example of this proto-camo was in the fourth century, during the Gallic Wars, when Julius Caesar sent ships painted in a shade of “Venetian blue” to carry out recon- naissance missions. Those onboard also dressed in this fetching hue in a further attempt to blend in with the ocean. Native American hunters are also said to have donned animal skins while hunting, so as not to alert their prey. Aside from carrying out the odd bit of sea-bound snooping or obscuring yourself from the view of that evening’s dinner, there was largely no need for camou- flage at this stage in history, as conflicts were still typical- ly settled at close quarters. The invention of long-range guns would fundamentally change this, illustrated by the two Boer Wars, which bookended the 19th century. The first, from 1880 – 01, saw British forces adopt a khaki uniform, hoping to blend into the arid landscape; such was the accuracy of the opposition’s marksmen. By the time the British went back for seconds in 1902, this “drab” uniform had become standard-issue. What we recognize as camouflage today didn’t truly emerge until the First World War, when armies— in particular, the French–began to enlist the help of “cam- ouflage o ffi cers,” or camofleurs , to design and implement patterns for evading the enemy. (As noted by academic Roy Behrens in the extensive, hyper-nerdy tome Disruptive Pattern Material by British streetwear label Maharishi, the same French term, roughly translated as “veil” or “to disguise,” also gave rise to the word “camouflage.”) Early camouflage o ffi cers included the English surrealist artist Sir Ronald Penrose, as well as zoologists such as John Graham Kerr—fitting, as the process was neither entirely scientfic nor purely aesthetic. Writing in 1931, the French artist and naval camoufleur Pierre Gattier stated that “[camouflage] should also take account of the psycho- logical e ff ects on the observer’s retina. If you surround a geometric figure with a red stripe edged in blue, it seems to stand out. Inversely, if you surround the same shape with a blue shape edged in red, it appears to ‘sink’ below the surface.” In the decades that followed, camouflage would fragment into various subgenres, each specific to a certain combat need. Tigerstripe camouflage was intro- duced in the ’60s by South Vietnamese armed forces in an attempt to mimic the dense jungles of Vietnam (a strat- egy soon copied by US forces); Flecktarn—the German compound of “spot” and “camouflage”—was designed in the ’70s and finally implemented by German forces in 1989. Variations of this dappled camo have since been ad- opted by the Chinese, Polish, Danish, and Belgian armies. There’s also desert camo, snow camo, and rain camo. Despite the nature of modern warfare long having evolved past the need for camouflage uniforms in most combat situations, they have largely remained, an endur- ing symbol of uniformity and identity. The first widespread adoption of camouflage by civilians came in the 1960s, as protests mounted against the Vietnam War and participants ironically borrowed its uniform to make their point. Camouflage had appeared away from armed combat before—for instance, the Dazzle Ball, hosted by the Chelsea Arts Club in 1919, where the dress code mimicked the black-and-white patterns of dazzle camouflage ships—but the Vietnam protests were the first that tied camouflage to a sense of identity and counterculture, an association that remains to this day. An abundance of army surplus stores, selling old military jackets and camo fatigue pants for a ff ordable prices, has meant that few post-’60s subcultures in the US have not had some sort of camo-moment. The raucous protagonists of New York’s Hardcore scene during the ’80s and ’90s adopted it because it looked tough, made you feel tough, and actually was tough—an important factor, considering how often they encountered flailing limbs and clashing bodies at their shows. Rap groups like Public Enemy also adopted camouflage for similar aesthetic reasons, while the rivethead subculture of the 1990s wanted clothes reflective of the raw industrial dance music they favored. In European club culture, camo became some- thing of an uno ffi cial uniform as well. In a 1992 article for CAPONE - N - NOREAGA: WAR REPORT AND ARMY FATIGUES At the time of the 1997 release of Capone-N - Noreaga’s War Report , it’s no exaggeration to say that Capone, Noreaga, and Tragedy Khadafi, the album’s uno ffi cial third rapper, felt at war. Little wonder, then, that on the album’s inside sleeve, there’s a photograph of a figure decked out in camo and a gas mask, while the front cover features the two rappers stunting in fatigues. CNN, as the two rappers constantly refer to themselves, were carrying the torch for a style of early ‘90s East Coast hardcore rap, grimy and boom bap in style, which looked like it was going to be extinguished by the flashy new “Hip-Pop” epitomized by Pu ff Daddy’s No Way Out , released just two weeks before. As the two would later explain: “It was the beginning of the shiny suit era. We wore our army fatigues and we were completely di ff erent from that.” On “Stick You,” the duo expresses a desire to get their revenge on a well-known but untrustworthy local drug dealer, one of the countless episodes of street politics the album details. There’s a cross-country skirmish in “L.A., L.A.,” a direct response to Tha Dogg Pound’s diss track, “New York New York.” Both sides were rapping for the dominance of their cities amid a violent, media-fueled rap war pitting East Cost against West Coast (New York’s king Notorious B.I.G. had been killed earlier that year), making diss tracks like these particularly potent and in need of response. One of the toughest tracks on the album, the Buckwild-produced “Neva Die Alone,” is a dark-hearted track that sees the unstop- pable attitude of the beat matched by the constant stream of slurs referencing bloodshed and “putting bombs where the feds be.” The track overflows with allusions to Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics, beginning with a list of countries: “Lebanon, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria.” Noreaga had already taken to referring to his LeFrak City neighbor- hood of Queens as “Iraq,” while Noreaga’s Queensbridge was “Kuwait.” Accelerated by the Gulf War a few years prior, the specter of Arab-speaking countries was becom- ing increasingly pervasive in American social discourse. Noreaga was also associated with The Five Percenters, a religious Black Power group with a ffi nities to the Nation of Islam, who similarly referred to parts of America with stylized religious names, with New Jersey becoming “New Jerusalem,” and so on. This wide-view focus on war and conflict permeates the machinations of Capone-N - Noreaga across War Report , the album lending a potent, contem- porary, and acutely insightful voice at a moment in which much was changing, both locally and globally. WORDS BY THOMAS MOUNA