Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NHIll Bill’s “War Is My Destiny” tells a three-minute story about a boy who watches a tyrant destroy his village and spends his life coming back for him. Keep the witness and leave the sword. New Hampshire’s constitution already armed you, and artificial intelligence just handed you a staff.
The song lasts a little over three minutes, and in that time a child loses everything. Raiders come. His family is killed and his village is set on fire. He is five years old, and he is the only one left alive who saw it. The rest of the track is that boy, grown, walking back toward the man who gave the order.
The track is “War Is My Destiny,” by the New York rapper Ill Bill. It is the eighth song on his 2008 album The Hour of Reprisal, released that Sept. 16 on Uncle Howie Records and Fat Beats. Ill Bill produced it and raps the first verse, Immortal Technique takes the second, and Max Cavalera, the Brazilian metal musician known for Sepultura and Soulfly, screams the chorus. Cavalera told his band’s website in 2007 that it was “the most evil rap I’ve ever heard in my life.” He meant it as praise.
It was in my headphones while this column took shape, and I want to say plainly what I take from it and what I leave behind. As a story, the song is a revenge fantasy, and the revenge can stay on the record. What I want is the first thing that happens to the boy. He becomes a witness. New Hampshire is walking into a fight over who owns artificial intelligence and who it works for, and that fight will go to the people who saw what happened and wrote it down. This state’s constitution started arming them in 1784.
Full disclosure: I drafted this column with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, and I use AI tools in this newsroom every day. That is part of the argument below.
Related coverage. This column follows We Are Due for a Revolution. New Hampshire Wrote the Lawful One Into Its Constitution in 1784., which made the constitutional case, and Who Owns the Machine Decides Who Can Afford to Stay Together, which covered ownership and household budgets. The Generation Locked Out of the First Job Should Build New Hampshire’s Next Newsroom is the recruiting call, and Nobody Can Cross-Examine a Chatbot explains why a person has to answer for every word a machine drafts. This piece adds the song, two more articles of the state constitution, and a short list of what one resident can do with a records request and an AI model. Its labor-share and Stanford employment figures are the same ones those columns cite.
What the song is
The official video, posted on Ill Bill’s YouTube channel, is animated. The Animation Blog reported in 2009, quoting the people who made it, that Adam Calfee directed it at MoreFrames Studio, that four people worked on it for about three and a half months, and that the characters were drawn on paper while the blood and much of the atmosphere were filmed in a water tank. The Action Pixel, an entertainment site, summed up the plot as a boy, orphaned and enslaved, who grows up to take revenge on the ruler responsible.
The album around it is a meeting of rap and metal. Blabbermouth’s 2009 notice lists a cover painted by Larry Carroll, who did Slayer’s Reign in Blood, and guests that include members of Bad Brains, Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan and Howard Jones of Killswitch Engage.
If the plot sounds familiar, it should. A boy’s parents are killed by raiders who answer to a warlord, the boy spends years enslaved, and he grows up to hunt the warlord down. That is also the outline of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian. The resemblance is my reading. I have found no statement from the artists naming the film.
So what does it mean? Read plainly, it is about what loss does to a person who has no power. Grief hardens into purpose, and the purpose becomes the whole life. The title says the narrator did not choose his war. It was handed to him when he was five. That is why the song lands with people who have never held a sword. Most of us know what it is to be handed a fight we did not pick.
It is also a fantasy about killing, and I won’t dress that up. Nobody should take civic instruction from the ending.
Keep the witness
Before the boy is a warrior, he is the one person who can say what was done and who did it. Accountability reporting starts in the same place. Somebody saw it, and somebody kept the paper.
The tyrant in the song rules with fire and sorcerers. The power most Granite Staters run into is quieter. It looks like a closed file, or a records request that sits unanswered for a month.
New Hampshire wrote its answer into Part First, Article 8 of the state constitution. Public officials are the people’s agents and answer to them at all times. “Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable and responsive.” The article dates to 1784. A 1976 amendment wrote in the public’s right of access to governmental proceedings and records, which may not be unreasonably restricted.
The statute that carries it out is RSA 91-A, the Right-to-Know Law. Every citizen may inspect governmental records and copy them. The law has no press pass in it and no special class of requester. Looking is free. An agency may charge the actual cost of making a copy.
The part that is destiny, and the part that is not
I think artificial intelligence and the robots behind it are coming whatever anyone in Concord votes for. People are tool builders, and this is a tool that builds tools. That much I am willing to call destiny.
Who owns it is a decision, and it is being made now, mostly without you.
Start with the ground the machines are landing on. In the second quarter of 2026, workers in America’s nonfarm businesses were paid 52.8 percent of what those businesses produced. The Bureau of Labor Statistics called it the lowest level ever recorded, in data that begin in 1947. For much of the postwar period the share sat between 60 and 66 percent.
Then look at who feels the machines first. Stanford economists working from ADP payroll records reported in August 2026 that they do not see jobs disappearing across the economy as a whole. They also found that employment of workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations has fallen 19 percent behind that of workers the same age in less-exposed jobs, mostly because companies are hiring fewer young people. The authors describe their findings as early indicators and not proof of cause.
Nobody burns a village in that data. A door stops opening, and the share of the harvest that goes to the people who did the work keeps shrinking. I want these machines to make life better and fairer for everybody, including the people who never own a share of the companies that build them. I have argued in these pages for a public stake that pays every resident a part of the gains. If owners keep all of it, the song’s first scene plays out slowly and legally, one unposted job at a time.
A staff for every citizen
Here is what changed, and why I am not gloomy. Reading a 300-page budget used to take a paid staff. So did checking a bill against the statute it amends. Lobbyists had that staff and agencies had it. You did not. Now you do.
The same kind of software that is thinning entry-level hiring will sit with you at 11 p.m. and walk through a town budget line by line. It will draft a Right-to-Know request in a minute and turn a year of meeting minutes into a timeline. It will also tell you wrong things with total confidence, so check every claim against the document. Nobody can cross-examine a chatbot. You can cross-examine the record.
That is the revolution I am recruiting for. It is lawful and it is slow, and it starts with one request:
- Pick one public body: your select board or your school district.
- Ask it for one record under RSA 91-A. Two plain sentences will do, and GSR keeps a request builder on its GSR Tools page.
- Read what comes back with an AI model at your elbow, and check each thing it tells you against the page.
- Show up once. Part First, Article 32 protects your right to assemble, to instruct your representatives and to petition the Legislature.
- Send me what you found: granitestatereport@gmail.com.
The constitution has a name for where this leads. Article 10 is titled Right of Revolution. It says that when government stops serving the whole community and other remedies fail, the people may reform the old government or establish a new one. Reform comes first on that list, and reform starts with knowing what your government did.
This revolution is fought with requests and votes. Nobody gets hurt in it. People in power fear that kind more, because you can arrest a man with a sword and you cannot arrest a public record.
Leave the sword
The boy gets his revenge, and the song ends. It never says what he builds afterward, because revenge stories don’t. That is the limit of the song, and of any movement that runs on anger alone.
Keep the anger anyway. Being handed a rigged deal should make you angry. Spend it on the record. Be the one who saw it and wrote it down, and bring the machine along to carry the boxes.
Play it loud. Then file the request.
— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report
Your Turn
You tell me: What record did you ask for, and what came back? The most useful answers get published with credit. granitestatereport@gmail.com
Fact check
| # | Claim | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “War Is My Destiny” is track 8 on The Hour of Reprisal, released Sept. 16, 2008, on Uncle Howie Records and Fat Beats; Ill Bill produced it and raps the first verse, Immortal Technique the second, Max Cavalera the chorus. | ATTRIBUTED | Wikipedia, “The Hour of Reprisal,” track listing; label, chorus and guest verse match Blabbermouth, May 15, 2009 |
| 2 | Cavalera screams the chorus; the album cover is by Larry Carroll, who painted Slayer’s Reign in Blood; guests include members of Bad Brains, Raekwon and Howard Jones. | VERIFIED | Blabbermouth, “ILL BILL’s ‘War’ Featuring MAX CAVALERA; Video Available,” May 15, 2009 |
| 3 | Cavalera called the song “the most evil rap I’ve ever heard in my life” and, in the same answer, said it was great. | VERIFIED | Soulfly Web interview, reprinted by Blabbermouth, July 8, 2007 |
| 4 | Ill Bill is a New York rapper and producer; Cavalera is a Brazilian musician known for Sepultura and Soulfly. | ATTRIBUTED | Ill Bill’s artist biography on YouTube Music; Blabbermouth, May 15, 2009; The Creative Independent, artist note on Max Cavalera |
| 5 | The official video is on Ill Bill’s YouTube channel under the title “ILL BILL ft. IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE & MAX CAVALERA – ‘War Is My Destiny’ Official Video.” | VERIFIED | YouTube listing, channel ILL BILL |
| 6 | Adam Calfee directed the video at MoreFrames Studio; four people, about three and a half months; characters drawn on paper, blood and atmosphere filmed in a water tank. | ATTRIBUTED | The Animation Blog, May 14, 2009, quoting the video’s makers |
| 7 | The video’s plot follows an orphaned, enslaved boy who takes revenge on the tyrant behind his father’s death. | ATTRIBUTED | The Action Pixel, “War Is My Destiny,” Oct. 3, 2014 |
| 8 | In the song, a five-year-old sees his family killed and his village destroyed and is the lone witness; the album track runs 3:11. | VERIFIED | The recording and its licensed lyric display on Apple Music, as played by the author |
| 9 | Conan the Barbarian (1982): a boy is captured after raiders led by a warlord murder his parents, is enslaved for years, and later sets out to kill the warlord. | ATTRIBUTED | Publisher’s summary of the film carried in public library catalogs. The resemblance to the song is GSR’s reading; I found no statement from the artists naming the film. |
| 10 | Part First, Article 8: officials are the people’s agents, accountable at all times; the quoted sentence; right of access to proceedings and records not to be unreasonably restricted; adopted June 2, 1784, amended 1976. | VERIFIED | N.H. Constitution, Part First, Art. 8; date notes as printed with the State of New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights |
| 11 | Part First, Article 10 (Right of Revolution) and Article 32 (Rights of Assembly, Instruction, and Petition), as summarized. | VERIFIED | N.H. Constitution, Part First, Arts. 10 and 32 |
| 12 | RSA 91-A:4, I gives every citizen the right to inspect and copy governmental records; no fee for inspection without copying; an agency may charge the actual cost of providing a copy. | VERIFIED | RSA 91-A:4, I and IV |
| 13 | Labor share in the nonfarm business sector was 52.8 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest ever recorded in data beginning in 1947; mostly 60 to 66 percent for much of the postwar period. | VERIFIED | BLS, The Economics Daily, Sept. 15, 2026 |
| 14 | Stanford: no economy-wide job displacement found; employment of workers 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations is 19 percent below the level that would match their less-exposed peers; the gap comes mainly from reduced hiring; the authors call the findings descriptive, not causal. | VERIFIED | Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen, “Canaries in the Coal Mine?” Stanford Digital Economy Lab, August 2026 revision |
| 15 | GSR has argued for a public stake that pays every resident a share of automation gains. | VERIFIED | GSR, Oct. 17, 2026; GSR, Oct. 19, 2026 |
| 16 | AI and robotics are coming regardless of state policy; ownership of the gains is a choice; AI tools give a resident research help once limited to paid staffs. | ATTRIBUTED | The author’s opinion and prediction, labeled as such in the text |
Reach the editor directly. Confidentiality respected where possible.
granitestatereport@gmail.com · (603) 931-9264
Editor’s note. This is a signed opinion column. Every factual claim is listed in the fact-check table with its source, and claims that rest on a secondary account are marked ATTRIBUTED. No lyrics are reproduced; the song’s story is described in the author’s words. The video is embedded from the artist’s own YouTube channel. The reading that the plot resembles Conan the Barbarian is the author’s. The featured photograph, of the stained glass above the State House door in Concord, is by Carol M. Highsmith, from the Library of Congress collection, which lists no known restrictions on publication. The narration is a computer-generated voice reading this text. The column was drafted with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, as disclosed at the top. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors at the top of the article, with what changed and when.
