Emmanuel Jal is a former child soldier born in a poor community in Sudan. Emmanuel spent several years fighting with the SPLA in Ethiopia, until war broke out there and the child soldiers were forced back into Sudan by the fighting and joined the SPLA's efforts to fight the government.

He says that "I didn't have a life as a child. In five years as a fighting boy, what was in my heart was to kill as many Muslims as possible."

When he was 11 he met Emma McCune, a British Aid Worker who adopted him and smuggled him into Kenya where he went to school in Nairobi. While studying in Kenya, Emmanuel started singing to ease the pain of what he has experienced. Through his music, Emmanuel Jal counts on the unity of the citizens to overcome ethnic and religious division and motivate the youth in Sudan.

After escaping to Kenya, he fell in love with hip hop in the way that it identified issues being faced by the neighborhood, which he was able to identify with in a unique manner. Although he lacked any music background or knowledge of its history, he felt that hip hop could provide the easiest and most effective vehicle to express his story and lobby for political change.