Twenty-five years ago, on the heels of one of the most successful, critically beloved hip-hop albums of all time, the Fugees shocked the world by breaking up. The fallout from the romantic relationship between Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean was too much to bear, so the trio went their own ways.
Wyclef was the first to release a solo album, Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival, only months later. Nominated for three GRAMMY awards, it was a stunningly multifaceted solo debut that was both of its time and revolutionary in the way it expanded the boundaries of hip-hop. The uniqueness of The Carnival lay in its many musical influences, almost all taken from the Caribbean. The Score had already made clear how influential Jamaican music was for The Fugees, but Wyclef’s solo debut went deeper, referencing his native Haitian and Cuban music.
Fortuitously, The Carnival’s release dovetailed with larger musical trends in the mid-to-late 1990s, specifically the exploding popularity of "world music"— a deeply problematic term that lumped together many disparate musical traditions, but has persisted for marketing purposes. Although Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and David Byrne had begun to make inroads in exposing non-Western musical genres to western audiences in the 1980s, things really took off in the 1990s. The decade saw projects such as Buena Vista Social Club (released a few months after The Carnival), which kicked off a rebirth of Western fascination with Cuban music.
The Carnival’s impressive roster of guest stars included Cuban music legend Celia Cruz, who appears on Wyclef’s remake of "Guantanamera"; the Neville Brothers on the throwback love song "Mona Lisa"; and Rita Marley and the I-Threes, singing background vocals on the roots reggae song "Gunpowder" (in which Wyclef channels Bob Marley in sound and message). The inclusion of Cuban music isn’t accidental — Haiti and Cuba have a long history of mutual cultural influence, as is evident on "Guantanamera" when Wyclef raps that his uncle used to play the song on his record player.
This hip-hop version of the quintessential Cuban song features Lauryn Hill on the last verse, outshining Wyclef and demonstrating, once again, that she was the most gifted MC of the three. She guests on five songs on The Carnival — and Pras shows up for two — indicating the album was written and recorded before their falling out. Other supporting players from The Score who show up frequently on this album are producer Jerry "Wonda" Duplessis (Wyclef’s cousin), R&B duo Melky Sedeck (made up of Wyclef’s siblings) and John Forté.
Apart from "Sang Fézi" in the middle of the album — on which Hill croons gorgeously over a sample of "House of the Rising Sun" — Wyclef saved the Haitian portion of The Carnival for the last three tracks, which are sung or rapped in Creole. The placement of these songs suggests he was worried about introducing Haitian music to an English-speaking hip-hop audience and wanted to ease them into it by making an album that relied heavily on familiar hip-hop tropes, replicating much of the production employed on The Score.
These last three songs feel like an afterthought, appearing after the "Closing Arguments" sketch. "Jaspora," meaning "diaspora" in Creole, and "Yele" are sonically much more tied to Jamaican music, even though they’re sung in Haitian Creole; the latter (featuring Wyclef on guitar) calls to mind "Redemption Song." Thus, it’s really only the final track, "Carnival," that references French Caribbean popular music. One of the best songs on the album, it features Jocelyne Béroard of the zouk supergroup Kassav, and Haitian konpa star Sweet Mickey (Michel Martelly), who was able to parlay his musical fame into a successful presidential run in 2011. In fact, Wyclef tried to run for president in the same year as Martelly, 2010, but his bid was rejected because he didn’t meet the residency requirements in Haiti.
Much of The Carnival conforms to the 1990s East Coast hip-hop sound, and is a sort of natural extension of The Score. This is most obvious in its reliance on a wide range of samples, as well as the many skits/interludes placed in between tracks. In addition to sampling quite a few classic old school tracks, such as Slick Rick’s "Children’s Story" on "Bubblegoose" and "Rapper’s Delight" on "To All the Girls," there are some truly inventive choices. The opening track, "Apocalypse," brilliantly employs a sample from a 1960s French classical singer, whose haunting voice soars over a dope beat. "Gone Till November" steps outside the usual bounds of hip-hop production by using an original orchestral arrangement by the New York Philharmonic. Despite its lack of samples, the production on "Anything Can Happen" stands out and the instrumentation on the chorus evokes the feeling of the Wild West.
Wyclef is a more gifted musician and producer than MC, and The Carnival is superior sonically than lyrically. That said, "To All the Girls" is an exception that sees Wyclef reflecting honestly on being a "ho"—and the way this word leads into a citation of "Rapper’s Delight" ("Ho-tel, motel, Holiday Inn") is brilliant. Reading between the lines, the song is about him cheating on his wife with Hill and not being mature enough to handle the commitment marriage entails.
Contrasting the wonderfully inventive production of "Anything Can Happen" and the realness of "To All the Girls" is the hackneyed "We Trying to Stay Alive." Borrowing a move from the Puff Daddy playbook, Wyclef samples both the chorus and the background instrumental of the Bee Gees’ hit, a lazy choice that leaves nothing to the imagination. It doesn’t help that Pras, a famously weak MC, is featured on the track. Apparently Barry Gibbs was not a fan of the song.
More egregious, however, are the interludes on "The Carnival," which haven’t aged well and rely on gratuitous ethnic stereotyping. The misogynist and ridiculously entitled "Words of Wisdom" reinforces victim-blaming, warning men off of accepting late-night booty calls because they will inevitably end in (false) accusations of rape. Of course, this wasn’t unusual in 1990s hip-hop (see Tupac and Digital Underground’s "I Get Around" and Nas’ "Dr. Knockboot"), but the skit is wholly unrelated to the songs on the album. Then there’s the orientalism bordering on racism in "Down Lo Ho," featuring a "Chinese" character who first showed up on The Score and whose accent is mocked. Even the mocking of Haitian-accented English — with the lawyer who defends Wyclef pronouncing "bulls**t" as "bishop" — feels over the top. The theme that supposedly connects all the skits — that Wyclef is unjustly accused of some unnamed crime (being a playa?) — doesn’t gel thematically with the album.
Where The Carnival excelled was in introducing new musical repertoires and sounds into hip-hop — an accomplishment Wyclef built on a few albums later, on Welcome to Haiti: Creole 101. This legacy of merging hip-hop and Caribbean music — as well as the fact that Wyclef both sang and rapped — can still be seen in contemporary hip-hop: Young Thug famously paid homage to Wyclef as one of his major influences in 2016, and one could argue that even Drake followed in his footsteps.
Although Wyclef never duplicated the success of The Carnival, he still will always occupy a unique place in hip-hop’s history as an eclectic multi-hyphenate with a voracious appetite for diverse sounds.
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