There's no doubting the chilling authenticity of this rapper's tales of urban warfare. At the age of 8, Emmanuel Jal became a child soldier for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, a horrific experience he pours into the songs on "Warchild," his solo follow-up to a 2005 disc he made with Sudanese singer/oud player Abdel Gadir Salim. Jal's lyrics are clearly the focus here—"I believe I survived for a reason to tell my story to touch lives," he declares in the title track—but producers Roachie and Silvastone anchor the MC's flow with casually globe-tripping tracks whose warm melodicism recalls recent work by Wyclef Jean.—Mikael Wood