by Wyclef Jean
“I’m not going to pass you, Mr. Jean,” she said. “But I will give you summer school and if you pass summer school you will graduate. That’s a great song, and you’re a very talented kid. So I’ll give you this chance instead of failing you.”
I blew through summer school and I got my diploma, but there was no way I was going to college, so instead I ran away for good. I slept on couches and lived with friends and different people from around the neighborhood until I finally landed at the Booga Basement, and that became my home.
Uncle Renauld let me live there and let us record there, but I had no way to survive. My cousin Renel got a little bit of recording equipment, and I learned how to use it, and I started charging people from around the ’hood for recording time. Everybody thought they were a rapper or a singer, so I’d make them a beat, record their song, and charge them for it. It was easy money for me, and that was my hustle. They’d come see me at the Booga, I’d make the beat, record and engineer everything, and give them a DAT of their song. It didn’t take long for word to get around that all anybody had to do was come see me.
We started out with a little 6-track Akai digital recording machine that Renel bought. He made that initial investment of a couple hundred dollars, and I always say that if there hadn’t been a Renel Duplessis there would be no Booga Basement, no Fugees, no Wyclef, none of it. So thank you again, Renel.
I could mix and record on that tiny Akai board, which would dump it all to a memory cassette that would be spit back out to a DAT or a regular cassette tape, whichever you had available. It didn’t take me long to master all the knobs on that little box, and soon I was turning out tracks like a fiend. The first thing I ever recorded for real on that machine, and got paid for, was for my future wife, Claudinette. She paid me to record her singing a gospel song. I liked her a lot, but I was always about the money.
Renel saw that I was serious and that I spent the time it took to learn to use everything, so he kept buying what he could and slowly our little studio grew. Every time I could afford to, I’d take some of the money I made recording demos and buy more, too. We got a VFX keyboard, then an Akai S900 sampler. Anyone who knows about hip-hop production knows that these pieces of gear are the classics that defined the beats we know so well today. Later on, after I met Khalis Bayyan and watched him use his Linn 9000 drum machine, I was all about that piece of gear. It’s so easy to get a very real, analog-sounding drum track going in no time with one of those. I still love a Linn. The beats never sound like a machine made them. I started adding guitar effects, too, which was a whole new world to me. I got the Big Muff distortion pedal and the Wah-Wah, and things got interesting. Those two are very basic, but they’re all you need to get a whole range of sounds.
It’s a good thing I got all of that gear, because things were about to change for me real quick. You never can see those moments coming in your life, when someone walks through your open door and everything you’ve been looking for is right there. It all starts falling in line without you even trying, and it’s natural because it’s meant to be. It’s easy to say you have to be ready for it, but how can you ever be, really? Life is not some plan laid down by man.
4
THREE BECOME ONE
The first time I met Pras Michel was in my father’s church. The Jean Family band was like the Beatles in our little corner of the ’hood and Pras, being a Haitian like myself, knew all about us. He came down one time when we were rehearsing to try out. The only thing we didn’t have in our band was a horn player and Pras, seeing an opening there, came through with a trombone.
Now that I know him, this story is even funnier. Pras is a great rapper and has a good ear, but trombone is just not something that vibes with his style. And let me tell you something: he was the worst trombone player I have ever heard in my life. But he was the funniest guy we’d ever had around, so we let him stay and hang out at rehearsals. He started coming by every day and was like a little cousin who kept us laughing and made every practice better for that reason. Soon he and I became really good friends. He is a unique guy; he really sees the world his own way. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met in my life.
Pras has always had a few hustles in music going on and still does to this day. By the time I was all moved out and living in the Booga, scraping by, making beats for the thugs in the ’hood, he was talking about this group with these two girls that he said were as beautiful as they were talented. I always took what my man said with a grain of salt, but he was right about this. Somehow he had charmed his way into the working in the studio of Khalis Bayyan, one of the founding members of Kool and the Gang, who is a musical genius in his own way. Khalis had seen potential in Pras, and he was working with him to put something together.
Pras called me one afternoon and said he needed me to come down to this studio to lay down some vocals. “I’m here with those two girls I told you about in this group we callin’ Tyme. We doin’ a track,” he said. “I need you to come sing some of that reggae stuff you’re so good at.” He played it cool. I don’t think he even mentioned that he was being produced by Khalis.
The two girls were named Marcy and Lauryn, and the minute I saw Lauryn Hill, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was in the vocal booth, and when she came through the door to say hello I experienced that feeling when everything stops for a second. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.
“Damn, she’s beautiful,” I said to Pras when I got him alone.
“Oh no. No, no, no. You can’t go there. I know you, man. I’m friends with her brother; you can’t go there.”
I slowly took my eyes off of her and looked at him. “Okay, man. I feel you.” I respected his request—at first—and only fooled around with Marcy a little bit in the early days. She was a little older, after all.
That day in the studio I did what any teenage boy does when he sees two fly girls: I started showing off. I ran around, picking up every instrument in sight, playing little riffs, singing hooks, soloing on guitar. Those girls weren’t going to let me go nowhere from this group after they saw what I could do. Then I went into the vocal booth.
“Okay, what do you need?” I asked them.
“We need a vocal part and a rap.”
“Okay, just turn the mic on.”
I didn’t have a notepad, no lyrics, nothing. I just did what I’d learned to do battle rapping, just flow straight off the top of my head about whatever was on my mind. I started going off, and I have no idea what most of it was but I do remember coming up with a hook, which was this: “The enforcer, the enforcer, the enforcer, the enforcer.” Don’t be too impressed. It was probably the worst Fugees demo ever made. The only thing that saved it at all was that I did it entirely in Jamaican-style patois, which was easy for me because reggae is my favorite kind of music. The girls didn’t even realize I was Haitian until later; they thought I was from Jamaica. Unlike Haitians raised in Haiti, who listen to kompa (which is a derivative of Haitian merengue or zouk—or Caribbean soca, which came from calypso and was influenced by DJ culture), I grew up on Bob Marley and everything brought out of Jamaica to the rest of the world by Chris Blackwell and other British record labels in the 1970s.
That day we recorded a song called “Ride, Little Boy, Ride,” which had a reggae flavor, with Pras and me rapping and Marcy and Lauryn singing. Marcy had a multioctave range like Mariah Carey, and Lauryn was a natural-born soul singer. She really was, right from the start. She learned to rap—all that came later—but from the moment I first heard her, that voice was pure blues and soul unlike anyone else I’d ever heard. And as everyone knows, she is beautiful, just a natural beauty, with a glow that no one can take their eyes off of.
When we were on the road, years later after we’d sold millions of records, we’d joke on the tour bus about the great lost Fugees songs—which should remain forever lost. That was our name for the worst tracks we’d ever recorded, and “Ride, Little Boy, Ride” was definitely in our top five: one of the best of the wo
rst. Those early songs were the sound of raw talent getting acquainted, and it only takes one visionary to see the potential there. That was Khalis Bayyan, which is the Arabic name he assumed after he converted to Islam. He was born Ronald Bell, and along with his brother Robert, founded Kool and the Gang. Ronald played saxophone in that band, and after they broke up, he became a skilled record producer. Khalis was the one who saw our future.
“There is some form of magic going on here,” he said. We looked at him in disbelief. I knew I was fly and we thought we were good together, but when Khalis Bayyan tells you so, suddenly what you’re doing becomes real.
“Yo, I’m serious. There is something interesting going on here. You all should stay together and keep working.”
Khalis was the Fugees’ Obi-Wan Kenobi from that day forward.
When we all met, I was a senior in high school, Lauryn was a freshman, and Pras was a sophomore. I had been doing the Exact Change thing before that. It was incredible to work with Kurtis and I spent most of my time watching him carefully, trying to pick up what I could from how he handled himself in the studio. He was focused, he had a great ear, he knew what he wanted, and he knew how to make it happen. He gave us direction, he defined the sound we should have been going for, and he knew how to get us there. Exact Change wasn’t the right group for me, but it wasn’t a bad one. We sounded like Arrested Development: a hip-hop world beat sound and a little bit of the consciousness.
After that came to an end, I was signed as a solo artist, just after I turned eighteen. People think my first record deal was with the Fugees, but it wasn’t. I got one as a solo artist signed to a major label called Big Beat Records. A guy by the name of Craig Kalman signed me, who later went on to develop T.I. and Flo Rida. I released a house music record on that label called Out of the Jungle, and I dedicated it to Nelson Mandela because it came out in 1990, the year he was released from prison. People might not realize that I was definitely into house music growing up; all the hip-hop kids from Jersey were, because we would all go dancing on the weekends and in the clubs they played a lot of house music as well as hip-hop. We hit up places like Club 88 and Club Zanzibar in New Jersey, all weekend and a few nights during the week. Zanzibar was a legendary spot in Newark. It opened in 1979, and was a huge two-level building with disco on one floor, and house and hip-hop on another. It had legendary DJs like Larry Levan and Tony Humphries. The place had an amazing sound system and was a huge cavernous space inside a kind of futuristic-looking yellow building. The style at the time for club kids was to wear a backpack, and I had a Batman sticker on mine. Everyone wore big boots and baggy pants, whether they liked rap or house, and everyone danced in circles and showed off their moves. My track was a combination of both styles, so it got a lot of play in the clubs because it was the perfect transition track for DJs. It was produced by a guy named Trevor Nelson, who created the beat, and I wrote the rest of the song and the lyrics.
I was working on my solo stuff while the Fugees were getting our thing together, and I felt that the Fugees were much cooler, because I wanted to be part of a group. Being in a group was like joining a vibe: you had partners to play off of, you had a groove, and you had something bigger than yourself to develop together. I liked how Lauryn, Pras, and I played off of each other. It was just the three of us, and it felt that way almost from the start. Even though she didn’t leave the group for about two years, it never felt like Marcy shared the same do-or-die mentality when it came to the group. She gave it a try but she was thinking about other things, and eventually she went and did those things. The three of us saw no other option—and we didn’t want one—other than our music. Good thing we felt that way, because it was going to be a long road to the top.
MARCY CAME FROM A good family from the suburbs and even when she still believed, they didn’t see this rap thing working out ever, so they pressured her to quit the group from the start. They wanted her to go to college and pursue a career on Broadway, which she eventually did. If she had stayed, the Fugees would have been two guys and two girls, because the musical chemistry was there. Lauryn sang the soulful stuff, Marcy sang the high notes, Pras rapped, and I did more Caribbean-flavored rapping and singing. I think about what that formula would have been like, what The Score would have sounded like with all four of us. It would have been incredible and Marcy would have been lethal on those songs. She was the most vocally talented of all of us, no doubt. And that’s saying quite a bit because all of us could act, sing, and dance. We could show up and do dance routines and pass as a dance troupe if we wanted to. That version of the Fugees would have been a four-person powerhouse. That wasn’t meant to be, but it didn’t slow us down. After Marcy left, the rest of us kept at it and pushed each other even harder than before. One thing I know is that we would never have gotten further on our own than we did together, because the music we made as a unit was so much more than the sum of its parts.
I’m not sure how I can explain to all of you who were young kids when the Fugees came out just how much different the times were. When we were coming up, if you wanted to make it in music you had to be a complete entertainer. You had to be able to rhyme, sing, break-dance, act, play instruments—all of it. You had to know how to entertain people on every level and have the musical skills to boot. The movie Breakin’ was just in theaters and if you couldn’t spin on your head you weren’t shit. Pras, Lauryn, and I were just teenagers, but we weren’t going to settle for anything less than being a supergroup, and we were willing to put in the work.
We rehearsed three to four times a week, and we didn’t just go through our songs. We’d get in front of a big mirror in a dance studio and work out our stage routines, down to the smallest gesture. We went through it all over and over until we anticipated each other’s moves so well that we weren’t even thinking anymore. We spent about six hours rehearsing, three nights a week.
Lauryn’s mom respected her daughter’s dedication to music, because she was willing to drive her across town from the suburbs of South Orange to the ’hood to practice with Pras and me—two Haitian kids with nothing to our names. Mrs. Hill didn’t judge; she picked us all up and dropped us all off each day. Our guide through all this was Khalis Bayyan of course, who came down to help us work on our dance moves, and had us in the studio writing new songs every night we weren’t rehearsing.
I’ve always been the leader of the bands I’m in, because I’m a born ringleader, basically a P. T. Barnum. In the Fugees, that was my role. I was also the big brother to both Pras and Lauryn, not only because I was older, but also because I always had a plan and got us where we needed to go. At least that’s how it started.
My relationship with Lauryn was that of a mentor at first. She didn’t know how to rap and I taught her. Lauryn’s gift is her voice, and I’ve never heard a more beautiful soul singer in my life. She is among the greats: Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and anyone you want to compare her to. She’s a natural, and those notes and that passion just come out of her.
She didn’t understand rhyming, though, and for months, Pras and I did all the rapping while she and Marcy sang the hooks. I felt like something was missing though, so one day I asked her if she would ever rhyme.
“Sure.”
“You ever done it before?”
“No. If you two can do it I know I can.”
“Okay, little sister, alright.”
I wrote down a few verses for her, some I had been working on, and added a few lines I made up on the spot. She looked at the paper for a few minutes, and then told me to put on a beat. And when I did she tore through them like a pro, not even looking at the words. If she could memorize lyrics that quickly, I knew she’d be one hell of an MC.
I gave her a stack of MC Lyte and Queen Latifah CDs and told her to listen carefully and learn the rhymes she heard. She took to that like a pyro to matches and had the rhymes down in two or three days. She was incredible, an artist who had found a new inspiration. Soon I was rhyming lines
to her that she would memorize on the spot and spit back at me better than I had expected.
I was her mentor, and I wrote rhymes for her starting then and for a while to come. I taught her all about rhyming, showing her the swag and style, just the way Chill Rob G had shown me years before. It didn’t take Lauryn long to make her style her own, though. She’s a very gifted woman.
As she, Pras, Marcy, and I kept working on our group, we got tighter musically and personally, and soon I was asking Lauryn to come down to the Booga to sing hooks on the little demos I was producing to make some cash. I didn’t do it for every track, but for the ones that were worth it, I’d say, “Yo, you want this to be really good? Chill for a minute. I’ll get this girl down here to sing you a hook you will not believe.” Lauryn would leave her parents’ house in the suburbs on the good side of the tracks and come down to the ’hood in East Orange and I tell you, her participation put me in a position to increase my prices. That voice won everybody over, every time. I was moving her into getting some street cred, and giving her a chance to expose her craft—her voice—which is every bit as beautiful as she is as a person. She is intelligent, compassionate, talented, and beautiful. That is how things started between us, working together on all levels, two artists who fell in love.
As I’ve said, Lauryn’s parents supported her pursuit of the arts, and around this time, after we’d been practicing as the Fugees under Khalis Bayyan’s management, she got cast in the Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act 2 because she was pursuing acting full-time as well. She went to LA to try out, and that distance brought us even closer together. She’d call me every night and we’d stay on the phone for hours while she told me every detail of her day, and I told her every detail of mine. She was in LA, hanging with Whoopi, telling her about her group back home, the Fugees. Sometimes distance like that and hours on the phone can bring you closer than seeing each other every day.
