12329: The Jean genie (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Jun. 16, 2002

The Jean genie
With his new label and new album, could former Fugee Wyclef Jean be the man
who brings Haitian culture to the world?
BY EVELYN McDONNELL
emcdonnell@herald.com

On his new CD 'Masquerade,' Wyclef Jean looks back at his life in search of
meaning after the death of his father.

''Sweet Micky is an MVP!'' Wyclef Jean bellows as he enters a mansion in
Miami Beach on a recent May day.

The erstwhile member of one of the biggest-selling hip-hop acts ever, the
Fugees, is filming the video for MVP Kompa, a track from his third album,
Masquerade (in stores Tuesday). Sweet Micky, the charismatic Haitian star,
is with him. Jean performs the song, set to the sweet beat of Haitian
compas, or kompa, in Creole.

''The storyline is about a kid who comes to America and works hard and
achieves what he wants: to become the MVP,'' Jean says.

But MVP stands not just for most valuable player, but for multicultural
visionary pioneer, he explains. The MVPs are an honorary posse, an extension
of the Refugee Camp he formed around the Fugees.

''The way he became this MVP is he took the compas and mixed it with the
hip-hop and the reggae, and he mashed it all into one sound. He's the MVP,''
Jean, 31, says in characteristically smug fashion. ``And that's me.''

The video tells this rags-to-riches story with footage shot at the mansion,
on a boat and in Little Haiti. In what's probably a first for a CD on a
major label, the MVP video is being released to Caribbean outlets at the
same time the video for the pop song Two Wrongs, also from Masquerade, is
sent to MTV. It's a novel move by the rapper, guitarist, songwriter and
producer who has almost single-handedly brought Haitian culture to the
American pop market.

''The Little Haiti part of the video represents the inspiration,'' Jean
says. ``It represents where my whole energy comes from. It's to show kids
you can go from a position of ghettoism to wherever you want to get to.
Don't let nobody tell you different.''

Jean's message to kids was given new visibility earlier this month when he
made headlines after being arrested in New York at a rally protesting cuts
in the city's schools budget. Police said the rapper was trying to perform
and that the organizers, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, did not have a
license for performances. Jean and organizers maintain he was merely trying
to speak.

Either way, it's another controversial incident in a career by an artist who
has strived for both mainstream respectability and street cred, sometimes
working at cross purposes.

On Masquerade, he cautions young listeners not to get caught up in a thug's
life. Then Jean, who affirms on the phone that he's a gun owner and
''marksman,'' offers some military advice on shooting techniques.

''In the form of sports, guns are fine,'' says Jean, who as a youth was shot
in the knee by thieves who had stolen his aunt's purse. ``Practicing on
objects and people is two different things.''

UP FROM POVERTY

Jean's biography is proof that MVP is not just a Horatio Alger fantasy. Born
in Haiti, Jean and his family moved to Brooklyn when he was 9, and then to
New Jersey. In 1996, the one-time drug-dealing projects kid became a pop
star; the Fugees' second album, The Score, was a worldwide crossover smash,
selling more than 11 million copies and winning two Grammys.

The Fugees soon imploded, but each of its members -- Jean, Lauryn Hill, and
Pras -- went on to successful solo careers. Jean's '97 debut, The Carnival,
was widely praised for its pan-Caribbean vision. Jean, who gave Destiny's
Child their signature sound on their song No, No, No, also became an
in-demand producer.

And yet when his father, a preacher, died in an accident last September (a
car he was working on collapsed on top of him), Jean suddenly felt that
maybe fame and fortune were lies -- a masquerade. On Masquerade, he looks
back at his life in search of meaning.

''The reason it's called Masquerade is because it's like my autobiography,''
Jean says over the phone from New York a few weeks after the video shoot,
and one week after his arrest. ``After my dad died, I wanted to take y'all
back to where me and my father started off. I remember being a shorty in the
hood, and he was like, you can take the ways of the guns, the drugs and the
violence, but that's a masquerade. Or you can do it the honest way, but
that's not a masquerade, and you'll be successful at the end.''

Masquerade track PJ's is a tribute to the projects in which Jean grew up.
(The CD includes a version of PJ's in Creole, done in the Haitian style
called racine.) The song 80 Bars describes his conversion from hustling herb
to hustling music: ''Living in the jungle, my guitar became my muscle.'' And
on Oh What a Night, he makes his ambitions clear: ``How could I become the
next Quincy Jones.''

The preacher's son wants to be a player. ''You could say I have half of
Miami,'' he says when asked how rooted he is in the city he calls his second
home. `` 'Clef is the Haitian Tommy Mottola.''

Along with Jones and Mottola, Jean compares himself to Emilio Estefan and
Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. He hopes to do for Haitian and other
Caribbean music what they did for Latin and reggae by starting a world beat
label, Sak Passé (Creole for ``what's up''). He predicts the label will be
up and running in a few months.

''Compas can be in those forefronts if it's done right,'' Jean explains.
``The same way Chris Blackwell put reggae on the map, the compas beat is an
incredible beat. The reason it's at a standstill and hasn't gone past a
certain level is people don't understand what's being said. If I could take
some of the beats and get some of the artists to voice it in English, then
people would start viewing it differently. Then they'll be able to
understand.''

Compas, however, has nowhere near as big an established audience as Latin
music, and no stars with the enormous talent of a Bob Marley.

''You should maximize the potential in your community first,'' says Cynthia
Blanc, producer of the Haitian Music and Entertainment Awards and publisher
of the magazine Tambour Battant. ``Until you can pack the Miami Arena or the
Orange Bowl, why try to cross over? Ricky Martin made it in Latin music
before Suzy from around the way in America wanted to start living La Vida
Loca. He didn't try to reach Suzy Beckford before reaching Juan Nuñez, like
Haitian artists do.''

Still, Blanc says, if anyone can help Haitian music reach a larger audience,
it's Jean. ''He has the secret ingredient,'' she continues. ``Most of the
musicians and artists, at least the younger generation, see him as a role
model and motivational tool to try to cross over. He can tell them what they
need to add to what they're doing now to appeal to other nationalities.
Young Haitian people are already proud of saying they're Haitian because of
him. Musicians would follow his lead or take his advice.''

MUSICAL ACTIVISM

Jean has always been a political artist; the term ''Fugees,'' after all, is
short for ''refugees.'' He has organized a couple of concerts at Bayside
that were benefits for the Wyclef Jean Foundation, a program -- now on
hiatus -- in which he mentored 20 disadvantaged youth. He bought them
instruments, gave them music lessons and provided them health and dental
care.

The New York rally protested the city's plans to cut $1 billion from the
schools' budget. (The week before Jean was arrested, Sex and the City star
Cynthia Nixon was arrested at another protest. The city is now reassessing
the cuts.)

''There was no disorderly conduct on my part,'' Jean says. ``The police
started yelling in my face. I went in to talk on behalf of the kids. They
arrested me and brought me to prison, all for a cause which the mayor did
hear.''

''Everyone's really proud of what he did,'' Hip-Hop Summit founder Russell
Simmons says. ``He created more energy and more publicity, he created
greater awareness of the issue.''

In February, Jean made a surprise appearance at the Bob Marley Caribbean
Festival on Virginia Key, joining Damian and Stephen Marley's set. It was
the first time he had appeared on the same stage as festival headliner
Lauryn Hill since the Fugees disbanded. But Jean says he did not see her,
nor has he talked to the artist, who that night revealed the dismal set of
songs that became her generally lambasted MTV Unplugged album.

''I think she's in a different head space,'' Jean says on the phone,
sounding somber. ``I just wish her the best and hope she can come around.''

At the video shoot, he has a more mischievous suggestion for Hill: ``She
needs to be an MVP.''



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