Peacemaker

Wyclef Jean makes nice

by Jon Caramanica

Making up is hard to do. At last week's MTV Video Music Awards, Destiny's Child (at least, what's left of the ever-changing group) took to the stage to present the award for Best Male Video accompanied by an unlikely fourth -- Wyclef Jean. Clef, the former Fugee turned style-mashing scene hopper, was the man who'd ushered the Houston girl group through their deal signing and first album, only to split with them under questionable circumstances. On the group's debut single, "No, No, No, No," it was Clef who promised to "make a little money with Destiny's Child." Earn he did, and then, poof, nowhere to be found.

But it's comeback time for Clef, and there's a lot of nice to be made. For a man who's spent his musical career building stylistic bridges, he's expended an inordinate amount of energy burning personal ones. According to recent interviews, he's no longer on speaking terms with either of his co-Fugees, Pras and Lauryn Hill. Two years ago, Clef was accused by former Blaze-magazine editor Jesse Washington of pulling a gun to dispute a negative review of former protégé Canibus. Now free from his mentor's thumb, Canibus disses Clef venomously on his new album (Clef disses back on his). My, how the times have soured. Clef has even recorded his own version of Nas's misguided power anthem "Hate Me Now." It's a message to his naysayers and enemies: don't hate me because I'm disreputable . . .

Or popular. Clef's courting of the spotlight has been notorious, and his new The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (Columbia) panders to the pop mainstream in ways that few rappers feel comfortable doing. Authenticity isn't much of a concern -- he keeps it real through booking the occasional hardcore guest spot (see Big Pun's "Caribbean Connection") and by making sure his West Indies roots are well-grounded. On his first solo project, The Carnival (Columbia), he imported sounds from south of the border, paving the way for a Latin fusion in mainstream hip-hop; he even succeeded in a semi-legit attempt at Celia Cruz's "Guantanamera." And since he'd already earned crossover stripes with the Fugees, making a pop impact as a soloist wasn't hard, especially after he'd positioned himself as the group's musical auteur.

Now Clef has expanded his pop comfort zone yet again. The types of fusion on The Ecleftic are numerous and diverse, but Clef's moves aren't concessionary in an artistic sense. Rather, these heavy-handed gestures further the statement he wants to make -- that even though he's got hip-hop in his heart, he's still capable of making the most anodyne black pop on the market, and that white America should come on and join the party.

Take the most blatant stab at mainstream approval, "Kenny Rogers -- Pharoahe Monch Dub Plate." Like Puffy squared, Clef brings in both title artists to deliver slightly altered versions of their epic hits -- Monch with the club banger "Simon Says" and Rogers (who's spoon-fed a patois lyric or two) with the melancholy hold-and-fold anthem "The Gambler." Doubtless Rogers is grateful for the career infusion, but it's Clef who really gets over, using his cred as a calling card to ingrain himself with other musical worlds. He even closes this album with a cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," a track that "responds" to a skit where redneck cops pull over Clef's tour bus and demand he play some Pink Floyd to prove he's a musician. Being able to do so is a nice statement, but it's really just an excuse for Clef to flex his crossover chops. The politics are incidental.

Here, as on most of the album, Clef demonstrates that he's still hip-hop's great scavenger, able to weave all sorts of styles into a single whole. The Ecleftic hints at tango, reggae, hip-house, and early-'80s funk -- by dipping his toes into so many pools, Clef's hoping to prove that all musics can get along. But his destructive tendencies still peek out. "Where Fugees At?" takes the predictable swipes at his former bandmates; "However You Want It" is the obligatory Canibus dis track. Elsewhere, he dons the robes of the martyr, expressing the noble animosity of haters worldwide. For Clef, bearing that weight is almost as important as ameliorating its causes, and on songs like "Pullin' Me In," where he acts out the struggle in song, it's never clear that the side of the good is where he wants to be. If he were never bad, he'd have no territory to reclaim.