Musicians :
Howard E. Scott (guitar, vocals), B.B. Dickerson (bass, vocals), Lonnie Jordan (keyboards, vocals), Papa Dee Allen (congas, percussion, vocals), Charles Miller (saxophone, flute, vocals), Lee Oskar (harmonica, vocals), Harold Brown (drums, percussion, vocals).

- War Blends Latin, Caribbean, and American Music into a Seamless Rhythmic Hybrid on The World Is a Ghetto: Influential Album Features the Hit Title Track and N° 2 Smash “Cisco the Kid” !

- Experience the Biggest-Selling Record of 1973 in Definitive Sound: Strictly Limited to 3000 Numbered Copies, Mobile Fidelity’s 180 gram 45 RPM (2 LP) Set Underscores the Depth of the Band’s Funk, R&B, Blues, and Gospel Threads !

- 1/4” / 15 IPS Dolby A analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe !

The chart-topping milestone that broke War through to the mainstream started out as an idea for a play featuring a character named “Ghetto Man”. While the latter idea was abandoned partially due to the band refusing to be limited by a single concept, The World Is a Ghetto took shape as a creative juggernaut that lyrically confronts social ills, prejudice, and injustice all the while its fusion-based arrangements blend Latin, Caribbean, and American styles with seeming effortlessness and total coherency.

War’s reward? Claim to the best-selling album of 1973 along with a generations-spanning influence. Janet Jackson, Tupac, Sonny Stitt, Ahmad Jamal, A$AP Mob, Geto Boys, and Method Man are just a few of the artists who covered or sampled songs on the record. Rolling Stone also included it on its original list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Many other outlets cited the 1972 effort on their own registers.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, mastered by engineers Colby Gustafson and Krieg Wunderlich, strictly limited to 3000 numbered copies, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity's 180 gram 45 RPM (2 LP) set presents The World Is a Ghetto in definitive audiophile sound. The wide grooves, dead-quiet surfaces, and ultra-low noise floor on this 45 RPM reissue benefit a version that renders everything from the satiny brassiness of Charles Miller's horns to the depth, solidity, and grip of B.B. Dickerson's bass with reference-grade presence.

Recorded in under a month, The World Is a Ghetto features a live-on-the-floor approach that helps give the array of instruments dynamic colors, textures, and details. Vocals, too, come into view with fullness, character, and realism. Advanced degrees of separation, imaging, and airiness further spotlight the septet’s kinetic arrangements and hydraulic movements. As if unfolding within the frame of a massive proscenium arch, the mix of pianos, timbales, congas, bongos, harmonicas, clarinets, group voices, and more occupy their own space and extend far and deep on a vast soundstage. They’re a credit to co-producers Jerry Goldstein, Lonny Jordan, and Howard E. Scott, who ensured nothing feels busy or cluttered.

As NPR observed five decades after the record's original release: "It was a simple idea : Combine the everyday music of Long Beach and nearby Compton with the ascendant sounds of funk, soul, and R&B, and shape it all into something that would sound right coming out of a radio anywhere in the United States". Yet even that smart distillation glosses over the multi-cultural veins spread throughout War's fifth studio album, whose progressive range and vibrant rhythms directly owe to the specialities of each band member.

R&B, Latin, ska, psychedelia, funk, blues, jazz, gospel, even classical: The World Is a Ghetto blends, boils, and brews them into a nearly 44 minute stew. The group’s robust percussion, curling guitars, soulful melodies, and hybrid structures serve one constant : grooves whose casual, cool nature drops you amid a throng celebrating at a summer block party. The very sort that many of War’s members attended growing up in Southern California.

Whether pursuing uptempo energy or a slow pace, War envisions an environment in which lines separating any kinds of class (social, economic, racial) disappear. That desire not only comes through via the direct narratives and hypnotic beats but on the now-iconic album cover. Illustrated by Howard Miller, it depicts a lively urban neighborhood scene crammed with animated elements : cracked pavement, clothesline-hanging laundry, stool-perched diners, bickering apartment dwellers, street gazers, telephone poles, cats, dogs and more. At the center of the hubbub : A Rolls-Royce sidelined by a flat tire and getting hooked to a tow truck.

The spiritedness mirrors that of War’s music. It serves a larger function in that the group intended the sketch and the album to symbolize a oneness that underscored togetherness, community, and commonality. War doesn’t view the title and sentiment of The World Is a Ghetto as a negative but as a positive. Everyone resides on the same planet, breathes relatively the same air, deals with unexpected problems. And, in the band’s eyes, seeks peace, hope, and love.

That sums up the thematic thrust of the title track, a Top 10 hit that manages to slouch and sway, droop and drag, slide and swivel, contemplate and persuade over the course of its 10 minute-plus-long length. War delivers similar messages of optimism and equity on “The Cisco Kid”. A N° 2 smash inspired by the 1950s television series of the same name that featured a non-Anglo superhero, the crisp song contains several peak-era War trademarks pan-African percussion, slinky rhythms, gritty singing, and simmering organ lines among them.

War keeps the vibe going for the duration of the album, as indicated by the pep of the spry, group-vocal-lifted “Where Was You At” and mystical voodoo of “Four Cornered Room”. Evidence of the collective’s ability to jam comes by way of the epic instrumental blowout “City, Country, City”.’

Zoom, zoom, zoom : The World Is a Ghetto launched War into the public realm, signifying its status as a major band of the 1970s and beyond. Pass the salted peanuts.