The Last Word: Wyclef Jean

You recently joined Lauryn Hill to make a Fugees cameo at Jay-Z’s London show. What was that experience like?  

Well, it’s just like Jay said, we go way back. I’m tied to the hip with Beyoncé and him, and it just felt good because at the end of the day, you know, we’re all just a bunch of kids that love hip-hop music, right? 

It’s always important that the young generation coming up really understands hip-hop too, like, they’re studying the culture, they’re reading the proper books, you know what I’m saying? So Jay-Z is one of the books if you’re talking about hip-hop; you got to know that dude and you gotta know that movement. That’s how we all started, so it was a catch-up moment. It was a surreal moment. An eclipse. It was also Beyoncé’s birthday. 

You’ve got a special relationship with the UK and you’ve only deepened that now by performing at the second British Museum Ball.  

Well, for me, my relationship with the UK, my obsession probably starts with my name, right? My father named me after John Wycliffe, the Christian reformer who translated the first book of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He was the man who translated the Bible into English, remember, so that’s sort of where it starts – when your daddy gives you a Haitian and English name.

But when I came to the UK, I looked at people like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley because they showed that if nobody got you musically, the UK would always be the place where you’d find your other aliens somewhere in a club, somewhere in a pub. You could find your own Martians. And as for the museum, my love for history is without question. I got the chance to go [to the museum] a few weeks back and it was so fascinating. I’m fascinated by mummies. The idea of archiving all that time and place. Putting Wyclef in a museum is like putting a kid in a candy store.  

I’ve always believed that to understand where we’re going, we have to understand where we come from. History and music both carry the stories of humanity. To bring them together at the British Museum is something very special.

You’re releasing seven albums over the course of a year too, as part of the Quantum Leap project. [Vol. 1 was released in August and Vol. 2 will be released on 30 October, with further releases to come]. That’s quite an undertaking.  

I’m two down and five to go, but it’s been pretty amazing. I think the whole game is being changed and I’m the first alien on the planet to do a project like this, because it started seven years ago, but I’m always looking towards the future.  

Music is free, right, and when a gazillion songs come out every day, you have to wonder what impact can come from somebody who did The Score [The Fugees’ second album], which shifted over 22 million copies, and worked with Santana on ‘Maria Maria’ which did ten million. You have to wonder what’s next, so I thought, ‘I’m gonna reset the button.’ There’s seven chapters and a celebration of everything I’ve been doing for the last seven years. The first album, Clef Notes, is a biography, the second, Q Theory,is my jazz album dedicated to Quincy Jones, the third is One Night in Kingston, my reggae album, the fourth is Preach, because I’m a preacher boy and I love gospel, and the fifth is probably gonna be my mother’s favourite – it’s the country album. Anybody that knows about Caribbean music knows that country music is just a natural thing for us. The sixth, Grown and Sexy, is the R&B album, and the seventh is Mayhem, which feels like a celebration like Notting Hill Carnival.  

You mentioned the future, and there’s been a lot of musicians fearful of AI’s capabilities. What’s your take on it?  

I’m on the same side as Dr. Dre, right? We’re engineers, we’re producers, it’s just another tool for us, right? Whoever’s scared of it doesn’t know how to use it; we’re geniuses so what the hell can AI do for me? I have a quote I teach my students, we say, “I am the master of AI. AI is not the master of I, therefore, I am I.” Any tool used respectfully, you’ll be fine. When people listen to The Score, there’s a whole nerdy aspect which they don’t have a clue about, right? I was recording on analogue 456 Ampex tape and I couldn’t always afford a big studio. AI can be a tool because if I need a flute to sound like the Taj Mahal, the player ain’t always there. So AI can be used as a tool to make it deeper. The bad side is the idea of plagiarism because the average person could use it to make a song and be like “H, can you make another song like Wyclef’s ‘911’ for me?” And so what we have to make sure as musicians is that these machines are not being trained to steal our material, and if they are stealing our material, we have to be ready to countersue because if you can’t countersue, then nothing’s gonna happen. 

You made a bid to run as President of Haiti in 2010. Would you consider running again?

After my experience there I know my position is greater than the president, right? My position is to influence politics, and in order to do that, I’m gonna push for great governance, right? Why don’t we have more IT programs where we can offer more jobs?

How can I give a couple hundred thousand people work and send kids to school? Charity is not the way, right. The way is like to implement great policy and and great governance, fight for anti-corruption law So I’m never gonna stop that fight because that’s the biggest fight, because if we can get that part right then the kids in the future of Haiti will definitely have a chance.

But politically, I won’t run for office because it’ll tie my feet. That’s what what I learned from politics, I’m just a little too sexy to have my feet tied, you know what I’m saying.

Lauryn [Hill] said you’re both in a good place earlier this year. Could more Fugees tunes materialise?

Well, the the beautiful thing about like me and Lauryn is that we’ve always been Storm & Wolverine since we were kids, right? We have these twin powers that when we activate, like it goes crazy.

So when I say like I’m in a good place, you have to understand, me and Lauryn have never had musical problems, right, but we’re both so artsy and so judgmental of our craft.

But at the end of the day, what we will not do is put something out and name it something just because we want to clout chase and name it something. It’s gotta be good enough.

We’re both just insane geniuses and whatever that project is, it’s not gonna be The Score. We’re vibing, you know what I’m saying to you, and once we vibe, the beautiful thing is you don’t know what’s coming, but it just feels special because it’s that thing that you’re feeling when you see both of us.

Your Fugees bandmate Pras was jailed for 14 years in 2025 for illegal lobbying. Have you spoken to him?

I send messages to Pras via a brother named Ben. I was on the Joe Buddenn show, and then what I said on the Joe Budden show was, and, and I’ll definitely stand by that, is that I feel like the sentence was pretty harsh, you know what I mean? I did not know Pras for any form of criminality when I was coming up with him and he has kids, so I pray that he gets clemency.

What’s inspiring you in 2026?

In my head I can’t separate young from old. But I could tell you when I listen to someone like Olivia Dean, right, that it’s nostalgic and pretty dope. I have a lot of love for music coming out of Brazil and I even spent some time in the favelas for my jazz album. A lot of the rhythms out of there inspire me. Another place is India, the vibes coming out of there musically are massive.

A lot of DJs too. I recently DJ’d in Ibiza with Black Coffee and I do that under the name DJ Afrikali Jean. In fact, the first song I ever released was a house music song . I was 18 years old and it’s called ‘Out of the Jungle‘, and I did this song. I got the call from Black Coffee, but I told him I wasn’t going to do it as Wyclef. The lights were off for 3.5 hours and I’m going crazy and then at the end I turn on the lights and I’m like, Yo, this is your boy Wyclef Jean! No one had realised because the lights were off.

You had a massive UK hit with ‘Perfect Gentleman’. Who to you is the most perfect gentleman that you’ve ever met, Wyclef? 

That’s the coolest question and it’s so easy to name. The coolest, perfect gentleman I’ve ever met in the world, man, is my OG Tom Jones, man. That’s the perfect gentleman, bro, and that’s what I’m gonna be like when I’m old. Tom Jones for life, bro.

Wyclef Jean will headline the British Museum Ball on October 17.