Wyclef Jean

Wyclef Jean was born in 1969, two years before the end of Haitian president François Duvalier’s regime, which saw the murders of between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitian citizens. This period was characterised not just by repression but by poverty – the average Haitian survived on $75 per year. The succession of his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, in 1971 brought little change. Between 1972 and 1977 alone, 200,000 Haitians fled to the United States. Of the million-or-so Haitian Americans today, many are refugees of the country’s dictatorships.


Jean was among these refugees. Describing his childhood in Haiti, he recalled that ‘we were so poor that we ate dirt off the floor’. At the age of nine, Jean immigrated to the USA with his family, developing his talent for music in school jazz bands and a teenage rap group. Major success came with the creation of hip-hop trio Fugees – the name a shortening of ‘refugees’ – along with members Pras and Lauryn Hill. While their 1994 debut album Blunted on Reality was an underground hit, it was their second and final album The Score (1996) which brought widespread acclaim and success, blending rap, jazz and R&B with often-political lyrics. The album is considered to be one of the best hip-hop albums of all time.

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After the disbanding of Fugees, Jean continued his career as both a solo artist and producer, also making forays into charitable work. In 2001 he set up Yéle Haiti, a charity which raised $9 million for the Haiti earthquake in 2010. He paid further homage to his Haitian and refugee background with his 2012 autobiography Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, and his 2017 album Carnival III: The Fall and Rise of a Refugee.