The School of Greatness - 457 Wyclef Jean: The Making of Greatness in Music & Life

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

"Music is a vibration before a language." - Wyclef Jean If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/457

This is episode number 457 with multi-platinum artist Wyclef John. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone today to our interview with Wyclef John.

I am so pumped. Right when Wyclef walked in the studio, he saw that I had some on it kettlebells. And we started to do a little workout together. He lifted like a hundred pound kettlebell while I had like a 50 pounder and he was a machine. Then he went in to play some music. We talked about jazz. We rapped out about the jazz world and talked about my brother and his experience in jazz. And man, we set this up for an incredible experience for you. I'm super pumped for you to dive in, to listen and to wrap your mind around what you're about to hear.

For those that don't know who Wyclef Jean is he is a lyricist, singer, musician, producer, poet, songwriter and what I just learned about him he's a calisthenics champion as well. Now the music that Wyclef has written, performed and produced both as a solo superstar and as a founder and guiding member of the Fugees, has been a consistently powerful pop cultural force for over two decades. In 1996, the Fugees released their monumental album, The Score. studio in his uncle's basement in New Jersey and it hit number one on the billboard charts, spawned a trio of smash singles and is now certified six times platinum. But what I love

about Wyclef is he was a child prodigy with a wealth of musical influences from jazz to classical rock to reggae and he resisted the pressure to duplicate the same sound and style of that masterwork with the Fugees. Instead, he's launched himself as a producer and solo artist whose work drew from an innovative and eclectic palette that included elements of pop, country, folk, disco, Latin, and electronic music. And after we did this interview, I got the chance to hang out with Wyclef before he performed a set at the YouTube space here in LA. And it was just so

fascinating to see how he builds other artists up. He had other artists there that he was collabing with. And it was so cool to see how he engages with other people to lift everyone up around him. And we're going to talk more about that, how he finds the superstars and really supports them. And what it does to keep him staying at the top 20 years later after he hit number one with his album with the Fugees. And some of the things we're covering today are how music saved his life from growing up in the roughest neighborhoods of Haiti and in New York City. The stories of how Wyclef helped Beyonce, Shakira, and other superstars write their breakout hits, why he ran for president of Haiti, and how he continues to give back to his country now, and also how he almost got assassinated. Then we talk about how to communicate and relate to the rising generation through art and creativity.

Also, what it takes to come back to an industry you've left for years. That and so much more. Guys, we wrapped it out for a while, and I hope to bring him back on sometime in the future because there's so much wealth of information and stories that he has to share, and I know you're going to love this one. Before we dive in, I want to give a shout-out to the reviewer of the week. We've got over 1,300 five-star reviews over on iTunes,

and all of your reviews matter. They help us stay in the top 100 of the rankings on iTunes. So please head over there and leave a review right now if you find this interview helpful in any way or if you found this podcast helpful for you, go to itunes.com slash greatness. And the reviewer of the week is from Fit Rocket Scientist, who said, This podcast rocks.

Lewis Howes generates extraordinary content with his guests. This podcast should be on everyone's top list. The positive energy and years of knowledge shared in each episode make this podcast truly great. So the Fit Rocket Scientist, thank you so much for your review. There's dozens of reviews every single week, and you were the reviewer of the week. Guys, make sure to share this one out right now. lewishouse.com slash 457. We'll send you right to the show notes.

You can watch the full video over on YouTube there as well. All the photos and some behind-the-scenes videos of Wyclef performing and playing in the studio also. Go back to lewishouse.com slash 457 after this to watch those. Share this with your friends right now. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Wyclef John. Carnival One, that was a classic.

It was like your dorm smoking weed album. Yep. We were listening to it before. Yeah. So the three, so now the Carnival 2 had, ah, yeah, that's Juve right there, baby. Hendrix. That's my story right there. It is good

So we're listening to the greatest hits It's like your brother's story You know what I'm saying We share that story right there You were in Juvie? I had my whole team was You know what I mean More than Juvie locked up

Really? Were you locked up ever? That song is a song of choice Yeah Now I know They call me Speedy, baby. He got away. You know, I almost got, I was never as bad as my brother or probably you, but luckily I had some wheels and I got away from cops one time when I was like 12.

Wow. I was just breaking into a, I don't think I've ever told this story, but I was breaking into, are we rolling just to make sure the audio is rolling? But I was rolling, I was in delaware ohio where i grew up in ohio small town yeah north of columbus yeah small town ohio wesleyan university is there and i'm um just like bored you know just like a bored kid and i go to the uh the track at ohio wesleyan and there happens to be like in the arena underneath the track or whatever or the stands there's like a vending machine.

And so I just get the idea to like shake it to see if I can get some change out of it. Right? You know what I'm saying? Just trying to get some quarters. Because I like to go buy baseball cards or whatever. And then all of a sudden I was with a friend of mine who was a little older than me and all of a sudden he starts like banging it. He a sudden, he starts banging it.

He's strong. He starts banging it. Quarters are coming out, right? Then we find a crowbar, and we're smashing the coin box. It's like winning a jackpot, just flooding out a quarter, quarter, quarter. Then all of a sudden, we're banging away for a good 10 minutes, getting more quarters. All of a sudden, we hear a sound. Down the way, we see the cop car

close the car yeah we sprint my friend he was like 16 17 i was 12 or whatever he was much faster and more athletic than i was and uh he well there was literally like a 10-foot fence i've never seen a human jump so high and he just leaped over and grabbed and threw himself over and i was like trying to climb up and uh somehow we got away though man you'd be surprised man luckily what the human body can do when it feels the fear yeah when that fear kick in with danger oh my goodness you'd be surprised yeah yeah what was the craziest thing you got into the craziest almost trouble no i mean you know i got into mad trouble when i was younger you know i always say like my mama bought me a guitar that saved my life you know coming from haiti i'm from a poor environment i used to eat dirt in the floor my brother you know i mean just take a donkey to school the idea of

electricity we didn't have that you know what i mean so think of that i lived like that till i was 10 years old right so and we we lived i mean our village practically was like called dirt village and we literally where we lived at was like we lived um the whole village was so small but our amusement park was a cemetery if that you know what i'm saying i'm just showing you how where we come from you feel what i'm saying to you so we from from. You feel what I'm saying? That's what I said. Ain't nothing nobody could do to me. How can you kill me? I was already dead, man.

And I came to life. You feel me? Because we're from that place where it's forgotten. It's like the land of the lost, for real. Coming from that small town. Because even you could hear of haiti but then the small little tiny villages of haiti you would never know like names so for me you know so by the time i got to 10 i was i lived in the projects in brooklyn so that was like the first time i saw electricity

i saw a building i ain't even know what that was right so when when me and my brother was looking at the city lights he was like what's that i was like yo um that's uh there's diamonds because you know in the village they told us like america was like they were so rich in america that like diamonds you know they fell from the sky so it's literally like so you would think like it's almost like we was living like the indians in primitive times right before or think about it like in america when the war was over and people thought the war still was going on in certain places that's really how so um so the projects we come from is called marlboro projects con Coney Island. You know what I'm saying to you? So when I talk on my album, like the Carnival one, and I talk about like, you know, you catch a bullet in your goose, you know, like it was real. You know what I'm saying to you?

Like at 12 years old, you pick up your first gun. You know what I mean? Wow. You know, you learn how to sell things very quick to a crack fiend. And you know the crack fiend will buy anything for the drugs. And then at the same time, you barely speak in English. You're getting in elevators, smelling like piss. You see what I'm saying to you?

Other people getting in the elevator with you. People try to shake you down. And then a body's on the roof like every month. This was Marlboro projects like so you got to think about it so once again i left one extreme came to another you know what i'm saying so in brooklyn they kill a stream with nothing to another stream of a lot more fear and scary stuff yeah definitely but where we came from so in brooklyn um they basically one of my cousins that got killed but like we all was you know we all moved together

and you know sometimes i always felt like the bullet was for me you feel me so um but we was very tough we fought with our hands we fought with blades whatever we had it was like warriors come out to play for real where we come from so um and i mean you saw me like out there with you like the way like because i was always like little you know what i mean but i take i'd be like yo bring on the biggest guy bring on andre the giant and i'm gonna take him down and i would take down like the big dudes because where we come from is sort of like you just have a big heart you know what i'm saying and i was never for um people thinking that they're gonna punk little people so i never used to go for that, the idea of somebody think they're going to bully a block. So my parents assumed that I would get killed very fast.

So we left Brooklyn, and they moved us over to New Jersey. How far from the city? So Jersey, where we was going to, man, it was like an hour and a half. Okay. Yeah, and we moved to another place called newark new jersey that's just rough exactly i know newark yeah so we moved to like the car theft capital of the world at the time yeah so that was another movie and a half you know what i'm saying so how old are you when you're in uh when i was in newark i was like 15 wow but the thing was every week we back and

forth in brooklyn because my family was going like between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I remember like my mom literally I remember she was like you can get further with with a guitar than a gun I remember those words you see what I'm saying to you because um it was like I always felt like I had to have like a gun or a machete. You're carrying around a gun or a knife all the time? Yeah, yeah. I used to have guns, man. Really? Yeah, 22s.

When you were 16? Oh, yeah, yeah. We didn't play. You feel me? Holy cow. Yeah. I mean, that's why. I'm talking about beating up a vending machine.

Well, that's why we don't glorify it. Right. That's why the Fugees never glorify it. So when someone is telling me, like, yo, I'll shoot you. My boys will shoot you. We so crack. I'm like, yeah, so what? Like, who didn't do that in the hood?

Like, tell me a story I don't know. Like, we did that, but we not doing that no more. Like, what we're doing is we're elevating the youth. So I never speak about like i never like glorify that's why whether if it's crips blood latin kings it don't matter like my story is a deep one like you know i mean i i go to any hood anytime because it's it's more like a respect factor because i know if i didn't make it i would have been one of them right right? So I celebrate life. And then when I go see them, like they're like, yo, Clef, you know, we definitely we check for you because we know you ain't just going to give us a speech and then go back to your mansion. Like we know, like we see you in the ground in Haiti.

Like we see how you move. Like you ran for president. You almost got assassinated. You got shot at you know so so um so at times i pinch myself because to just be here and to be alive and every time people come to my show they'll be like yo man show's so crazy you're such a nice guy you know and i'm like yeah because of where i come from i have to celebrate life because 80 of my homiesies, they're not like in the song Hendrix. It's a song of choice.

I was like, yo, when I was playing Jimi Hendrix in the trap, them dudes was in the trap, you know, wanting to be El Chapo. So all of this stuff is around you. And it's real. It's not like a movie. It's sort of like you will be tempted because if you're working at mcdonald i remember i was working at burger king dude and my cousins used to pull up in the bm you feel me just to mess with me like yo why clef gene there we'll have 17 packs of fries four whoppers don't forget man the hard-working man a sucker hurry up bro and you

know and then they put you know and it's your fam you know what i'm saying and you're tempted dude i mean you're a teen you see this you see this car you're like yo man like you want that so what is it that make you be like okay you know what i'm gonna keep working in this fast food restaurant i'm gonna be a security guard with a flashlight. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. Like you do all of these things and you believe in the myth because it's a myth because it's not a reality because where you're from, you don't see nobody making it

but these guys. It's like the pimps, the drug dealers. You know what I mean? Around the block. Yeah, around the block. And then most of the preachers where we come from are pimps anyway so this is what we grew up where we saw so for you to be like okay man i'm not gonna do any of this yo it takes a lot of will wow crazy man how did

you have that will to know that you were gonna make something yourself besides doing what everyone else is doing? Well, all I knew was whenever I did music, I escaped, right? So I had one of my brothers. He came from Haiti with me. He's a lawyer today. I remember we used to be in the project roof when we first came from Haiti, and we was on the roof, and we looked at each other, and I was like, what are you going be and he was like yo i'm gonna be a lawyer really and we speak in creole not even english he was like yo what

you're gonna be a somebody a gangster man because i gotta get mama out of this neighborhood and then it's good you're gonna be a lawyer so you can get me out of jail so and he's a lawyer today. So for me, like all of these realities, like we face them together. And my escape was music. So like music was my escape. And I used to collect like baseball cards when I was younger, right? I had like the Reggie Jacksons. Because you could collect so many ball cards, right? Because I heard you say like baseball cards. So we used to, because you would, depending many ball cards, right? Because I heard you say, like, baseball cards.

So we used to, because you would, depending on the year of the card you collected, you know it's worth a lot of money, right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, of course. So we would, so that was, like, some of the hustle that we was doing. But for me, whenever I was doing music, it completely took me away from everything. Completely took me away from everything. And so being like my father was a minister, like Marvin Gaye's father, he did not want you listening to rap music, everything. So the household was very Christian theology.

You know, my name actually is named after my name is Wyclef John. Wyclef John is the Englishman. He's a he's a Protestant. after my name is Wyclef John. Wyclef John is an Englishman. He's a Protestant. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first English translation is from Wyclef John in the time of like Martin Luther. So I'm just showing you how deep, like this dude naming me,

and he named my brother after like a Swedish priest. My brother got a crazy name. So this how, and this dude, my dad from haiti i'm like you super twisted dude like you from haiti you naming me after english dude my brother so just to show you how religious this dude was so then we could not play the idea of rap music he called it drug dealer music you could not listen to this stuff so literally we had i had a walkman and then the walkman you know what i'm saying we had a little radio and that's how i used to sneak and get the cassettes from the hood and put it in the sony walkman and listen to it and

then uh my brother he was different he was listening to other things and i was listening so he would come to me and be like yo um you need to check this out it's a it's a crazy band and i'm like yo who that he like the police i'm like man i ain't i don't got love for no police i ain't listening to nothing call the police he was like nah check this out this the police synchronicity you're gonna dig it and the cassette was a black and white cassette it said the police and it says synchronicity you're gonna dig it and the cassette was a black and white cassette it said the police and it says synchronicity on it and then i put it on and then i was like yo this is rad man it's cool he was like yeah it's this dude from england i think his name sting so peep how we're just in the hood discovering all this stuff so he was more into he was putting me up on one side of music he was listening

to and then i would be like yo check this out you know what i'm saying yo this guy he's a battle rapper he'd be going around smacking people uh after he wins battles or if you're gonna battle him he'll just show up and take you out he was like yo what's his name i'll be like yo it's this guy his name is krs1 he's from the bronx and then so we just share and we kept so all of this sharing while killing is going on outside somehow we was able to escape all of that and i i think i always say like till today and it's sort of like so if it's jeopardy it's like give me or my brother music for 500 we We can't lose. Because whether if it's classical, country, blues, you know, it's sort of like every kid has something they're obsessed with. And people be like, how are you so eclectic?

I said, look, that's like my little nephews. They'll sit in front of a video game and play it all day and can play with people in all parts of the world. And they're real good in the video. I said, whatever part of the brain you decide to put your mind to, you're going to rock. Absolutely. Man, that's amazing. Who was the most influential artist for you growing up,

either artist or song, that really shaped you? I mean, obviously it all shaped you. Yeah. I would say for me it was probably Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and like Jimi Hendrix. Yeah. Those was like I was in. And then the other side where I got obsessed with.

So you had that side. And then later on when I turned 16, it was Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and this drummer called Art Blakey, like the way he just used to play. And then I was like, man, and Quincy Jones. So I was like, yo, I was like, Quincy Jones made me think like deeper than jazz. He made me think like, OK, if you learn every part of this jazz, you will have a life like he because he showed you like you can have a life past jazz right because the best jazz musicians are just the best in the world i mean but it's like calculus it's amazing it's like another level of genius yeah you learn calculus but the average norm don't use it they use addition and subtraction so you you're weird. It's not mainstream. Yeah, you're weird to a big portion of the world. Like you show up and you're speaking a coded language.

You know what I'm saying? But Quincy Jones was like, yo, if you can get past the coded language and this is how you could do popular music, there's someone called Michael Jackson. So you're studying all of this. You know what I'm saying? And then you start to believe that you can do it. Wow. Wow, man. And who was the most influential parent for you growing up?

Well, I would say definitely my mama. My mom was softer than my dad. My dad was tough. But my mom, you know, I was like a mama boy because she always – because I always told her I'm going to get you out the hood. And she was like a mama boy because she always because I always told her I'm gonna get you out the hood and she was like how and I was like cuz I'm gonna be a big star and She was like a star from Haiti. I was like, yeah, she was like well name one star from Haiti that has been

Successful in your entire lifetime matter of fact, let's go back to who's the most famous Haitian and then I was like well Toussaint Louverture uh and Wyclef Jean but I was saying that when I was little to her she was like you're so crazy but so my mom she had that belief man I know she had that belief at a young age and um and she was, you know, I love my pops. My pops was cool, but it was like tough love. Sure, of course. And my mom, I could always escape to her.

Yeah, she was like your music. Yeah, definitely. That's cool. I know a couple of Haitian, well, semi-well-known Haitians. I played against, in college, I played against a wide receiver

named Pierre Garçon, who's now in the NFL for the last 12 years and top wide receiver. Garçon. Garçon. Garcon. And then a buddy of mine, Caduce. He was a host on TRL on MTV for the last six, seven years.

Of course. I know Caduce very well. He's a buddy of mine. I think he's Canadian, but he's from Haiti originally. Yeah, yeah. That's my man. Shout out to Caduce. Yeah, Caduce is a good guy.

Well, I didn't even do really an official introduction, but welcome to the school of greatness. We've got Wyclef in the house, lyricist, singer, musician, producer, poet, songwriter. And before we even started, found out you're a calisthenics champion, fitness guru. I don't play, baby. We don't play. In the hood, you can't play. I love it.

You get that monkey bar, you got to go for it, man. I love it, man. And also, I love that we were talking about how my brother loves jazz, and that's really kind of the foundation. You really got into jazz early on. Yeah, big time. And you learned self-taught 12 different instruments. Is that right?

Yeah, man. And I think that's even cooler to know that you came from learning jazz and appreciating it, Because most people don't. They get into pop music just by getting into it. So I think it's really cool. Yeah, no, definitely. And you've done so many. I mean, the facts about you go on and on.

I mean, you were playing the Santana song. What's that song called? Oh, Maria Maria. Maria Maria. Maria Maria. Before you wrote that song, you co-wrote Shakira's Hips Don't Lie, which was like a global phenomenon for a number of years.

Well, it's funny because the Shakira song, I wrote it two years prior to Shakira. You ever seen the movie Havana Nights? It's like a crazy dance. Yes. It's like they try to redo Dirty Dancing. Yes, yes. And I actually watched it for the Dirty Dancing parts.

So, you know what I mean? Because I like dancing. But I did it for Havana Nights on another artist. That's what I was telling you with that whole Quincy Jones scheme. I did it two years ago because there was a clef. We need music for a movie. And being up from Haiti, you know cuba it's all in my blood so i did this record man and it was another artist that i had called claudette artis

and claudette artis is from a group i had called city high at the time what would you do if your man was at home and then yeah i have wrote that song so i I was like, she's going to be the one. So my whole thing was to try to get her to blow up to the next level and use Hips Don't Lie. So I did it for her. And Clive was like, I don't think this song's a hit. So the song just sat there. And then two years later. So she sang it and played it and recorded it.

This is what I'll trip you out. If you go back to the Havana Night soundtrack two years prior to Shakira, anyone that's listening, you will hear the exact same song. Song by someone else. That's right. Wow. So I'm showing you, like, I'm always ahead of my time. I'm an alien.

But how could you do a song like two years prior? Now, two years later, I get a call from Don Deana. He's like, yo, Clef, you know, we got the artist shakira do you know i'm like of course i know she cares there yo we need you know and then so charlie walk who's like a music guru he came to the studio he heard it started jumping he was like yo let's call shakira right now so we called Shaki I got on the phone and she's like hello I love this song I love so and then so it's so it's so funny because I'd be saying the music business is different than the music two different things the music business is Hollywood it's like do you want to be in films like if you want to be in popular films, that's the music business.

Like, the music business don't have no time for no super creativity. Like, it doesn't. Like, it's entertainment. Now, lucky you if you, so that's why they said those that find that middle and are able to do both and and work out because it's not you know so it's not creative doing the music business no because it's the music business you gotta have something to show so when Shakira said her hips don't lie and in the video we saw her hips don't lie now this is show business that means okay let the song begin now we Clem. We believe this part. So as a producer, too, you grow, you learn. And I was like, wow, it's so funny.

It's like a writer who writes a hit movie, and the movies stay underground unless this actor convinced the crowd that, you know what I mean? Some people has those gifts. So that's how The Hips Don't Lie ended up being like, yo, gigantic. It's like top three of all times. It's crazy. Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Hipstone Live. These are like the three biggest airplay of all time. So it tripped me out because I was like, yo, this song literally was sitting on a soundtrack.

And I always tell people, go back and you'll hear the exact same song. You'll trip out, man. That's crazy. Hilarious. people go back and you'll hear the exact same song you'll trip out man that's crazy hilarious so how do you convince someone who says no it's not a hit a big person who's you know in the music business who has a lot of decision making he's like no it's not a good song and then how do you bring it back to life well i think that you know we all need coaches and to get to the Super Bowl, right, or to win the NBA championship or to win the World Cup, you still need the coach. And Clive Davis is one of the best coaches in the game. Now, like, we all seen Super Bowl.

Like, we all watch NBA. Like, so the coach can give a play. And let's say out of 10, maybe he misses two, but his record's for eight, right? That's Clive. So at the end of the day, he's still Clive, and the fact that he was like, I needed you to do this song was enough to put me in that play.

And in that play, he might not have seen that I was about to dunk. And that's okay. But he knew that, okay, Clef's a starter. So as long as he puts me in the starter, you know, and so I see that. I respect him. You know, he's like a godfather. Sure, sure.

You know, he was like at my dad's funeral. He's one of them execs that actually care for artists. You know what I mean? But I was like, man, this thing is a hit. I could feel it in my bones. I think this thing is a cultural phenomenon. But when the Godfather tells you no, so you sit back and then you wait your turn, right? And then I was like, yo, coach, put me in the game.

Put me in the game. And then Donny Ina put me right back in the game. It was like, yo, I said, okay, we're going to get it. You're speaking my language about all the coaching and the sports sports business i love it man my analogies though i mean sports and music i mean that's all day like you see the relevancy is crazy i remember when kobe we was at sony you know what i mean and like kobe kobe could play right yeah kobe could play Kobe can play, right? Yeah. Kobe can play. Kobe was doing, I remember Kobe was doing an album. I remember that. I remember Shaq.

Oh, yeah. Shaq was doing an album. This is all the time like the Fugees. So we all had, so this was all going on at Sony. And so once again, there's a whole thing. They always say like great sport guys want to be musicians, and we musicians want to be musicians and we musicians want to be sports

it's trippy like the NBA All-Star game I had Andy Grammar on recently and he was like Snapchatting the last weekend about at the end

of the All-Star game just playing basketball it's like all he cares about yeah big time so funny here's what I love about you Wyclef you are

you're a big star in your own right you've written so many of your own great songs, but you also find and develop other talent that aren't big. You kind of break them, is what I'm hearing you say. You're really good at finding people, knowing where to position and put them. You like to lift people up, is what I hear you say. What is that? Most artists want the fame for themselves, and they want all the recognition recognition and they want to be the biggest.

It doesn't seem like you have that in you. You've got your fame. You've got your gifts. You've got your money. But you're elevating the world also. Yeah. Well, I mean, really, like, so, like, the mind of Einstein, right? Relativity.

So the thing is we all really need each other. And sometimes we don't really pay attention to it, right? I'm only as good as you are. And you're only as good as I am. And what does that mean? That basically means that each one teach one. So what happens is, you know, we go back to the sports analogy. So Kobe is dope.

But there's some young Kobe that could cross on kobe right now right and and remember when jordan was at the top kobe came and we knew he's like yo this kid but there's something that happens when you embrace when you embrace so i always believe like whether if it's great philosophers man it could be something that's written like 2000 years ago. What is it that when a person was writing that makes us still apply these philosophies today? It's because it came from a point of non-selfishness. The person was like, let me create something that can inspire a generation to create something and the next generation to create something and continue so for me when i met lauren lauren was like barely 14 years old yeah so it was like i was like okay so we i was like okay um she has a gift and coming from the church being around singers i was like

okay she has a gift we're gonna rock so how'd you how'd you find her or meet in the first place so i used to do like a lot of off broadway plays there was a play i was doing called club 12 and i remember prize i was in my daddy's church he was like yo man i got this group man i'm in the studio i'm doing a song with two girls but i need a reggae part and i was like how do girls look you know what i'm saying because you know i thought i was the haitian fonts i like how they look man how they look man you can't be talking to no girls i just need you come over here and do this part so i go into the studio and i sing the reggae part and the girls is like well he's part of the group now and i was like yes i'm part of the group now. And I was like, yes, I'm part of the group. And how old were you at the time?

I was like 17. Wow. But the thing was, the producer at the time, his name was Kalis Bayon. And Kalis Bayon was the guy doing all of the records for Kool and the Gang. Wow. And he was the one that was like, yo, man, there's some kind of chemistry here. So I was in the hood in East Orange. Lauren was in the suburbs.

So I was like like you know what i can't be selling drugs here in the trap i gotta figure out something so i told every drug dealer in my neighborhood whoever was hustling i said look because everybody's hustling but they trying to get out of the hustle man right so i was So I was like, look, I'm going to. So my dad kicked me out the house and I went to my uncle's house and I took over my uncle's basement. And me and my cousin Jerry, we create every now we created the Booger basement. So now we in the hood. We in the trap crack house on this side. And I never closed my basement.

I said, look, anybody that needs this beat come to me i'm the man so i was the dr dre in my hood i was like yo and then remember i have an advantage i play a bunch of instruments too so it wasn't like i was just gonna like i knew how to put music around and then the person i would have sing all of the hooks was lauren So I was like, yo, so this started a whole big thing. So, so many people in the hood got demos of Lauren, like, voice right now probably listening to this. So, at a young age. So this sort of, like, spurred, like, the whole idea, which became the Fugees. And then I remember, like, after that, I got a phone call because people saw I had the pulse.

So they was like, yo, we got these four girls. They're in a hotel room. And the record is stuck, man. And it's not charting. And we need you to do the same thing you did for Lauren. So I go to this hotel room and it's four girls. And they're like yo what you want me to what you want us to sing and I was like yo sing a church song for me and the one girl she starts

amazing you know she sings this church song and that happens to be uh Beyonce yeah and the group happens to be Destiny's Child so man I can keep going on and on and on and on there's so many um there's a whole myth like before you blow up, you got to see Uncle Clef. That's what they be like. As long as you meet Uncle Clef in some gothic space, you're bound to do 500 million. Right, right, right. Is there any artist that you have that's come across your path that maybe you're like, eh, I'm not sure about them, and you kind of passed on them or you weren't working with them in some capacity,

and then they went on to be this big hit? Well, I knew that artists, it wasn't sort of, I had to go with what I felt like I can handle more so. You see what I'm saying? Right, right, right. So maybe you're going to be a big hit, but you couldn't handle it. No, it was sort of like the industry is a big industry, right? So you got people who's great at doing hip-hop,

people that's great at doing reggae, people that's good at. So it's like, exactly. So I remember being in the studio with 50 Cent. If 50 Cent is listening, he will remember this story, right? Because when I was in the studio with 50 Cent. If 50 Cent is listening, he will remember this story, right? Because when I was in the studio with 50 Cent, there was a group called Femme Fatale, right? I have one of the original 50 Cent, actually. I have a record, right?

With 50 Cent and my group, G&B. Watch how far back this goes. 50 ain't blow up yet. G&B was the kids singing Maria Maria on Santana's joint. No way. And then I just was like, 50 Cent is raw talent. I wasn't trying to sign 50 Cent. That wasn't the mission.

It's to the point of what you said. I just thought he was incredible. And I felt like, yo, he should be on this song. I wasn't like, oh, these guys is bigger because they was on it. It was like I always go for the talent versus the talent. So for me, that story is always endless. So it's not really about. So to the point, I think that people is more worried about like, oh, let me sign this person.

I just be like, yo, man, I remember cash money. Little Wayne. Little Wayne was like a kid uh people be like yo clef how are you so connected and anyone you call they just pick up the phone and anything you want i'm like yo because i ain't screw nobody over all i got is love and most of the people i put them on before they blew up anyway so i I remember like Cash Money, you know, and Brian Grazier, who's one of the biggest producers out of Hollywood. Like this dude is like, you know what I mean?

So Brian Grazier gave me my first shot at scoring. I scored the movie Life. Brian Grazier's the music composer, right? Who am I thinking about? Yeah, Brian Grazer. Is he a music? No, he's the producer. Whether if it's, I mean, he probably got more Oscars than Life.

Sure. So the last thing he did was Empire. Okay. You know what I mean? Sure. But he's, like when I tell you, a natural good friend. Yeah. But he's like, I mean, inllywood if it's top four he got

to be number two or one this is how powerful this dude is um you got to check check the name out but once again i'm a kid who's doing a bunch of hip-hop and r&b records he was like no give this kid a shot at scoring because i was like yo i'm really a jazz guy, you know? And I get to score life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. So when you watch the movie now, you look at it again, you'll be like, holy crap, that's why Cleve Jean's name, he did the score. So once again, I'm all over the place doing these things, but then I had to do the soundtrack.

When I was doing the soundtrack, I was like, yo, there's a clique out of new orleans they call cash money like no once again nobody knows like it's just that i love music and i always got my ear to the pulse so i said yo there's a kid juvenile boom boom boom boom and then i was like then there's this kid named ja rule who's coming out of the east coast he's's boom, boom, boom. So now if you go back and you listen to this Life soundtrack that I did with R. Kelly, you'll see the amount of talent that I put on that soundtrack way before Blue.

And I think that that's really the juju to what I do. I do not look for hype. So we got two sides of it. We got the YouTube views right the instagrams the boom that's one side of the discovery then we have the opposite side of it too the opposite side is called magic right and magic is something that comes out of nowhere and you just like yo what is this And you just like, yo, what is this? Then you snap it and you put it back on YouTube.

So for me, there's a lot of magic out there. There's people, a lot of people listen. There's a lot of magic out there. And a lot of it is getting lost in the sauce because we're not at the level now where majors are funding like when we was coming out in the 90s we was getting funded big millions of dollars was getting put in but now you're in a different structure now so what the record companies do is they just wait for the data analytics so they go okay

a hundred million views go find this kid sign now. His name is Fetty Wap. Go sign him now. And that's dope. So that's dope because, man, when I was coming out, I thought the A&Rs was so whack. 17 A&Rs passed on to Fugees. So I love the fact that we are in a generation where the kids can say, hold on to two middle fingers.

You can't decide what's hot. I'm going to build my own audience and I'm going to show you what's hot. So I love that, like Chance the Rapper. You know, I'm a big fan, like Chance, all of them. And then you have the other side of it too. So I think the most exciting thing for me with this Heads music that I'm partners with, with this new label is because when they came and got me,

this was after politics. And I was like, yo, we need you to be the haitian smoky robinson to this label and the flu of talent coming up in the next five years is gonna be like mind-boggling there's a girl out of columbia after shakira remember i told you this name so the next one out of columbia her name is farina dude remember i tell you this you don't have to understand a word she's saying phonetically her spanish sounds like as if she's speaking english really she has every rhythm from buster rhymes to drake to little one and ain't like she ever been up here but she's so influenced by urban music and um so she's like somebody who um so that's some talent that i think man is i find it my i find it mind-boggling because not even speaking english

and you know we'd be like okay music is the universal language we get it but when we actually hear someone speaking another language and we're like, it don't matter what they're saying. It's dope. You know, that's pretty exciting. Oh, man. I'm a big salsa dancer. Love salsa. That's why when Hips Don't Lie came out, it's not really salsa, but you can dance salsa to it. Of course. Of course. So it's like, it's the only song I can dance salsa to in like

a club or something because they're not playing salsa music usually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when I'm in the salsa club and I've been doing it for almost 12 years now, you know, there's no English. And I'm in the salsa club and I've been doing for almost almost 12 years now you know there's no English and I'm like one of the only white guys in the club it's all Latin and it's like I don't understand what they're saying but I feel it and I understand what they're saying you're not I mean cuz music is a vibration is before language mm-hmm period you know

what I'm saying to you and i think it could be like okay we're living in america yes english but then when it come to spanish dude like spanish is as popular as english like it's big we can't talk about hollywood without talking about spanish me come on this is like part of the biggest form of culture. Like, you know what I'm saying? It's like imagine America with no Latin people, man. This place would be like, man. Dead.

Dead. Like we'd be like, yo, what kind of food is this, man? What kind of dancing are you doing, buddy? So all of that, once again, plays. That's true. Yeah, together. I'm curious, what do you think about on a day-to-day basis? What is the thing that drives you crazy in a positive way or that drives you in general? When you're waking up in the morning, when you're going to bed, where does your thoughts go?

Well, I mean, really now my thoughts are different than they were then. You know what I'm saying? then you know what i'm saying more you know i i wake up every day now and my thoughts are like okay um how are we gonna keep building on this legacy you know who's the next so i wake up every day like thinking you know who's the next it could be like a piece of software an invention like okay where are we going with sound you know what i'm saying like we had the mp3 generation so now i'm like okay what is the next generation so um now my thoughts are back to uh my engineering craft as um because when i did the score it was my basement, and people thought I did it in some big studio. Just to show you how advanced I was,

now the kids have a laptop, and they're doing the music out of their room. The Fugees was doing that in the 90s. Do you see how crazy this is? So what you see a kid's doing now with their laptop, I was doing it in the basement. Now, this was not the thing to do because they had the big SSL boards, the knees, and all of that. What are you doing?

Putting up some foam on the walls and just kind of soundproof it the best way you can? We took the basement. We guttered it out. We put the foam on the walls. And once again, I just understood. Don't ask me how I understood this, but I understood science and understood chemistry. I understand how electricity works. So it's so funny because you're in the basement.

Could you imagine you plug in all that equipment? The first thing you're going to get is you're going to get a ground noise. The whole thing. Ready or not, here i come oh yeah like yo how the hell i'm gonna get rid of this ground noise dude i took seven antennas and i literally no way yeah i pinnacled them right in the in the ceiling right because it's all electricity. So then I was sending the ground to the wires, to the piece of steel. And this is how I was cutting out the ground. Wow.

So only to say that is, so right now. How'd you understand that? Did you learn it somewhere? Or were you just kind of tinkering? Or you just intuitively? No, I just knew that the ground noise is part of the electrical frequency. So the same way, like, as humans, if you're walking in the street, right, and lightning's down, you don't want to have no metal on you, right?

So that means metal will react with electricity. So I was like, I knew the ground was coming from a certain way. So even though I don't see it, I can hear it, right? And it's living infinitely. But then it's almost like if you're fishing, right, and you put a worm, and then the fish is going to come straight for the bait the same way. Wow. So, you know what I'm saying?

So as the future is moving, one of the things that I know that I'll be part of inventing and we've been working on, it's probably going to take two more years. You know, we, and I've been working with a team out of Singapore all over, just the next level to the MP3 generation where you can convert files, send things over, and you're not losing the waves, the sounds, you know what I mean? The quality. The quality of everything. And everything you're hearing losing the waves the sounds you know what i mean quality the quality of everything and everything you're hearing now is stereo right but the record pink floyd the wall was all done all of that weird trippy stuff was done and what you call binaural so as the future moves forward i feel like everything's gonna be different on how you hear it so this is one of the things we wake up every day um i drive a lot of scientists crazy

on finding a new coding and moving like the mp3 generation forward so i think we got i mean we're in the process i can't reveal too much but we're in the process of cracking um different codes that's great man that's gonna be cool what is um a daily process for you like the non-negotiables the things you need to do every single day to keep you mentally sharp emotionally sharp connected to the right people in the world keep your musical gifts sharp and keep you thinking out a bigger wavelength. What are those non-negotiables? It's one thing, man. It's my daughter. It's really it. Like, she's it.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm in the studio yesterday. She's like, she got the flu, you know what I mean? And she's FaceTiming. She's like, Dad, I'm coming, I'm coming, because I got to edit, because I got a show. I'm like, I'm coming. She's like, Dad, we're missing new addition. You know what I mean?

I wasn't around when she's like 11. She's 11, but she's a different 11-year-old. I heard she steals your money and gives it to charities. Yeah, she takes money, gives it to charity. She's a different kind of 11 and um is this a biological daughter yeah my adopted daughter yeah i've adopted her her name's angelina since birth like i took her from birth you feel me so she's not your your daughter biological daughter but you're yes she's my daughter you know what i mean i feel like she

was given to me by the gods wow so literally from the hospital to me you know what I mean? Of course. I felt like she was given to me by the gods. Wow. So literally from the hospital to me. You know what I mean? So she's, I call her Angelina because that's what she is to me. She's just a gift. She's a gift. And a very rare gift. Sometimes kids are given to us in different ways. don't know why and we should never question science right so we should just feel it and go with it right um because sometimes you could be like yo

um why is this child sent to me right so for example like um i still consider her a great friend angelina jolie you know and we've been to Haiti together. We've worked together. We. But those kids, it's like because of where they come from. Right. When someone you never know, it could be. You could have took a kid and this kid could have probably end up in skid row. And you don't even know that. But somehow the science understands it. Karma understands it.

One thing that's real is karma. So, like, I never really questioned karma. So I'm like, okay, I don't know. Like, maybe this is what I'm supposed to be doing because I'm supposed to be saving someone. But I'm not thinking of it like that. And I really don't question it. And I think, in my opinion, when we challenge the universe is when we get fucked. Because the universe is tricky.

It gives you the signs are very, very clear. But so sometimes we be like, no, no, I don't want this like this. I want this like this. So me, it's sort of like, because of where I come from and I'll be like, you know what? I won't question anything.

I'll love everything. You know what I'm saying? And I'll protect everything I love and I'll fight and die for what I love. You know what I'm saying and I'll protect everything I love and I'll fight and die for what I love you know what I'm saying sure and that's really my philosophy and so what about other habits that you have obviously your daughter is the main thing yeah my daughter my daughter is incredible other other thing rituals or routines yeah I love like if you look online like you'll see me doing um crossfit i love crossfit

yeah doing it for years yeah crossfit is um we had the founder on here a while ago okay yeah yeah yeah it's incredible um i always was like look if, if things didn't work out, I knew that I would go straight to the military and I would have been a SEAL. Like, I know that for a fact. So funny. So I'm so into, like, the militancy of, like, how far you could push your body. That's what I was saying, man. You'd be surprised how far your body can go with your situation. So I love that.

I love practicing. so uh every day music yeah every day i sit on like four or five instruments and i literally just like it's therapeutic so versus going to a psychiatrist right everyone has everyone has a release people listening to this, they release yoga. You got some, it's swimming. But there's something about the mind stimulation. So I could sit there and say, okay, today I'm going to work on chord progressions. So I just sit on the piano and I just, it could be like an hour.

But after a while, it drifts your head somewhere else. But after a while, it drifts your head somewhere else. And it's almost like a form of meditation without you feeling like, without you having to say the word of meditating. I call it like time drift or time travel. So I think a lot of that stuff is healthier. And a lot of people have to find that stuff. Because sometimes we'd be complaining like, yo, life is so messed up. This is so. and then when we look at it and we just take a second and think and be like holy crap everything is really here for us

we just got to take take take it you know because sometimes you'll be like yo life is messed up but then when you look at your surroundings you'll be like yo maybe it's messed up because this person you know and i'm a strong believer of keeping the right energy around you. Because not all the time in my life have I had the right energy around me. So I know when it's bad energy. You know what I'm saying? So I'm like, yo, man, make sure you get the right. And kids be like, yo, tell us what determines if we can be a star or if we can make it in the business or not.

Or if we can last. Because I said, our DNAs don't exist no more. I said, we from the 90s. Jay-Z's from the 90s. Clef's from the 90s. I'm like, Beyonce 90s. I'm like, we all. And this is like 24 years later, dude.

Like 24 years later, dude. Like 24 years later. So then I look and say, okay, well, tell me an artist that's right now, that's going to 24 years later from now, that's going to be interviewing and be like, yo. And I'm saying you stay relevant to generations. I'm not saying like you've fallen off. You literally keep reinventing yourself to generation through the gas of the music so once again i tell kids karma and how you surround yourself and how you treat people and look you're gonna be up like one time

you're gonna be like everyone has a peak and i learned this from stevie wonder we all have a peak. And I learned this from Stevie Wonder. We all have a peak. Right? And Stevie was like, look, man, you're going to have a peak. And then if you do it right, you're probably going to have two to three peaks, he said in life. And he was like, they're going to be different peaks. He said, you might think your second peak is a music peak. And it's not a music peak. So I felt like my first peak was the Fugees. It was a big peak. It was a music peak and it's not a music peak so i felt like my first peak was the fujis it's a big peak it was a big peak and i felt my second peak was when i decided that i was going

to become the president of my country of haiti so i didn't i wasn't like thinking like and when i say peak these are like historical moments that you're to do all of this great stuff in the middle, right? We call that sustaining it, right? Sure, sure, yeah. But the peak is like something happens and it blitz the universe. Everyone's attention is on you. Yeah, it just blitz the universe. You know what I'm saying to you?

So now, you know, I await the third peak. I don't know what it's going to be, man. Maybe I'll become like a CrossFit mix. I don't know what it's going to be, man. Maybe I'll become like a CrossFit mix. I don't know what it's going to be. So all of these things are really, once again, based on karma, based on yourself. So how do you, when you've reached a peak, how do you maintain it? And what does it do for your mindset if you're not getting the same attention that you were once getting at a peak? Does that affect you?

Does it hurt you? Does it frustrate you if you're not as relevant same attention that you were once getting at a peak, does that affect you? Does it hurt you? Does it frustrate you if you're not as relevant as previously at certain times? Yeah, and this is a great, great question, right? Because everyone always wants to be on top, right? And everyone don't want to be second, and nobody wants to be third, right? So this is how everyone should break it down. So you're going to have a peak. LeBron is LeBron.

Yeah. Kobe was Kobe. So no one could take away from the legacy, Mark, right? Past that, the sustainability is can you do more than the music? Can you do more than the sports? Do you stand for something your your your your sustainability is just based on what you stand for so if you at your peak you think you're the best thing in the world you think like i'm never be under. The minute you see you number three, you commit suicide.

Yeah. Because your brain can't. But if you say, okay, at your peak, if you're doing good, right, and you're like, man, you're helping this person. People are like, man, this guy is such a nice guy. happens is when you become number six you know and somebody who's number one they're gonna come find you and be like yo man remember me like you did boom boom boom boom and they so they bring you back they always bring you back up so it's sort of like no matter what happens when a kid is talking and he's like yo if it if it wasn't for Kobe, I would. What?

Kobe. That lifts Kobe right back up. So then you become. So now there's the peak. Now past the peak, it's called iconic. So now when you add a level of legendary and iconic, then you add a level of zen. You're always a peak. You add a level of zen.

You show up. All the kids go is like, that's you know what i'm saying so but in order to get to that level you have to be standing for something so what happens is if you're not at that level of iconic or the kids are saying man he's an icon you know that's the og that's the triple og um then what happens is every day you wake up you worry about your relevancy and then you start to adapt with however the ocean is moving so that you can stay relevant and when that happens i mean basically because if you are doing music, you do music. Now, the best athletes that will last forever, Muhammad Ali. Like, why?

Like, why Ali? Like, this guy went to jail. Like, why? Like, what is it? Like, why are people still? Because, once again, past the sports, he just did what was right. Not what was popular all the time. Cause what's right.

Ain't going to be what's popular. And I did stuff like where man, like, yo man, Lord knows, like, you know, like people come and they challenge you.

They test your credibility. They say, and it has nothing to do with music. They're like, yo, you should have stayed in the music lane, but history protects the truth and it has nothing to do with music. They're like, yo, you should have stayed in the music lane. But history protects the truth, and it will always protect you. So for me, that's the advice I could give anybody.

You know what I'm saying? I love that. And what's the thing that you stand for outside of music? I mean, outside of music, right? Because I feel like music is just a gift, a natural gift. I stand for people. and what does that mean man you stand for people that means that i believe that we all are human beings and our job is to love each other protect each other help each other grow um it's what we talked about earlier yeah you know what i'm saying i'd be like yo you ever read the book celestine prophecy you ever read egyptian book of the dead you ever read the vortex

you ever read the alchemist you'd be like man i did clef what was the people thinking alchemist see see i got there so i couldn't even make it up right it's up there somewhere yeah yeah but what was the people thinking when they was writing this book, right? The author, what was he thinking? It was like, yo, it's either I'm going to stand for something and I'm going to do something that's going to live 2,000 years from now. And in order to do that, you can't be selfish and stand for yourself. You got to stand for people. John Lennon, he stood up for people. He's John Lennon.

And Muhammad Ali stood up for people he's john lennon and uh muhammad ali stood up for people well you know when an athlete don't agree yeah with something that's going on in the sports and he decided like you know what i ain't gonna raise up my hand or i'm not gonna he's standing for something now we can have our opinions we could be be like, yo, that's f***ed up what he's doing. But only history will tell and know if he's doing the right thing or not. Yeah, yeah. What's the biggest challenge right now we're facing, not just in America, but as humans? Man, the ego factor, right? It comes from the Roman Empire like everybody must rule everybody must conquer and everybody feels like everyone else is supposed to be under them right so

you know like i'm not no conspiracy theorist you know what i mean but my grandfather was a voodoo priest from haiti my father was a minister my uncle was a mason so i was raised with the triad right so my my grandfather my father defied my grandfather because my father was like he ain't into whatever my grandfather was doing but my father was like, he ain't into whatever my grandfather was doing. But my grandfather was like, this is who you are, dude. Like, you're, you know what I mean? So now I come in the picture and my father trying to make me a minister.

And I'm like, you're out your mind, dude. This is not what I'm going to be doing. But it's sort of like, it all goes back to the essence. You know what I mean? And I could just say like one thing I learned from my grandfather because I mean hmm I mean he's the natural David Blaine like one thing I learned from my grandfather was just that you know science is real karma is real. Karma is real. And the greatest miracle to ever come out of anywhere.

Like even if you see a man levitate, none of that. He said the two greatest miracles is birth and death. he said once you understand that then you understand that every man and every woman is created equal then i'll even take it a step further i'm like yo man this is confusing what you mean everybody created equal okay well this is just even taking a step further the ruler of the roman empire put you could put whoever he is like you'd be like yo this dude was dominating there was one crazy ruler by the name of caligula like in high school i saw that movie insane like high out my mind watching caligula's hooked out with some girl yeah this is gross it's crazy but um or it could be. Like, at the end of the day, take them at their death and take who they consider a peasant at their death.

They both meet the same place. Yeah. To the dirt. that we face is just that mentality of the old school Roman Empire where everybody wants to be the biggest force. And while they want to do this, man, babies are getting shot from the sky. Women are getting kidnapped and raped. Child trafficking is going on and all of that. So I guess I'm one of those that is optimistic to say, you know, the world can be a better place, but it would take us as human beings to make it a better place. I'm so glad you're talking about this because I'm finishing up a book right now that comes out later this year called The Mask of Masculinity. called The Mask of Masculinity.

And it's about the ego that drives men in general that hold us back from our true greatness and our vulnerability and the love inside of our hearts to connect with people in an intimate, vulnerable way, in our authentic way. And I think we get so susceptible and enticed by having more and control and manipulation and money and sex and all these other things that it holds us back. And we put up these walls that aren't really truly us.

And I think you're right on. I mean, I think the ego is the biggest challenge that the world faces. No, big time. The ego. And this is not a now thing. This is always has been. faces no big time the ego and this is not a now thing this is a always always and at the end of the day it's good that we could talk about it's good like what you're writing i'm gonna definitely read it because what happens is maybe because i don't believe that it will stay like this you

know what i mean because long before you know we the Google map, we had the pyramids and someone figured out the Aztecs. They figured all of this stuff out. So I just feel like it's a rotation where things go back to the cycle of the same. It's like a peak. Yeah. And you don't know, like, you know, like humans will accept whatever the new norm is. And this is the part that I want people to understand. So what you think the new norm will be, you might be getting another surprise. So basically, the most thing to do is basically to stay humble and stay at an even playing field.

Because you really, we know where we're going. We know we're going to have flying cars. We know where we're going. I'll give you a cool thing everyone was listening check out the the apples juno jupiter project it's very cool it's sort of like so juno spaceship sent to space and and to record sounds around Jupiter. And then so Juno is sending back the signals from Jupiter, right? So it is online. Y'all should definitely check it out because you could see like what's going on with the weather in Jupiter

now to find out if there's water in Jupiter, right? And also you could see it online. There are sounds coming from Jupiter. And these are like different things. So at the end of the day, all I say is, you know, I ain't no crazy person. So don't be like, yo, man, that dude Clef came on the show. Yo, that dude was smoked out. He had like six edibles.

He started talking about aliens. No, what I'm saying is we humans will accept whatever the new norm is and we are on earth so on earth we have to find a way to figure out what the harmony is because if we don't figure out what the harmony is on earth nature will figure it out for us and that's all i'm saying i love that yeah man i feel like i could listen to you all day, man. What's your definition of music? Oh, that's a good one. Man, my definition of music is life.

You know? Like, imagine the world, man, with no music. It's like the world with no heartbeat. Yeah, man. It's life, definitely. Where do you think the best songs come from the best songs basically are inspired from the same place that birth comes from and from the same place that death comes from because if you pay close attention to artists that are in tune with themselves and they write personal and these are the songs that end up big, the artist can get inspired and predict their death in the song.

I mean, I could give you different examples. And the artist can predict life in the songs and they can predict what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, before it happens. Because it's the mystery of birth. And it's the mystery of death. Like, what is this thing? Is death really life? Is life really death? You see what I'm saying to you?

So at the end of the day, that's where we get inspired. to you. So at the end of the day, you know, that's where we get inspired. And once again, for those that think I'm tripping, it could be Biggie. It could be Tupac. It could be Otis

sitting on the dock of the bay. I could keep going on and on. It could be the Fugees. We used to be number 10. Now we permanent one. We wasn't even number 10. But in my brain, I was like, yo, we about to be number one. I could clearly see who's telling you this, Clef.

I don't know. I just feel like we going to be number. How are you going to be number one? The last album sold two copies. No, something. It's an energy. It's that feeling. You know what i mean yeah wow i'm curious about your legacy again you've had so many hits you've won you know grammys all the big hits the songs the accomplishments what is the legacy you

really want to be left behind for you what's the thing you want to be remembered for the most i really don't know yet because when i look at what i'm doing i feel like i'm just getting started right so you're a young man yeah and then the age that i'm about to go in is the age that quincy jones did michael jackson so i really feel like um my best work is ahead of me. And I feel that, you know, I, I just think like what we did with the nineties with, and no way trying to recreate that. I just feel that there's a flu of new talent and that are moving at the speed of light. So I just think whatever that is, if I'm part of that and help built some kind of structure within that, I'll be able to define it. I would be able to, if you asked me that a year ago or a year and a half, I would be able to, maybe two years ago, I probably would tell you. Because when Heads Music came and got me, I was like, man, I'm done with music.

Like, I left music. I went to politics to help my country. And the exact words was, you're not done with the culture. The culture needs you. And then so what happens is now when you have a kid that's 25 named Young Thug and his first song on his EP is called Why Cleve Jean, it makes you say, man, they're right like that space there's something so now there's a connection with my kids so all this information

that I have mmm I'm supposed to give it to them yeah I haven't given it to them yet so that's what the legacies I thought they had it but um so then it shows you okay the legacy you can't even talk legacy yeah until you pass this information sure so this next decade might be the biggest one so far cuz we So then it shows you, okay, the legacy. You can't even talk legacy yet until you pass this information over. Sure, sure. So this next decade might be the biggest one so far. Yeah, because we're going to pass a lot of information over to the youth. Pass the torch over.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of information. I want to ask about your last day on earth many years from now. This is a question I ask called the three truths. Yeah. You've, you know, all the awards you've already gotten, you're about to pass the torch for the decades to come and be building up the youth and having all these superstars

and who knows what you're going to be doing, reinventing how music is listened to, the wave, you know, files, everything. It's the last day, and for whatever reason, all your music has been erased. It's gone. and all you have is a piece of paper and a pen to write down three truths the three things you know to be true about your experience your life the lessons you would pass on but they couldn't hear any more your music for whatever reason what would you write down as your three truths i mean the first truth that we would write down is to basically to live for yourself

and not to live for others is the most selfish act you will ever experience in your lifetime that's the first truth that i would write the second truth that i would write is no matter what happens when i'm gone always remember that we all are equal we're from the same balance right and left makes us balance evenly so it's important that no matter what happens that man women child understand that there's no one above no one. It's very important. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then the third truth, which is probably the most mystique truth that I would leave,

is that even though I'm gone, all you have to do is pay attention to the wind i'm still here all you have to do is when you jump in that ocean and you see that wave that's me coming when you look in the sky you see that bird 30 000 feet and that eagle smiles know that that's me. So I'm forever here, baby. And what's the thing that you want people to know about the most right now? We got to wrap things up here for a second. What can we connect with you online? What's the big thing you want to promote right now? Well, I think right now it's a streaming generation.

So it's incredible to come back come back right and we're in a music space so to see like a song like hendrix streaming like 10 million on its way to 20 million is incredible so the ep we have is called juve and juve uh gives you a dna of where why clef's from right so basically i'm a caribbean west indian boy so it takes you i always say if you haven't been to the caribbean pick up juve it'll give you that dna but that whole ep will lead into a full-length album okay which is called the carnival and the carnival is um anybody who got carnival one you already know it's going to be like dorm room music. And it's going to have very, I'm going for, whenever I say the theme is the carnival, it's very eclectic, the sound.

So we're going to have some wild shit on there. So for example, we might bring Daryl Hall, take Rich Girl. I flipped a scheme and do 2017 version of rich girl throw it off by putting pusher t in the middle you know what i'm saying sure so it's gonna be like wild stuff like that like you don't know what's gonna happen but um what i loved about juve everyone says man it's a body of work because people people like, I'm like, yeah, people still listen to a body of work. If it's dope, they'll pull songs. But people, there's, okay, maybe the kids will pull the songs.

But people my age, they want the body of work. So we're going to keep putting body of work. I love it. We were listening to the whole thing before. It's amazing. We'll link it up here afterwards. I want to acknowledge you, Wyclef, for your incredible gifts, for your heart, and for your ability to lift up humanity.

Thank you. You've done an amazing job, and you're more than just music, man. You're really about helping the world. Love you, too, man. We keep pushing. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. Bless.

Thank you. All right. Oh, what a beautiful human being and soul. So glad we got to connect. And I'm so glad that you stuck around to listen to this entire interview because I loved every moment of it. Loved his stories. Loved his message.

And if you love Wyclef as much as I enjoyed this, then make sure to share this out with your friends and spread the love. lewishouse.com slash 457. Connect with Wyclef on social media. He's over on Twitter and Instagram. He's pretty active in all those places. So tweet him at Wyclef on social media. He's over on Twitter and Instagram. He's pretty active in all those places. So tweet him at Wyclef John. Make sure to add him on Instagram and tag me and Wyclef over on your Instagram story

that you're listening to this right now so we can connect and say hi. So tag both of us over on the stories on Instagram and say hi. Again, if you haven't left a review, please leave one over on iTunes.com slash greatness. Or if you're on the podcast app right now, just click on the review button on your podcast app and leave one for us right now. We've got some amazing guests coming up. I am so pumped for this. You have no idea. We've got some big interviews, episodes that we're releasing and some people who are coming on each and every week. We do this every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,

and it's all about bringing you positive inspiration and the right tools, training, ideas, and people to help you unlock your inner greatness. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. I love you very much, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.