by Wyclef Jean
It took a little while, but I got the guy down to $150. The three of us walked to the front of the warehouse, to the little office with the front counter. The dude started to lead the goat around back.
“I’ll be right out with this for you.”
I know I hadn’t known this goat for long, but in that short time, in my mind, he’d become the Fugees’ mascot. I had forgotten that they butchered animals at this place. My reaction to what the man said was very innocent at first: I figured he was going to wash the goat and make him presentable. Then I realized what he meant.
I ran around back and caught him just in time. He had the goat’s neck over a butcher block and was about to pick up the axe.
“Hold on, man. I don’t want to eat that goat. I want that goat alive!”
“You want him alive?”
“I want him alive. I want to bring him onstage with my band. He’s gonna be our mascot.”
“This goat is not the dinner for the people coming to your show? I thought you were buying him to impress these people. This isn’t an animal you want for a pet.”
“We’re gonna put him to work,” I said. “But we don’t want to eat him.”
The guy looked at me for what felt like a very long time. “So you want to take this goat with you right now, and you want to make him part of your group?”
“Yeah, that’s it, man. This goat is the guy. This goat is coming onstage.”
At that point I had nothing to lose.
“Let me ask you something, my man,” I said. “If we’re not eating him, and you don’t need to butcher him, does he cost less?”
Dude was disgusted.
“No. He is exactly the same price.”
It wasn’t until I got the goat into my car that I realized how bad he smelled. His size wasn’t the problem: being Mexican, he wasn’t a tall goat. But let me tell you, he smelled like nothing I had ever known before that moment. When you’re on a farm or surrounded by livestock the way it was in that place, you don’t realize how one animal smells with so many around. With a Mexican goat in my hooptie Honda it was a whole other story.
That Mexican goat smelled like a pile of wet straw, dirt, and the shit pond back in Haiti all put together. This creature wasn’t of the earth. It wasn’t natural. Smells trigger memories and I’m still able to go back to that drive in my car too easily. It’s a smell I wish I could forget, but I can’t. That day, I put the windows down, I held my breath, and I still couldn’t stand it. I thought about turning around, but just then I looked at the goat and saw him with a Fugees shirt, some glasses, just being our Spuds. That’s when I remembered that I was right. Fuck the smell; this goat was our ticket.
At first this Mexican goat was well behaved. He just sat in the backseat looking out the window, eyeing me sometimes. He’d turn his head from side to side, real relaxed, taking in the scenery. He seemed real mellow.
When I got back to the ’hood, I ran back behind the house to the Booga Basement, which was really the garage under the house. As usual there was a collection of neighborhood dudes playing ball in courtyard between our house and the crack house.
“Yo! Come on out to my car. Y’all got to see this,” I said. I was real excited because this was the thing. I’d finally found it.
About twenty feet away, the pack of homies stopped dead in their tracks.
“What the fuck is that, man?” I don’t even know who said it. They all felt the same.
“Yo nigga, you smell that shit? What the fuck is that, Clef?”
“Hey yo, easy, man!” I said. “That is a rare Mexican goat. He’s coming onstage tonight.”
“Mexican what? That thing smells like shit, man.”
“Help me, we gotta hose him off and get him ready for the show. We gonna put a Fugees shirt on him and some glasses and he gonna be our Spuds MacKenzie.” I meant it.
They all just kinda looked at me funny.
“You crazy, Clef. That ugly motherfucker ain’t no Spuds MacKenzie!”
“Come on, man. We got to get this goat in the basement. I can’t let my aunt see this goat. She’ll kick us out.”
We led the goat to the basement and I washed him. I didn’t think that once you wet down a goat, all the stench in it would really come out. But I did learn that washing a goat makes everything about a goat worse.
My rare Mexican goat started stinking so strong that his odor rose up through the ventilation system in the garage into my aunt’s house. When we heard her start coming down the stairs, we ran the goat outside into the garage, still soaking wet, then took our places in the basement as cool as could be.
“What’s going on down here?” she asked.
“Just working on some music,” I said.
“What’s that smell?”
“What smell?”
“Don’t you lie to me, Nel. It smells down here.”
“I think a few of the guys have gas, Auntie. Really, I’m sorry but that’s it.”
I don’t think she believed us but she left. We went to the garage and the goat—he was still chill—now smelled worse than hell because he was damp. We toweled him dry, and then we got my aunt’s blow-dryer to help dry his fur. But none of that got the stink off. By this point it was getting toward showtime and I wasn’t going to be discouraged, so I made him look fly by putting a green Fugees “Boof Baf” shirt on him, along with some sunglasses. He was ready to roll as far as I was concerned.
This was a big show for us so I’d asked one of the heavy dudes in the ’hood whose name was Chop Chop if he’d drive us to the club in Manhattan. He had a chop shop where he ran stolen cars and drove this fly Jeep. He didn’t figure that he’d show up and have to make room for a “rare” Mexican goat.
“You gonna be big after tonight, man, right?” he said. “Don’t you forget me. I’ll get you where you’re going, but don’t forget me. We family. We a team.”
“Yeah, man,” I said. “I got you. When I win my first Grammy I’ll thank you, man. I’ll never forget you. But I got one more favor to ask tonight, man.”
“What’s that?”
“We got to bring my goat in the Jeep with us.”
“Your goat?”
“Yeah, man, I’ll get him. He’s real small; he’s real cool.”
Like I said, washing and drying the rare Mexican goat didn’t do much for the stink.
“What the fuck, man?” Chop Chop yelled. “It smells like shit, man! You can’t bring that thing in my car! Do you smell this thing, Clef? Do you? It smells like shit, man!”
“Nah, it’s cool, man. This thing is our promotion. This thing is our ticket, man. People see us with this goat they will not forget it. This guy right here, he is the new member of our band.”
Somehow I convinced this dude to put the goat in his car. I don’t remember what else I said to convince him.
Everyone I knew thought I’d completely lost my mind. The thing was, I was like Alexander the Great in my circle: my decisions were never to be questioned. But, still, I could hear the rumblings of mutiny.
The whole way to the club I heard them rumbling, but I didn’t care. We were going to steal the show, and I felt justified when we rolled up to the club and saw Jodeci coming out of their limo and one of them had a pit bull.
“You see what I’m saying?” I said to my car of people. “He got a pit bull! Every group has a pet. You need an animal if people are gonna remember you. How can any of you question me on this goat, man?”
It was quiet for maybe ten seconds.
“Yeah, he’s got a dog, dude. This thing in this car is a fucking goat, man.”
They had a point. I definitely agree with them now.
Getting the goat inside the club was waging a war. The promoters were not having it, talking about safety and health regulations, but the truth was the smell. We had these conversations outside in the wind and they were already too overwhelmed by the Mexican goat. To be honest with you, we rolled with some pretty heavy dudes back then and I’m not sur
e how it all got worked out, but despite the club and the promoter’s better judgment, they let us bring our stinky little dude into the club.
All of this took so long that by the time we got inside, it was time for us to go on. We stood in the wings with our goat, waiting as the emcee for the night, Big Cat, introduced us.
“Ayo,” he said. “Before we bring Jodeci out, we got this little group for you. All the way from New Jersey, it’s the Fudgies!”
The motherfucking Fudgies, man. He pronounced it like we were the topping on an ice-cream sundae.
“That don’t matter,” I said to Pras and Lauryn. “After tonight, they’ll remember the Fugees. We are the motherfucking Refugees! One and only.”
I must have looked ridiculous saying that, but who cares. When you have nothing else but confidence you’d might as well oversell your shit. I was wearing a black-and-yellow rubber fireman’s coat that night. I was obsessed with wearing something noticeable and I’d wear that or some kind of oversized leather Spiderman bomber jacket to every show.
“This is our moment, y’all. They gonna remember who we are,” I told Pras and Lauryn. They agreed, I think.
And then we took the stage.
Pras went out first as he always did, and got the crowd going.
“Yes, yes y’all! Lauryn, where you at?”
Then Lauryn went out and started singing and freestyling.
“Yeah! Clef where you at?” she asked.
It was my turn and I had my prop. I’d found my mascot, I had my Spuds, and he was a stinky Mexican goat in a t-shirt and sunglasses. I’d gotten a big chain for him, too. It was around his neck and I was going to lead him onstage, all thug. The only problem was, at the moment when we needed that Mexican goat to be chill and just roll with the program, he didn’t. The minute I led him toward the lights of the stage, he dug his hooves in. He wouldn’t budge.
I don’t know if it was because this was the first time that goat had ever heard music or seen strobe lights, but this dude started trippin’. I hadn’t thought this could be a problem until that moment. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started talking to him. I don’t even know if it was a him or a her.
“Yo, goat, just calm down, man. It’s cool, we gonna go onstage now. I got you, goat.”
That didn’t do much.
“Come on. They gonna love you, man! You just got to come with me right now.” That fucking goat wouldn’t move.
I was standing on the side of the stage, looking at Lauryn Hill out there smiling, getting them all hyped up. “Here we go! Here we go! Yo, Clef, where you at?”
“Yeah, yeah!” I said into the mic, still hoping this goat would start moving so I could join my group and play my part. Damn, had I misplanned this? No, man, I hadn’t. This goat and I had an understanding. He was just having stage fright. I’d talk him through this. He had to trust me: I had delivered him from the slaughterhouse to the club. I was literally planning a conversation with this goat. Then I realized something had to be done quick.
So I picked him up and carried his ass onstage with me.
I put him down on my side, by my microphone, thinking that this Mexican goat and I had a bond. It was clearly a one-way relationship; that goat was lying to me from the start. I hadn’t found us a mascot or a symbol or a cheerleader that believed in us. All I’d done is find a round-horned, stinky, cheap, mud-sucking Mexican goat who had no desire for a career in the entertainment industry. I’d bought the cheapest mascot money could buy, literally and morally. And as if to send the point home, it was clear to me, real fast, that dude wanted nothing more than some peace, some quiet, and a stall to call his own far away from me and this stage. Like every smooth R&B act does, Jodeci had a huge female fan base and that night the first ten rows were nothing but hot, fly girls all dressed up in their best. I had told everyone, from the security to the promoter that this goat was all good, but he wasn’t.
I came on with the goat and put him down next to me on my side of the stage. He stopped freaking out and just stood there, so I thought maybe we were in the clear. Our DJ dropped the beat to our single, “Boof Baf” because what else were we gonna do? I had grown somewhat immune to the stench of this goat, but the minute I brought him out, I watched all those fly girls retreat from the stage like my feet were on fire.
The goat was chill for about two songs, until our DJ pumped the beats about 20 bpms faster. At that point he became possessed and started spinning around and dancing like he didn’t give a fuck about anything. I didn’t mind that part, except for the fact that he left a trail. He basically ran across the front of the stage at full speed, shitting himself the whole fucking way. Dude pulled so hard on his chain and collar that it slipped out of my hand, and he ran right into one of my boys, bucking him straight in the ass.
There we were, the Fugees, the next big thing, with a stage full of goat shit and a room full of disgusted girls waiting for Jodeci. We had two more songs to do, too. They would remember us, alright. The promoter and Jodeci’s manager nearly broke the door to our dressing room afterward.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” their manager said. “That was some disrespectful shit!”
“We didn’t mean that to happen …”
“Is that how you do it in Jersey?”
When you’re the leader of a group, everyone is quick to tell you their opinion of your ideas after it’s passed. When you fail miserably, they tell you sooner.
“I told you that goat was a bad idea, man,” Pras said. “I told you this shit wasn’t going to work, but you don’t listen to people. You just do what you want to do.” Pras sold me out, which wasn’t like him. We were always very all-for-one. He was really trying to get through to me and teach me a lesson.
“Ayo,” another of our friends said. “You just cost your group their career.”
None of our crew would even sit next to me in the car. I’d failed everyone.
And all I could think about was getting rid of the stinking goat so I could forget about this mess. I’m not proud to say that in that moment I wanted to shoot that thing on the spot. I didn’t own a gun, so I asked Chop Chop to pull over so I could leave that stinking Mexican bastard at the side of the road.
“No, man. That goat’s your problem. You’ve got to take care of this yourself. Don’t bring me into this shit.”
When we got back to the Booga I went to see a guy in the ’hood who was a hard gangster, and I asked him if he’d take the goat and kill this thing for me.
“You out of your mind? I can’t kill no animals,” he said.
“Why not, homie?”
“What if we come back to this world as animals?” he said. “I ain’t going to risk that shit by killing some goat for you. You want it done; do it yourself.”
This dude was like the Tony Montana of our neighborhood, and I’d seen him do some cold shit. But killing that goat was too much for him. He was right, though. Don’t ever do what doesn’t feel right.
I ended up tying the goat to the fence in the backyard. I don’t remember what I told my aunt, but I made up some story about watching this pet goat for a friend for a little while. There was a crack house on one side, a gang hangout on another, and our block was full of kids two steps from jail. With so many criminals and troublemakers all around, you’d think that something would have happened to the goat after just one night. I thought I was going to wake up to a chain and an empty collar. I wasn’t that lucky. Nobody wanted that goat for themselves.
I did wake up to about a hundred kids from around the way, all hanging out, petting that thing like it was Bambi. The Booga now had a one-goat petting zoo. And the goat loved it. He was still ugly but he looked happy now.
“Ayo, what the fuck you all doin’ in my backyard?”
“We here to see him,” one kid said, pointing at the goat. “We heard you had an exotic dog!”
“Aw, man, that’s no dog.”
“This ain’t no dog?”
“No.”
“It’s a goat. It’s a Mexican goat.”
“Can we give him dog food anyway?”
“No, you can’t do that. But you can give him grass. That’s what he needs. Goats eat grass.”
“Okay!”
Our goat might have crapped all over the stage and scared all the girls clear to the exits but he did get us noticed. That afternoon the DJ on Hot 97 mentioned the Jodeci show and he had this to say, too: “Jodeci was hot, but before they came out, there was this group from New Jersey called the Fugees. They came out with a goat wearing a T-shirt and some glasses and this thing crapped all over the stage. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking. Here is their single, ‘Boof Baf.’” That’s all I wanted—and I made sure Pras and Lauryn understood that the goat was a success. The DJ even got our name right on the radio.
I took care of the goat and through him I learned to respect animals. He and I got into a rhythm with each other and I started to enjoy hanging out with the goat in the yard when I took a break from working on music. I even got him a Spuds MacKenzie Bud Light doghouse to hang out in, because in spite of the stink, that goat was a cool dude.
The one thing I didn’t take into account as far as the goat was concerned was winter. All of this went down in early fall when the weather was still nice enough for the goat to enjoy the backyard. Sometime around early December the weather turned cold, and I realized I had to find a real house for this guy. Spuds’s plastic hut wasn’t cutting it. And there wasn’t enough room in the Basement for both of us. He really didn’t like it inside anyway; he probably had flashbacks to the club.
Before I could figure out a solution we got a blizzard in the middle of the night while the goat was still outside. An old Jamaican man lived next door and he always yelled at us about the goat and how we didn’t take care of it the way we should. So when the snow started he called the cops who called the ASPCA who came and took the rare Mexican goat away. I was in bed down in the Basement when these guys broke in like a SWAT team, all of them dressed in black.
