When you think of Wyclef Jean, it’s hard not to see the multi-genre artist who's navigated everything from hip-hop to rock, reggae, and folk, while also standing as an advocate for social change. He doesn’t just talk—he preaches, freestyles, philosophizes, and name-drops Marley, Miles, and Bowie like he’s pulling threads from the same spiritual tapestry. Thirty years after The Score rewired hip-hop, he’s still impossible to categorize: a composer, activist, futurist, and the rare artist who can sound like a politician without ever sounding rehearsed.
When I caught up with him, he was juggling his podcast Run That Back, a Netflix film (Prince of Port-au-Prince), scoring Showtime’s The Chi, and running his new scoring company Sodo Mood Lab, which he hopes will bring more diversity into film composition. “We need more female composers, more minority composers,” he told me. “Why aren’t they getting the same shot?”
His passion for conversation extends into his show, which he insists isn’t really a podcast: “It’s not interviews, it’s real talk. The way you hear us talking—that’s how we talk when the cameras aren’t on.” Guests like Steve Harvey, Lena Waithe, and Clive Davis show up to trade stories and drop life advice. “I don’t care about your success,” he said. “I want to know what you’d tell the kid working at the pizza parlor who’s about to quit.”
Of course, talk to Wyclef long enough and the subject turns to Bob Marley. His recent cover of “Is This Love” wasn’t just homage—it was personal. “I cover songs I wish I wrote,” he said. “Bob Marley represents revolution—not of arms, but of consciousness.” For Wyclef, the connection runs deep: Haiti to Kingston, survival to imagination. “Growing up in the favelas, the way you escape poverty is through imagination. I wouldn’t have tried to run for president of Haiti if it wasn’t for Bob Marley.”
That worldview—equal parts street and scripture—traces back to his father’s Nazarene church, where secular music was banned and gospel jams secretly morphed into Van Halen riffs. “As long as we said ‘Jesus,’ we could get away with it,” he laughed. “We’d be like, Go ahead and jump… for Jesus Christ!” By 15, he was playing eight instruments and studying jazz, dreaming of being the first Haitian composer at Carnegie Hall. “I didn’t want fame,” he said. “I wanted to be the next Gershwin.” He eventually got there—Carnegie Hall, film scores, Grammys—but that same curiosity still drives him.
It’s the reason The Score still sounds untouchable a quarter century later. “We said we’re not gonna do music, we’re gonna create a movement,” he explained. “We were the bridge between the suburbs and the hood—before AI could put the thug and the nerd in one brain.” He laughs, but he’s right: The Score was multilingual, multigenerational, and multinational—Lauryn Hill’s fire, Pras’s flow, and Wyclef’s shapeshifting production. “People still call it a masterpiece because it was culture in collision.”
He still believes in that power—music as a global conversation. “In America, we only get a few news channels,” he said. “So if I’m talking about bombings in Lebanon, it’s because someone has to. The rest of the world can’t get better unless we get better. And we can’t get better unless the rest of the world does.”
His song “Immortal” tackled that idea head-on—compassion across borders in a world too distracted to notice. “It’s our job as artists to give a global vision,” he said. “If a kid in Alabama isn’t hearing about what’s happening in Lebanon, I have to bring it to them. Because once we think we’re invincible, that’s when we fall asleep.”
At 51, Wyclef is as restless as ever. “Quincy Jones didn’t do Thriller until he was 54,” he reminded me. “This is chapter two of Wyclef. I’m just getting started.” He flashes a grin. “And look at me—I’m still sexy, man. I’m more fly now than when I was younger.”
He’s half-joking, but you believe him. The man who once rapped “hip-hop turns to the future rock” saw it coming decades before anyone else did—and he’s still building that future, one riff, revolution, and real conversation at a time.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
