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Wyclef Jean VibeZ

Sixty-two tracks from a Haitian-American producer, rapper, singer and guitarist who has never once stayed inside a genre for a whole album.


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Wyclef Jean

Wyclef Jean was born in Haiti, raised in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and came to prominence in The Fugees, whose The Score (1996) is one of the best-selling and most influential hip-hop albums ever made.

His solo work is defined by restlessness. A single album will contain hip-hop, reggae, Haitian kompa, soca, folk guitar, gospel and Spanish-language pop, and he plays guitar throughout — which is unusual in hip-hop and central to how his records sound.

He has also been a significant figure in Haitian public life, running a foundation, campaigning after the 2010 earthquake, and attempting a presidential run. The catalogue is inseparable from that.

What to listen for

"Guantanamera" with Lauryn Hill, Celia Cruz and Jeni Fujita is the most ambitious thing here — a Cuban standard rebuilt as a multilingual posse cut, with the queen of salsa on it.

"We Trying to Stay Alive" is the one everyone knows, built on the Bee Gees, and it is funnier than its ubiquity suggests.

"Gone Till November" aside, "911" with Mary J. Blige is the best-sung record on the list.

"Diallo" with Youssou N'Dour is the most serious — about Amadou Diallo, the unarmed Guinean immigrant shot forty-one times by New York police in 1999, and it is a considerable piece of protest writing.

"Yelé" and "Lady Haiti" are the Haitian records and the heart of the catalogue; Yéle became the name of his foundation.

"Two Wrongs" with Claudette Ortiz and "It Doesn't Matter" are the pop hits, the second featuring Dwayne Johnson, which is exactly as unlikely as it sounds.

"Carry On" with Emeli Sandé is the late collaboration, and "Year of the Dragon" is the Lauryn Hill reunion.

Go deeper

The Carnival (1997) is the essential solo album and one of the most genuinely international hip-hop records ever made. The Ecleftic (2000) is the follow-up.

The Fugees' The Score is the necessary starting point, and Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is where that story goes next.

Listening note: the guitar is always his. He plays across almost everything here, which is rare in hip-hop and is the thread that holds an otherwise wildly promiscuous catalogue together — kompa, soca, folk, gospel and rap all sound like one artist because the same instrument is underneath them.

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