Mawazine 2016: Wyclef Jean still mixing it up ahead of album release

Jean recently returned to the music world and began working on his first album in seven years. In his eighth album, Carnival Volume 3: The Road to Clefication, due for release this year, he says fans should expect more variety.

Haitian musician Wyclef Jean at this year’s Mawazine Festival in Morocco. Photo by Sife Elamin

If there is one person Forest Whitaker should have thanked when accepting his 2006 Oscar, it was Wyclef Jean.

The way the Haitian musician tells it, he was in the running to play the towering role of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the film The Last King of Scotland.

“They called me to do the audition and they said they were thinking of giving me the part because of my accent,” says Jean, behind the scenes at the Mawazine Festival in Morocco, which ends on Saturday, May 28.

“And then when they told me how long I had to be there, I was like, ‘Somebody else better play Idi Amin, that’s too long.’”

The filmmakers got Whitaker and the rest is history.

Jean’s comments could be taken as a joke if it wasn’t him making them. His ambitions have always stretched far beyond music, taking in politics and humanitarian work, with a handful of film and television roles along the way.

Since making a name as one- third of the hip-hop group Fugees – with Lauryn Hill and Pras – the 46-year-old has released a string of eclectic solo albums, become a songwriter for hire and launched a part-time acting career that has included roles in hit TV dramas Third Watch and Nashville.

His biggest songwriting triumph remains his co-writer credit on 2005's Hips Don't Lie by Colombian star Shakira. It became one of the biggest-selling pop singles, with more than 16 million copies.

Jean used the freedom offered by the cash boost it provided to undertake his biggest challenge yet – running in the 2010 Haitian presidential elections.

With Haiti known for its political volatility, Jean recalls many friends in the music industry urging him not to run.

“They thought I was out of my mind. They said, ‘You can get killed in a street in Brooklyn, so why go to Haiti and get killed?’.”

In the end, his campaign was over almost before it began – the Haitian government disqualified the New York-based star for not having lived in the country for the required period of five years before an election.

Jean looks back at the experience with no regrets.

“Whenever you dabble into politics and humanitarian work, people begin throwing rocks at you,” he says. “But you have to understand that during the course of living, you have a birth date and death date, and the only thing that centuries will remember is the space in the middle.”

Done with politics, Jean recently returned to the music world and began working on his first album in seven years.

He has already released two singles that showcase his trademark eclectic sounds.

My Girl, released last month, is a riot of sonic of flavours with Caribbean rhythms, horns and sun-kissed vocals by Jean and up-and-coming soul artist Sasha Mari.

The track is a follow-up to last year's Divine Sorrow, a straight- up club jam co-written and produced by Swedish EDM star Avicii.

In his eighth album, Carnival Volume 3: The Road to Clefication, due for release this year, Jean says fans should expect more variety.

“I am basically picking up where I left off,” he says. “It’s like a global gumbo and I [cook] everything. I want the music to be everlasting – and to do that I am coming from a global base and not a local base.”

Meanwhile, plenty of fans would love to see the Fugees reform. Their last album was the 1996 hip-hop classic The Score.

Jean says he is open to a return to the studio with Hill and Pras.

“I always look forward to doing some work with the Fugees,” he says. “I say that nothing is impossible and everything is possible.”

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