by Wyclef Jean
Bob Marley, like Jesus Christ, led a life that has inspired just about everyone his music has touched. He united the poor in Jamaica and devoted his life to informing the rest of the world about the plight and culture of his people. As a man who began his life in a hut with a dirt floor and now lives in a mansion in New Jersey with Grammys on the mantle, I feel that it is my responsibility to do all I can. I’m not a legend like Bob Marley, but I am going to try my best to do for Haiti what he did for Jamaica. If I can do a fraction of that I’ll be satisfied.
We had the attention of MTV by that point, so I approached them and asked them to fund and to broadcast our concert. They agreed, and before I knew it, we were at the mayor’s office in Port-au-Prince. Then we did a show for something like half a million fans. You can see it on the telecast: there were people as far as the eye could see. Everything we had done to get there was worth it and of all the shows we ever played, that one meant the most to me.
It was the most appreciative crowd we saw in our entire career. These were people who looked to music as a language that they shared, who struggled every day just to survive, so this was a tremendous event for them. That day I felt the energy of the people because I was home. That spirit of togetherness is what will carry Haiti into the future because it has always been in our character. That moment planted the seed and drove me to start my charity, Yéle, and years later, get involved in Haitian politics. Yéle is a term that I coined that means, “Cry freedom,” and that is what I hope all of my work and influence will help the people of my homeland to do.
We sold tickets for that concert but the money we were hoping to raise didn’t reach the people the way we intended it to, which is the most important lesson I took away from the experience. After our Haitian relief show, we went off to Europe to accept at an awards show and to start another leg of our tour, so we weren’t on top of the situation. When we got back to America a few weeks later, I learned that somehow no funds were donated. We had organized everything through the government in power at the time, and trusted them to collect money for tickets. When we came to them asking how no money had been made on the show, they claimed that somehow every single one of the half a million who came to see us had slipped through the gates. When a system is imbalanced, no matter what your intention, it is always those who need the least that receive the most.
I never forgot the lesson I learned: if I were going to help my native land, I couldn’t trust the system, even the members of it who embraced me with smiles and open arms. The only ones I could trust to take care of business were those I’d entrust with my life. If I were ever to build a bridge from America to Haiti, I needed to start from scratch and lead by example. It wasn’t an easy solution, but it didn’t scare me. I understood that it would take years to get it right, but I didn’t mind because I was ready to give all the time I had.
AS A MAN I have a purpose, and that focus came to me back then, because I realized who I really am. I am a Haitian first and an American second, and that feeling for my homeland has centered me ever since. I have always been concerned with my trajectory as an artist, but from that point, at the height of the Fugees’ career, I began to take into account my responsibility to the culture that shaped me. I also began to see that I could use the influence of my success to focus the attention where it was needed. That desire within me felt natural and at the time, it was one of the only things that I knew without a doubt to be stable and unchanging.
It wasn’t easy to see something that had begun so beautifully become so destructive, but that was the truth and there was no running from it. My relationship with Lauryn had become too intense for either of us to continue, and it was putting stress on both my marriage and the group. The tension was there when I was home and the drama was there when I was on the road. I was a part of it all and all of it was nonstop—this never-ending roller coaster—because I loved two women but I could only have one. I loved them both for who they are, and I loved them so differently because they are so different—and both so beautiful. I’d made a choice and I was sticking to it, but my decision didn’t put an end to the story because you can’t just stop loving. It has to fade away or die because something happens to kill it. You can’t cut love off overnight because the heart wants what it wants, and it sure as hell don’t heed the mind. Lauryn and I weren’t going to leave each other alone, plain and simple.
After The Score and the Fugees had taken over the world, after the awards were won and the touring was over, we all took a break, because we needed that more than you know. We had won a huge victory but we had fallen to pieces in the process. Lauryn and I could hardly be in a room together when we weren’t performing, because we had no more words to say; if we started, it was anyone’s guess where we’d end up. She wanted to be with me and I still loved her, so we were together sometimes, even though I was married and she hated that. It wasn’t fair to her, but we didn’t stop it—because we couldn’t stop it. To make matters worse, even though I was married, and I knew once she was married all of this between us would stop, I still got jealous when I knew she was interested in other dudes. It’s not rational thought, and I don’t expect you to understand it, but the kind of passion that defies logic is the type of love she and I had together. Something dramatic had to happen to our relationship because we both knew that I wasn’t going to leave her alone and she wasn’t going to leave me alone.
Let me rewind here for a moment, because I need to tell you that our concert for Haiti was a pivotal moment for the Fugees internally, too. Afterward, nothing was the same, because it captured the pivotal event that changed everything between Lauryn and me. Anyone who has seen the footage might notice that Lauryn Hill was pregnant at that time. While we played those songs I believed that her child was mine, and I’d believed that for the eight months leading up to that moment. That baby wasn’t mine, and thank God it wasn’t, because I didn’t know what I was going to do if it were.
Only after her son Zion was born did I learn the truth, but now when I look back at things, I know what went down. Of course I’m only guessing, but I remember when we had a quick break between shows, months before the Haitian concert, Lauryn went to Jamaica while Pras and I went home, and then the three of us all met up again in England to continue our tour. Lauryn spent that time with Rohan Marley, who she remained with for years, but after that trip she told me that she’d been with him romantically. I would have known it even if she’d lied because she showed up with an acoustic guitar that wasn’t hers. It was sitting there deliberately on display in her dressing room.
“What’s that?” I asked her, when I walked in.
“It’s a guitar,” she said, leveling her eyes at me.
I went over and picked it up. It was well worn and broken in. “You don’t play guitar, and this one isn’t new. So it belongs to someone who played it a lot.”
“Maybe I’m going to learn.”
I felt my blood boiling. “Who got you that fucking guitar?”
I was mad as hell because I knew she’d been with that dude, and I knew it wasn’t fair, but I was jealous and mad at her for it. We got into it, and eventually she told me the truth. When I heard it, I got so upset that I smashed the wineglass in my hand on the table, and the entire stem of it went into my palm. I started bleeding everywhere, and though I was in pain, I kept yelling at her. I couldn’t control myself even though I knew I had no right. In the end, we talked it out, and she made me feel comfortable with whatever had happened by telling me the least that she had to. When you love someone you are willing to believe things that make no sense, or that you might not otherwise believe if you are thinking clearly. I came into the conversation feeling the truth, which was that they had been together, but I left her room believing that nothing serious had happened between them. That’s what I wanted to hear, even though I knew it wasn’t true. I let my heart trick my mind, which is a dangerous thing to do.
For the next nine months, I assumed her child was mine. It was easy t
o do as we rode the wave of success. In my mind, it was complicated and dangerous, but it was beautiful, too: if Lauryn and I had a child together, it was, to me, a product of our music and everything we’d worked to achieve. It made sense to my heart, as much as I knew it was wrong in my mind. If that’s what it came down to, I knew I would be honest with Claudinette and hope I didn’t lose her, just the way I knew I would do right by our child and so would Lauryn. I was proud of it when we performed in Haiti, because Lauryn was visibly pregnant. So to me, we were playing a concert for my people with our child growing inside her.
When Lauryn gave birth, I learned the truth: the child wasn’t mine, it was Rohan Marley’s. And in that moment something died between us. I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she had led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that. This killed our trust in my mind, and it caused us to start drifting apart. But the reason the Fugees broke up—or faded away—wasn’t just that. Things changed when Lauryn had her child; that event broke the spell between us. After that we both saw that she and I were going separate ways. I saw it when she deceived me, but when she had her son she saw clearly that she was going to do her thing and I was going to do mine. She could no longer be my muse. Our love spell was broken through her creation.
As all of this came to a head within the band, my marriage was hitting the rocks as well. Claudinette could tell that I was distraught over Lauryn’s child with Rohan and she confronted me about my feelings for her and whether we had been together in the recent past. I didn’t lie to her about anything, so she did what she should have done: she told me to move out and figure out what the hell it was I wanted. I already knew—I wanted her—but I moved out like she asked me to, into an apartment on Sixty-Sixth Street on the West Side of Manhattan.
I remember sitting there in my new living room, looking around, peeping out the window at the view. I could see Central Park, all of that, and to the naked eye, I should have felt accomplished. I had come from living in a closet off of a basement that I called a studio to traveling the world, playing for millions of people, and enjoying an expensive view of Manhattan. I had more friends and contacts than I could count and my new home had everything I’d never had in terms of comforts, but I had never felt so lonely in my entire life.
That is where I started writing the music for The Carnival. I didn’t know what my life was going to become, and I thought I’d lost both of the women I loved. I was alone for the first time since I was a kid, and I wondered to myself what was going to happen to me. I still had feelings for Lauryn but I knew I didn’t even want her, and I was pretty sure she didn’t want me either. Claudinette and I didn’t have any children, so we could part without hurting anyone else. I was thankful for that but I didn’t want to get my head around the idea of losing her at all. I had moved into a beautiful home, but I felt like a man with no home at all for the first time since that winter night my dad kicked me out. I had nowhere to turn, so I did the only thing I could do: I turned to music and I turned to writing lyrics and I started pouring my heart out in song.
Lauryn was doing the same thing. She wrote The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill during this time and if you look at both records, each is like a mirror of the other. She might not agree, but that’s my opinion. Those two records are the end of us. They are what was left from that beautiful star going supernova.
I locked myself in my new apartment with all of the records that had ever meant anything to me. I had all of my mom’s country records, all the soul music Lauryn had given me, and all the reggae that Renel and his family had exposed me to. It literally was everything that had influenced who I had become as an artist, and I sat there going through it all, trying to forget the Fugees. I tried to forget my success because I wanted to start fresh. As far as I was concerned, all that I knew before was gone. I had nothing, not even an idea of what kind of music I wanted to make as a solo artist. It’s hard for me to even remember which song I wrote on The Carnival first, because all of it was a big blur. I was there alone: wife gone, The Score was over. Too much drama had delivered me to this place. It was me and a room full of records, doing music to help my mind escape, which was my cure in the end.
The Carnival sold over 5 million copies and had a bunch of hit singles, including, “Gone Till November,” “Guantanamera,” and “To All the Girls.” That last one really spelled out where I was at the time.
To all the girls I loved before
To all the girls I cheated on before
It’s a new year
I got a change of gear, I swear
I can see clearly now, the clouds disappeared.
Meanwhile Lauryn was writing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which she recorded for the most part in Jamaica, at Tuff Gong Studios, where the Wailers did most of their work. She was there with Rohan, with whom she went on to have four more kids, even though he was still married to someone else. I can’t speak for her, but I don’t think Lauryn knew about this until she was already pregnant. Rohan had gotten married years before, had two children with that girl, and when things didn’t work out, never divorced. He and Lauryn kept having children and just continued on unmarried because he couldn’t legally marry her. The perception in the media, though, is that the two of them were a married couple, because over the years Lauryn openly referred to Rohan as her husband in the press. These days I don’t think they’re together anymore, but what do I know.
She might have been with him in Jamaica at the time, but musically and lyrically she was still with me. Her whole album was about her trying to make sense of our relationship, and when I listen to Miseducation, it’s like reading a diary of our personal history. There are lyrics and references that only two people in the world could know and understand, and you’re here reading one of them. Her album went on to sell 7 million copies. She also won five Grammys and hit number 1 on the album charts her first week out. After that album, which was a major work for that year, Lauryn disappeared from the public eye and has remained pretty private as an artist ever since. Every single fan and friend of hers has their theory about why she’s done this or how this happened, and I’m sure all of you reading this have yours, too.
A lot of people blame me for what has become of Lauryn since then, and the fact that she’s not out and about in the music industry. If you’ve read this far, you have to understand that she and I had a very complicated relationship, and I’ll take the blame for my side of the pain and confusion. No doubt, my marriage to Claudinette hurt her, but the fact that she more or less left music behind can’t be explained away that simply. Her relationship with Rohan Marley changed her life, as did becoming a mother five times over. I think she’s had a hard time in her relationship with Rohan and faced her challenges raising all of those children. It just makes me sad that Lauryn hasn’t been out there making music, because she’s got a real gift and I wish she would share it with the world.
Pras is someone who definitely blames me for the Fugees breaking up. We never really broke up, by the way, we just stopped talking about getting together to record again. In any case, Pras has made it clear to me that he thinks I’m responsible, and I understand why he feels this. It’s because he had to manage Lauryn and me when we became a couple on the road. Every time we fought, he was in the middle, keeping us focused, telling jokes, doing whatever he could to stop things from getting too crazy. Pras was the glue that kept the Fugees together. He did everything he could, but there was no helping it from self-destructing, and he’s bitter about that. I understand, but I don’t think he’s asked himself the most important question: if he were the one in my shoes, would he have thought twice about doing as I did? Would he have resisted being with her? He’s never answered that question, but I don’t care what he says. He’d do the same thing I did, and I wouldn’t blame him for it if he did. But that’s just my opinion of course.
Everyone always wonders about a Fugees reunion, probably as much as I do. I wouldn’t put it past us, but I w
ouldn’t put my money on us either. We have many rivers to cross if we’re going to find our way home. First of all, the thing keeping it from happening is bigger than Lauryn and me. It’s all of us.
Pras has to realize how important he always was to the musical chemistry of the Fugees. I don’t think fans even understand how important he was to the artistic connections within the band. Pras loves music, and he always heard things in the studio and added to what we were doing in ways that are not obvious to the people listening to the result. I think Pras feels that he was like the Tito Jackson of the Fugees—included in everything but forgotten by all. That wasn’t what it was like. Whenever Pras came in and did his 8 bars of rapping on our tracks, it added something we needed. I always tried to make his additions strategic because for me, whenever Pras was going to lay it down, things might get weird in the sense that the entire tone of the track might change. It would usually be a good thing that opened up your eyes and ears, but if it arrived in the wrong place, it might take the song to pieces.
That is why I let Pras do his thing when we did try to get back together, following our reunion for the film Dave Chappelle’s Block Party in 2006. We hadn’t played together in over seven years and all three of us loved doing our songs for a hungry crowd in Brooklyn. It had been long enough that it seemed like we could start again, so we went into the studio and tried to record some music. We did one track, “Take It Easy,” and I let Pras go. My intention was to do a mix tape together, and let Pras do a few tracks even on his own if he wanted to. If we were going to come back, I felt like we had to drop some shit for the streets since we’d been away for so long.
None of that came to pass, even though we did a bunch of music together before we hit a wall. Each of us had reasons why we couldn’t go on, but looking back, I think there’s only one: the chemistry wasn’t there. And now that I’ve had time to think about it, I know why.
