Amid a crowd that is as divers as the many different shades as Ray Ban, Wyclef Jean has the crowd’s attention-and he isn’t even on the stage.
The large video-screen backdrop begins playing a tape of `Clef c with his fellow Refugees. Almost as surprising, `Clef splits the video screen in two and slowly makes his way down the stairs to the stage. Pimped out in a matching red leather jacket and pants with a red scully and a white Panama hat, `Clef isn’t playing, he’s here to rock Saint Louis University, even if it is the Simon Recreation Center.
“We wanted to play last night, but we’ve heard so much about St. Louis,” said Wyclef. “It’s deep here, there is some deep church stuff under this city. We wanted to come out here and vibe the music. It’s so different, the music has almost a slave-chant feel to it.”
They enjoyed reminiscing about the good old days when Wyclef, Lauryn Hill, and Praswell rocked the music industry with The Score, but the Fugees have gone their separate ways. All three have dropped solo albums with Lauryn Hill and Wyclef, receiving critical and monetary success.
On his second album, The Ecleftic II Sides To A Book, Wyclef called out to his former Fugee mates on “Where the Fugees At?” “Lauryn if you’re listening/ Pras if you’re listening/ I’m in the lab at the Booker basement.” Since that time, the group has been in contact.
“Yeah, we’ve been in contact. We’re talking, the energy is much better. It’s a better vibe,” Wyclef said.
“Hopefully we’ll have something by 2001-2002,” `Clef said.
With a glimmer of hope for a new Fugee album, one has to wonder how these three separate individuals doing their own thing can mold into a unified hip-hop group.
“Hip-hop is a culture that started in the street and has moved around the world,” `Clef said. “In this culture there are the three basics of b-boying: graffiti, break dancing and rhyming.
“We came in wanting to be hip-hop musicians, wanting to play music. In years to come we’re gonna sing, rhyme, and play our guitars,” `Clef said.
`Clef does this on his newest album The Ecleftic. His album received a remarkable four and a half microphones in The Source, a feat rarely accomplished by some of the late great hip-hop acts of all time.
“It feels good to add another chapter to hip-hop. For a magazine like The Source to be listening to Pink Floyd and understanding it is cool. Hip-hop is a culture and you have to be ready for a culture shock.”
After working together on Canibus’ first album, Can-I-Bus and going into lyrical warfare against the “G.O.A.T.” L.L. Cool J, `Clef and Canibus had a falling out. Canibus blamed `Clef’s production for the less-than-spectacular sales. Since then, L.L. Cool J. has continued to lyrically shred any credibility that Canibus had in the mainstream, but left `Clef alone. On his latest album, L.L. spits a verse telling of how he and Wyclef set Canibus up to fail from the beginning.
“What he was saying lyrically was more humor. It was a classic L.L. dis, he’s going for the jugular,” `Clef said.
`Clef has only received one dis from L.L. even after he answered on the B side to his “Cheated” single. “What’s `Clef (Got To Do With It)” called out L.L. in classic hip-hop style.
“Me and him were cool after that. He noticed I wasn’t Canibus. I can rip the underground and still be mainstream, he got that. I have credibility in both,” `Clef said.
Despite `Clef’s past collaboration challenges, he remains an “Ecleftic” pillar of the hip-hop community.
