Wyclef Jean is taking ownership of the years he spent estranged from Lauryn Hill. Reflecting on the breakup of the Fugees, the Haitian-born musician admitted that he was the most volatile member of the group during its peak.
“I was young, bro. I was reckless. I was wild,” he said. Asked whether he was the wild one of the trio, he did not hesitate. “I think I definitely was the wild one,” he added.
Looking back roughly 35 years, Jean framed that period as the kind of mistake that comes with youth and sudden success. “When you were young you do stupid stuff,” he said.
He compared the group’s early fame to being superheroes who “don’t know your superhero power yet,” and said that inexperience made them careless with the gift. “So, you’re reckless with it,” he explained.
The silence that followed lasted far longer than many fans realised. When asked how much time passed before he and his former bandmates reconnected, Jean estimated, “Oh man, it had to be like 15 years.”
He was quick to push back on the idea that something dramatic caused the distance. “It wasn’t like bad like that,” he said.
Instead, he described the slow drift that happens when people build separate lives. “Once somebody gets into a new relationship, they have moved on,” he explained, adding that marriage, children and age all reshaped the members’ priorities.
The road back, he said, began with a phone call from a comedian. Jean credited Dave Chappelle’s Block Party as the turning point, recalling the moment “when he made that call and got all three of us together.” From there, he said, the energy between them started to flow again.
Today, he describes his relationship with Hill as warm and familial. “Me and Miss Hill now, we’re in an amazing place,” he said, noting that her children now call him their uncle.
Performing together again, he said, carries the instinctive chemistry they built as teenagers. “It’s like a perfect football game,” he said. “It just feels like a reset. It feels like completion.”
That bond stretches back long before the Fugees existed. Jean recalled meeting Hill when she was around 13 or 14, when the two performed together in an off-Broadway play inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Hill’s mother drove Jean, Hill and Pras to rehearsals and auditions across the area. “It’s like the Beatles, man,” he said of the group’s origins.
Jean confirmed that he had no part in Hill’s landmark solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. “No, we was separated by it,” he said. Still, he was not surprised by its success. “I’m Wolverine. She’s Storm,” he said. “You might be surprised, but I’m not.” He called the album “pure greatness” and said Hill has been that talented since she was 12 or 13.
He also shared the moment he first heard “Doo Wop (That Thing).” Jean said he was riding in a car in New York, tuned to Hot 97, at a time when he and Hill were not speaking.
The song caught him completely off guard, and he tried to rewind it. Drawing on sound system culture, he treated the record as a musical shot across the bow. “Definitely felt like that was clash time,” he said.
Jean laughed as he conceded that Hill had ethered him on that one, but he showed no lingering bitterness. “I mean she’s talking about her life anyway,” he said.
He called the song “a definitely a good comeback from her” and saluted his former bandmate. “She’s a strong, powerful woman, man. So, shout out to Miss Hill,” he said.
