Wyclef Jean enlightens USC Thornton students

GRAMMY Award-winning musician Wyclef Jean’s journey from the villages of Haiti to acclaimed international superstar has been nothing short of remarkable, and it’s still far from over. Jean will embark on his first U.S. tour in over 10 years in less than a month, but on Thursday he stopped by Carson Center at USC to reminisce about how far he has come with USC Thornton School of Music students.

“I’m not even from the hood, I’m from a hut,” Jean joked. “People in the projects [are] soft to me.”

Jean’s sense of humor as well as his ever-present desire to look to the future has closely associated him  with some of the modern music industry’s most notable artists, such as Avicii and Young Thug. Meanwhile, the laundry list of accolades that follow his name give many artists reason to cite him as an influence as well, dating all the way back to his seminal work with the Fugees and spanning his 20-year solo career featuring numerous high-profile collaborations.

Jean talked at length about his experience in the studio with some of music’s brightest icons, such as the theory lesson he learned when trying to tell Whitney Houston that she had hit a flat note while recording “My Love is Your Love.”

“She was like, ‘The note’s not flat, baby, I bent the note,’” he said. “And then when I listened back, she actually did bend the note, like you would bend the note on a guitar. Once again, I learned a lesson: chromatic scales are relative. We could say dorian, ionian, phrygian, all the scales we want, but it’s all relative to the time when the action is about to happen, it can change at any second.”

After enlightening the crowd with insightful knowledge and interesting stories, Jean treated the audience to a brief performance, singing and strumming an acoustic rendition of “Hendrix” before collaborating with various Thornton students to perform the classic Fugees track “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

After the event, Jean elaborated on many of his talking points, such as the importance of patience when creating music according to one’s own terms. Jean realized this sentiment when he released the song “Diallo,” a tribute to Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea who was shot 41 times by New York police officers in 1999. The song didn’t initially have the impact Jean was anticipating in America, but on a trip to Nigeria he saw how the song had touched thousands on the other side of the globe, reminding him that as long as he stayed true to his passion, the appreciation would come.

“I landed at the airport and looked out the window, and there were 100,000 people out there, and I was like, ‘Is Michael Jackson on this plane?’” he said. “And then I looked again, and there were signs that said ‘Diallo’ on them. It made me understand the purpose, like ‘We’re not just making music for 50 states anymore, we’re doing it for the world.’ That just boosts your morale, I just gotta keep going.”

More than the record sales and critical recognition, Jean strives to have a monumental, tangible impact on the world of music that will outlast his career itself. In his eyes, success can only be defined by leaving a generation of music that “defines time and space,” and can remain relevant in an industry that is constantly abuzz with new sounds and artists.

“When you hear Michael Jackson, it doesn’t matter if ‘Billie Jean’ was done in the ’80s or now; when you hear Wyclef’s ‘Maria, Maria,’ it doesn’t matter if it’s now or then,” Jean said. “We say we don’t write hits, we write cultural phenomenons. You can do one song or two songs, but can you actually move the needle to where you inspire the generation that comes after you?”

Truly a man motivated by his own legacy, Jean wants to be remembered as someone who stood for more than just music, evidenced in his many social justice efforts as well as his 2010 bid to be president of Haiti. Along with his commitment to using his platform to spark change, he plans to build and market the first hip-hop guitar, and aims to debut the product in a year and a half.

“How many guitar players have we had in our generation that have made guitars so famous?” he asked. “We can keep counting and counting, but all we really know is Fender, Les Paul, nothing different. So I’m excited that I’m going to be the first to invent the hip-hop guitar, I’m going to show you guys how I built it, and do music with it and everything.”

When the renowned producer finally elects to call it a career, expect his list of achievements outside of the studio to be as robust as his eclectic musical catalogue. Still, less than a year after concluding his Carnival album trilogy with Carnival III: The Fall and Rise of a Refugee last September, Jean is gearing up for another project, a mixtape titled Wyclef Jean Goes Back to School.

Jean plans to visit about 25 college campuses while working on the mixtape, recording material in the dormitories alongside some of the brightest young minds in music. Moira MacKesey-Green, a senior majoring in popular music, and Kyle Merrill, a senior majoring in music industry, both impressed Jean with striking performances during the forum in Carson Center, and the artist now plans to return to USC for the students’ help in making the mixtape a reality.

“Coming here and vibing with the little homies, this is definitely going to be one of the schools,” he said. “The artists, the singers, forget about it.”