Purpose

June 25, 2012
At first glance, award-winning hip-hop musician Jean’s memoir is just one in a long line of tales of a poverty-stricken youth climbing out of a hardscrabble life rung by rung on the ladder of music. Very quickly, however, Jean’s passion for music, his fierce love for his family and for Lauryn Hill, his partner in the Fugees, and his deep and abiding devotion to his native country, Haiti, forcefully reach out and grab the reader, who is soon rocking along to the rhythms and harmonies of a brilliant musician composing the score of his life. Jean conducts readers on a journey from his childhood in Haiti, where his preacher father auspiciously named his son after Bible translator John Wycliffe and musician Toussaint L’Ouverture, to his youth in New York and New Jersey, where in junior high Jean discovered his purpose in life though music. With his music, Jean hoped to bring people to a world where, at least for a while, everything was going to be okay and to make people feel good no matter what they were going through. Jean openly reveals the tensions and the intense love that he and Hill shared, and he candidly uncovers the gritty details of the Fugees’ multiplatinum success, The Score. Jean acts on his love and commitment to his homeland as he returns to Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake to help as best he can to rebuild his country. In his memoir’s final refrain, Jean reminds us that he’s always tried to live with purpose, as if every day were the last.

August 1, 2012
Son of a pastor and grandson of a voodoo priest, Jean was born in the slums of Haiti but grew up in New York and New Jersey, eventually bringing his immigrant experience and multicultural background to a gritty hip-hop sound. As a child, he'd enhanced his poor English skills by learning to rap. He later went on to join the Fugees and gain musical acclaim with one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time. By 2010, dealing with his frustrations with the growing clownishness of hip-hop music, he was working to get back to the roots of hip-hop in expressing injustice when he learned that Haiti had been hit by a devastating earthquake. In this riveting memoir, he details how he rose from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to multiplatinum fame, and channeled his social consciousness by founding Yele, an aid organization that eventually garnered controversy as he considered a run for the presidency of Haiti. Jean is candid in chronicling the drama of the music business and his heartfelt anguish for his homeland while struggling with success and commitment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2011

Haitian-born Jean, son of a pastor, grandson of a voodoo doctor, and recent candidate for president of Haiti, grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and then Newark, NJ, where rap proved to be his path to success. Here's the story of his career, including his time with the multiplatinum and Grammy Award-winning hip-hop group the Fugees. Since Jean's followers number 1.6 million on Twitter, 300,000-plus on Facebook, and 200,000 on Myspace, there's clearly an audience for this book. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
Reflective memoir from a breakout hip-hop star of the 1990s, served with a generous helping of braggadocio. Jean, who co-authored this book with prolific celebrity biographer Bozza (Why AC/DC Matters, 2009, etc.), has been in the public eye recently for his controversial efforts on behalf of his native Haiti, including an abortive run for the presidency. The narrative opens dramatically, with Jean's initial trip home after the devastating 2010 earthquake ("I had to help any way I could, not as Wyclef Jean, but as a Haitian"). Jean then looks back at his improbable journey from rural childhood to genre-defining triumph with the Fugees. As an adolescent, Jean left Haiti for New Jersey, where his strict father established himself as a fiery Nazarene preacher who regarded hip-hop as "bum music." Yet Jean's passion for musical expression developed early; he played in the church band to please his father, while making connections in the rapidly expanding universe of East Coast rap. By his early 20s, he'd joined fellow Haitian Pras Michel and two young women, forming the group that eventually became the Fugees. The author's greatest strength is his nostalgic discussion of the music scene of the '90s, when any success seemed possible, and his focus on the nitty-gritty of artistic development, as the Fugees moved from their run-down basement studio to sold-out stadium tours and platinum records. On the whole, though, the narrative is strangely paced: Jean intersperses humorous, self-deprecating anecdotes with repetitive storytelling and frequent assertions of his many accomplishments. The author awkwardly discusses the Fugees' dissolution at the height of success. Jean acknowledges his long extramarital affair with Lauryn Hill but seems to regard its destructive reverberations (including her virtual disappearance from the music industry) as inevitable, the product of their passion and artistry. Slick, unwieldy overview of Jean's stardom and humanitarian ambitions.

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