Loaded with just six songs, and recorded in under a month in a studio on Vine Street in Hollywood, War’s fifth album “The World Is a Ghetto” is widely considered a masterpiece that helped bring progressive Black music to the mainstream with its mix of soul, funk, blues, a bit of psychedelia and songs about inner city life.
It became the best-selling album in America in 1973 and as it turns 50, it could become one of the hottest-selling albums on Record Store Day’s Black Friday next month.
The band’s triple-platinum album, which generated two gold singles and landed on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, is being re-released as “The World is a Ghetto: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.” The five-LP box set includes never before heard songs from the band’s album studio sessions and behind-the-scenes recordings. Only 4,000 copies will be released on Friday, Nov. 24 The original album and bonus tracks are pressed on two gold-vinyl LPs while “the making of” tracks are pressed on three black-vinyl LPs.
“It still sounds fresh to me even, and when I talk to people about the album they say the same thing because it’s still different than any music that’s out there today, and then,” said Compton native Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan, one of the founders of the band, which came together in Long Beach in 1969.
“It all started in Long Beach, that’s where we started creating ‘The World Is a Ghetto.’ Our surroundings, we knew we were in the hood back then and that pretty much inspired us,” Jordan said.
Jordan and the band will be performing in the area before the release of the box set with shows scheduled in Santa Barbara County at Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez on Oct. 20, The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Oct. 21 and a sold out event at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on Oct. 25 inside the venue’s 200-seat Clive Davis Theater. The band returns to the Southland on Dec. 2 for a show at The…
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