Q: What do you get when you combine hard-core gangsta rap with soldiers returning from Iraq?

A: 4th25

These guys are the real deal. To understand where there coming from, go check out the groups website here and surf around.

My favorite song? Integrity (first 2 minutes of song). The song is about a soldier charged with shooting a captured terrorist in cold blood. Let's just say these soldiers are a tad bit pissed off at the brass and liberals in Washington calling it murder.

How the fuck can you charge a soldier with doing anything but doing his job?
I don't think y'all understand what this is.
This is war and whether we'll ever see our loved ones again?

And there's a lot of y'all out here who I could never forgive.
And I could never understand why y'all fuckers did what y'all did...

But I could see through the smoke that's how I know you a bitch.
You shouldn't ever let none of that come through between your lips,
cause out here it's not murder, it's jus our desire to live.

Cause you're all out here with your cape on, clueless and shit
Say you saw the whole thing and he aint have to do what he did.

No, he aint have to go and kill him, he could have let him live
But you must have forgot how many people here will see you dead.

And I don't care if he was handcuffed then shot in his head,
all I know is dead bodies can't fuck with me again.

You can listen to the first 2 minutes of each song at cdbaby here.

While I'm not sure the album is 'the event of a lifetime' as the group proclaims, it's a must listen to hear some soldiers perspective on the war in Iraq. This is not raw-raw propaganda, but presents the good, the bad, and the ugly. For instance, one of the songs questions why we're in Iraq when they really couldn't give a shit about the Iraqis. Another song, though, tells a liberal loved one back home to shut their cake-hole and stop questioning the war. Now that's honest confliction. Here's an AP article about the group:

As Staff Sgt. Terrance Staves dodged bullets recovering a burned-out Humvee in Baghdad's Sadr City, he heard a rocket-powered grenade zooming toward him.

All he could do was hold his breath, he recalled, when it crashed into the armored Bradley vehicle sitting just feet in front of him.

Back at camp, Staves went to his makeshift recording booth to vent his anger and fear by spitting rap lyrics.

Some of those lyrics were used on "Live From Iraq," an album he and a few other Fort Hood soldiers wrote, recorded and produced while on a one-year deployment in Iraq.

On the 15-track album, soldiers voice frustration at what they call shabby equipment and the lack of support they feel from the American public. The album vigorously defends soldiers charged with crimes for actions committed during the conflict.

"I was outside the gate a lot and had a lot of stuff happen to me," said Staves, 26, of Houston. "So for me to ... be able to get in the booth and let all my anger out was wonderful. Because sometimes you can't let all your anger out there because you might endanger yourself, your brothers or do something you're not supposed to do. It was a beautiful outlet."

The group, led by Sgt. Neal "Big Neal" Saunders, includes Sgt. Edward "Greg-O" Gregory, Staves, Spc. Michael "Paperboi" Davis, Sgt. Ronin Clay and Spc. Michael Thomas.

They were deployed with Taskforce 112 of the 1st Calvary Division at Fort Hood on March 12, 2004, and returned exactly one year later.

Within two weeks, the CD was mastered and the group had 2,000 copies made. The group has sold about 1,000 copies through its Web site and a regional music store chain has agreed to sell it.

Saunders, who spent nearly $35,000 on the project, said the soldiers don't have a group name and didn't include their names or pictures on the CD because they wanted to focus on their comrades, both dead and alive.

The album opens with "The Deployment," a heartbreaking tale of the moments before they left and their emotions as they approached Iraq. Several soldiers' wives cried when they heard the song, Saunders said.

"You would have really thought the world was coming to an end and for some of us it was," Saunders says in the song. "You were literally prying your loved ones off of you so you could make it out the door to the bus. I've never seen so much emotion in one place before."

Another track, "Holdin' My Breath," discusses how they conceal the horrors of war from their families and a song called "Dirty" is about a soldier dealing with a cheating spouse back home.

"`Live from Iraq' is the writing on the wall," said Davis, 21, of Lanett, Ala., "It's that magnifying glass to that huge picture that's been painted since this whole thing has begun. It's the attention to detail that has been overlooked in everyday life."

Saunders, from Richmond, Va., said the soldiers often found inspiration for their music during missions. But some of the songs recorded immediately after battle had to be redone after the men had cooled down.

"A lot of times the first draft might not have been what you really wanted to say," he said. "You may come off stupid because you didn't have your thoughts together and you're just kind of rambling. So we would take time to think because we didn't want to put out a stupid album."

The album's title track recounts a particularly bloody day last April when eight of their fellow soldiers were killed in a fierce gunbattle:

"This here is blood of soldiers of which the streets are paved ... And there is no reimbursement for the price that we pay."

Posted by: Rusty at 05:16 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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