recorded in Iraq. So were several of the between-song skits on the album, says Spielman, who adds that soldiers found a way to record their rhymes on “XBoxes and crappy little microphones, or we just pulled (vocals) off videotapes they made.” But the tracks recorded back in America were similarly bare-bones: producers Anthony and Anton Ransom would often assemble beats in a matter of hours, and vocals “were a one-shot take,” Spielman says. “We didn’t have the money, and the (soldiers) didn’t have the time.”
One of the artists Spielman discovered was Cpl. Watts, who’s been rapping since the age of 12, when a cousin back in Brenham, Tex. challenged him to freestyle. “I wasn’t able to, and he said, ‘You better try it again, or I’m gonna push you in that pond.’ And I said, ‘Un-uh, I ain’t doin’ it.’ And the next thing I knew, I was all wet and walkin’ home,” Watts remembers, laughing. “So I learned fast.”
Watts began battling fellow hip-hop enthusiasts before he even reached Iraq, on a ship bound for the Persian Gulf. And watching media coverage of the battles in Najaf, where he lost several close friends, angered Watts, who wrote “Don’t Understand” after returning to his barracks.
“People watch the news, and they say, ‘OK, a bunch of military guys got killed over in Iraq. Here we go again. Obviously, they’re not doing something right. We’re not accomplishing nothing’,” says a frustrated Watts. “But they say that because they don’t see on TV what we’re accomplishing.”
Voices From the Frontline is in no sense a “pro-war” album. The dozen songs are filled with confusion, grief, and ambivalence. One of the two female artists Spielman sought out, Marine corporal Mischelle Rae Johnston, vividly recounts the stresses and heartbreaks of Iraq on the soulful “Desert Vacation.” Spielman himself calls the war “a hell of a situation.”
Still, a portion of the proceeds from the CD will go to Operation AC, for troop supplies. And simply hearing about the war from the men and women who are fighting it–instead of from wannabe thugs and conspiracy theorists back home–makes Voices From the Frontline a necessary corrective to most of the hip-hop efforts that have preceded it.
“Now people are saying, ‘You’re gonna be a rap mogul.’” Spielman says with a chuckle. “But this isn’t just for a hip-hop audience. I really hope it reaches across all spectrums of music.”
–Dan LeRoy is a writer from Connecticut. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Vibe, and Rolling Stone Online, and his book about the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique–part of the “33 1/3″ series–was just published by Continuum.