Wyclef Jean: The Messenger

Wyclef Jean has a new album, The Carnival II: Memoirs Of An Immigrant, and even a haircut, but the question that still surrounds him is whether The Fugees will ever get back together.

The trio (Lauryn Hill, Pras and Jean) reunited for a 2004 performance in Dave Chappelle's Block Party. A year or so later, it was over. Since then, both Pras and Jean have gone public that "psychiatric" problems on Hill's part are why The Fugees remain estranged.

"For some funny reason, all this talk will make Lauryn even more powerful," Jean says with a slight chuckle when asked about a reunion. "The fact that Pras is talking and I'm talking and she's like a hermit, the more we talk the bigger she gets. So there's still room."

While it's probably a good idea to hold off on printing reunion tour T-shirts, Jean fully understands why the public so desperately wants a reunion.

"I think that the crowd just hungers for this sound of, you know, a group that can have a pop sensation but still be relevant to saying the issues of the world. It's like, 'Yo, we need that group to be saying what's going on in the world and no one is going to respect nobody else, but they gonna respect ya'll.'"

Even though The Fugees only recorded two albums (Blunted On Reality and The Score), Jean describes the group as being something that was put together by some sort of divine intervention.

"It's just certain people was born with it and human beings have a soul. Like you can't take a soul away from a human being and The Fugees was created through stars, like it was like a magnetic field. It was nothing rehearsed, it was almost like a prophecy: One shall be born out of a village of Haiti, another will be born in Brooklyn, and the other will be a suburban girl, you know what I'm saying?"

In the meantime, The Carnival II is probably Jean's most eclectic album to date, with several unlikely guest appearances, including the silky smooth voice of Paul Simon on "Fast Car," and the virtuoso violin skills of Minister Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, on "Welcome To The East."

"You can't rap with Paul Simon's swagger, man," he says. "It was just an idea I had in my head when I originally did the record. I always like as a producer to put things on the record that just keeps it interesting as it moves into a minute and 40 seconds. And my homies were like, 'You be smoking too much,' and I was like, 'No, trust me.'"

As for Farrakhan, "A lot of people's was like, 'Yo, you ain't scared to put Farrakhan on your album,'" he says with a hint of sarcasm. "I say, 'The minister is not saying anything, he's playing the violin.' I think that's a whole other thing. I think ya'll should pick up the album and listen to Farrakhan play violin. He's a vanguard violinist."

No matter what you might think about Jean's seemingly random approach to musical collaborations, in his mind, "It's not about you know whether if you agree with what someone's saying or not, the music always brings it back to perspective.

"This is the CD that they'll say 'Since The Carnival, this is Wyclef Jean's most focused CD because we can feel that energy.' That's why we called it The Carnival II."

Ultimately, you'll have to judge for yourself. But having heard the album, he makes a damn good point.