Wyclef Jean

From his sudden success with the Fugees and through his explosive solo debut with in 1997, Wyclef has developed a unique sound based on collaborations with high-profile artists and, more to the point, his own talents. Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Youssou N’Dour, Celia Cruz, Whitney Houston, Sinéad O’Connor, Carlos Santana, Mary J. Blige, U2, Destiny’s Child and Willie Nelson, Tom Jones — there was no limit to the types of performers that Wyclef learned from and in turn whose music he would enhance.

But something kept eluding his grasp. “When I was younger, I was just talking gibberish,” he admits. “I don’t have the head for that now. ‘Diallo,’ ‘911,’ ‘Guantanamera’ — those records say something. Now, with The Preacher’s Son, I’ve started doing whole albums like that. From now on, I’m into the art of writing songs and putting them together on albums that mean something.”

Throughout Preacher’s Son, his debut release for Clef/J Records, Wyclef Jean looks at the world through the prism of his own life story. Harsh edges and soft contours, shadows and colors, violence and tenderness — the contradictory beauties of life stand exposed in this compelling music …

And music is the operative word. In his varied career, Clef has accomplished much. But Preacher’s Son is something different even for him. In fact …

“Preacher’s Son is my first album,” he insists. “It’s the first album I’ve ever done where I focus on my songwriting more than anything else. That’s why I call it Volume One — because it’s a movement back to music. Being a hip-hop musician, being from a reggae background and of Haitian descent, I have a lot of music in my mind. For the first time on any record, I’m going back to that music.”

Even heard superficially, Preacher’s Son makes this clear. Clef draws from the islands, from the streets, from faraway cultures brought close by the daily news — from the blues and jazz and myriad strains of songs sung a thousand ways around the planet.

Listen more closely, and the words form complex, vivid pictures. Here are memories of neighborhood parties (“a barbecue, like we used to do,” sings guest diva Patti LaBelle on “Celebration”) and of innocent times lost (“Sometimes when I dream, that’s when I wake up,” Clef reveals on “Industry,” “and I kind of hope the Fugees didn’t break up”). Beaches, heated by the guitar of Carlos Santana, beckon in the seductive Latin vibe of “Three Nights in Rio de Janeiro,” while Missy Elliott kicks off the festivities in a more unlikely spot with the sizzling single, “Party to Damascus.”

But days and nights can drag out long and lonely. Clef, partnering with Redman, pays homage on “Baby Daddy” to men who sacrifice to take care of kids who aren’t even their own. (“It’s not easy for a guy to raise kids that don’t belong to him,” he says. “But they love the mother of that child and so they end up loving the kids too. We never give those guys the credit they deserve.”)

And sometimes, when hopelessness sets in, so does fear and fury. Clef knows these moments too. On “Life in New York,” he unfolds a desolate panorama, filled with “money, drugs, and bitches, cops, judges, snitches … jealous dudes that hate us.” Yet in the opening moments of this track, as he surveys this wasteland, Clef proclaims, “It feels good to be back in New York.”

“No matter what you say about New York,” he shrugs, “somehow we always pull through. We can always turn a negative into a positive.”

This world is nothing more than what Wyclef has always seen outside his window. His childhood back in Haiti was rich in spirit, if short on material luxuries. “I remember jumping around and dancing naked to the water, where I’d go for a swim,” he says. “Lightning and thunder outside. My aunt telling me to get my ass back in the house. It was happy. It felt free. African gods, you know what I’m saying? That’s the spirit I still travel with today.”

The view from his room changed when, at age nine, he and his family relocated to New York, first to the Marlborough projects in Brooklyn, later in New Jersey. Raised in a Creole community as, in fact, a preacher’s son, he spoke no English at first; his impressions of urban life took on poetic twists as he processed them in both his original and emerging languages. “I got thrown into a bilingual class,” he remembers. “I had twenty-four hours to learn English. Even now, my first language is Creole. That gives me a very weird style of writing.”

Two events made it possible for Wyclef to achieve this goal. One was his decision to affiliate with J Records, which gave him the opportunity to work directly with label president and executive producer Clive Davis. They had joined forces before, on the Santana single “Maria Maria,” and their paths had crossed as well when Wyclef wrote the title track for the Whitney Houston CD My Love Is Your Love, which Davis produced. But on The Preacher’s Son they were able to come together for the first time on a complete album project.

“I’d looked up to Clive for years,” Wyclef says. “I always wanted to do an album with him. So when we did The Preacher’s Son that was a great merge. It’s the first time in my life I’ve had someone monitor me through a whole album. We went back and forth. We talked on the phone every day. He kept pushing me to do my best.”

Davis concurs that The Preacher’s Son is a watershed recording. “It’s very special when an important artist tops anything he or she has ever creatively done,” he says. “It was thrilling to feel the impact that comes from hot, exciting, great music that is not only cutting edge but melodically memorable as well.”

With his history of working with great singers, Davis was a catalyst in bringing Wyclef’s vocal talents to the fore as never before. “I sang more on this album than I ever thought I would,” Wyclef says. “I paid more attention to the melodic structure. I approached each track like I was writing songs, as opposed to just writing a rhyme, so even when I’m rappin’ there’s a melody to it. It’s rhymin’ singing.”

More fundamental, though, is the transformation that this album represents, of a musician already celebrated for his eclectic imagination into a more profound level of concept and execution. Though each track stands on its own, The Preacher’s Son will ultimately take its place on the short list of great albums. Its maturity and insight owe much to the other event that helped Wyclef move past his earlier methods and onto something more profound.

“When my dad passed two years ago, that shifted my whole way of thinking,” he says. “Right away I wanted to do my music differently. I want to do things that will change people who hear it three hundred years from now, like scriptures. The Preacher’s Son is my first step in this direction. It’s my resurrection.”

Spoken like a true preacher’s son.

Wyclef Jean’s extraordinary musical talent has brought him wealth and fame and taken him all over the world. He’s been a member of the biggest-selling rap group in history, he’s a multi-platinum hit-making solo artist; and he’s produced for, and collaborated with, an incredibly diverse array of musical superstars.

But throughout his entire career, Wyclef Jean has never forgotten where he’s come from, the places that nurtured his character and creativity as a young man: his native Haiti, where he lived until age nine, as well as the projects of Brooklyn and the streets of Jersey. On Masquerade, his third solo album, Wyclef focuses his considerable lyrical and musical skills on life in the hood: past, present, and future. There are vivid tales of his childhood and his struggles as a young immigrant on the mean streets of New York, serious messages to the youth wrongly enamored of thug culture, and pleas for peace and love in the future–all backed by the eclectic and unpredictable sounds we’ve come to expect from a Wyclef Jean CD. Hardcore hip-hop beats, R&B funk, slow jams, and uptempo reggae–they’re all here, sometimes all in the same track. Masquerade represents the next step in the musical development of an artist who’s known unalloyed success since first stepping onto the scene nearly ten years ago, and who shows no signs of slowing down.

Wyclef Jean, of course, first hit it big as a prime mover in the groundbreaking Fugees, whose 1996 masterpiece The Score stands as one of the most influential records in hip-hop history. On that album, Wyclef pioneered a production style that became virtually unavoidable throughout the rest of the ’90s: real life street hip-hop seasoned with a radio-friendly musical, lyrical and vocal sophistication. The Score sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, won two Grammys (including Best Rap Album), and paved the way for the successful solo careers of all three of its members. In 1997, Clef released Wyclef Jean Presents the Carnival, a double-platinum album that featured the emotionally powerful hit single “Gone Till November,” which earned him a Grammy nomination in the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance category. Clef’s second solo CD, The Ecleftic — 2 Sides II A Book, was even more musically adventurous than his previous work, from the booty-shakin’ “Dirty South” to the socially-conscious neo-protest ballad “Diallo” to the R&B smash “911” which found Clef dueting with Mary J. Blige. In addition to his solo work, Clef found time to collaborate with Whitney Houston on her smash “My Love Is Your Love” and Carlos Santana on his chart-topping hit, “Maria Maria”.

More recently, Wyclef’s worked with Mick Jagger and Sinad O’Connor on their latest releases, as well as collaborations with U2, Destiny’s Child, Michael Jackson, and Rita Marley. The spiritual element that’s always been crucial to Wyclef’s music is immediately apparent on “Peace God,” the first track of Masquerade. Clef calls this his “Crouching-Tiger style”: a Far East flute is looped over a hip-hop drumbeat while Clef rhymes in praise of God and against false idols made by man. Whether adopting the persona of the Preacher’s Son or a Thug Angel, Clef has always illuminated ghetto reality as he sees it, taking on the tone of a wise older brother rather than a strident preacher. “The PJs” is an ode to the projects Clef grew up in and the lessons he learned there: “Gotta make noise for the PJs/I wrote my first rhyme in the PJs/You can hear it in my speech, I’m from the PJs.” This is a playful tribute to the harder life he’s left behind as well as a reclamation of his status as a hip-hop artist, first and foremost. There’s no other musician today who seems so natural in so many different genres.

“Masquerade” is a hardcore posse track featuring M.O.P., but while other producers might be content to just let the beat run, Clef brings on accomplished Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari to provide an unexpected coda to the track. Proving that he not only has an ear for music but also an eye for talent, “One Last Chance” is a soul ballad with Clef on acoustic guitar dueting with velvet-voiced Claudette Ortiz of City High. “Daddy” is one of the saddest songs you’re ever likely to hear–reminiscent of 2Pac’s classic “Dear Mama”–a rap that Clef dedicates to his recently departed father. “What A Night” remakes Frankie Valli’s 1976 disco hit into a soul/hip-hop blend where Clef tells a little of his amazing life story and details his many accomplishments. On “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Wyclef reworks the Bob Dylan classic, in Clef’s version the lyrics are transformed into a lament on unnecessary death occurring in the ghetto and throughout the world. Masquerade is the kind of album that only Wyclef Jean could make–from rock to rap to soul to reggae, Clef is a living embodiment of the different styles and genres that comprise contemporary popular music. Producer, arranger, composer, musician, rapper, singer, and showman–Clef is that rare artist who not only does all these things, but does them incredibly well. There’s only one Wyclef Jean and Masquerade secures his place as one of the most versatile, talented, and accomplished musical artists we’ve got.