Wyclef Jean Quotations

My grandfather was a voodoo priest. A lot of my life dealt with spirituality. I can close my eyes and remember where I come from.

I feel that life is short, so we should be disciplined, but at the same time we should have a good time.

I lived in the projects and the ghetto, and turned the negative into a positive.

At the end of the day, just know that God made you, so you can be your own individual, and don't let people give you that peer pressure.

Bob Marley stood for universal peace and love. He tried to break racial barriers.

It was important that I became successful. People say they do it for the love, and yes, you do it for the love, but you want to be successful

I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.

My daddy was a minister, my grandfather was a voodoo priest, my uncle was a mason; I was raised with a lot of studies.

You get quick money, it's beautiful, there's sunshine, but at the end of the day, you find out it's all a masquerade, baby. It's not what it seems.

Every generation is gonna keep changing, and you just have to embrace the change.

There's not a hip-hop artist that didn't snatch of piece of Bob Marley. It's totally impossible.

You know, I'm a modern day Harry Belafonte; I got the swagger of the island.

'Masquerade' is the autobiography of Wyclef Jean. A lot of people know me through my work with Carlos Santana or Destiny's Child, winning all those Grammy Awards, but you do not know what is going on inside me.

I want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.

Coming from Haiti and growing up in Brooklyn, there's a lot of European influence when I get dressed up. I wear a lot of fitted suits, elegant cuts; I think it's cool to mash up a lot of different looks.

Wyclef is a musician that tried to unite as many musicians at once as possible. I am trying to be successful at that. The greatest challenge is that, I just got arrested for protesting in NYC for cutting the school budgets... And I think that it's important to stand up. Schools are important.

I lived in a hut with no roof, and I rode to school on a donkey. I used to shoot birds with a slingshot to cook for dinner. Now I prefer to get my food from KFC.

That's the best way to feed the human mind. That's how Bob Marley did it. He never put it in your face. After you got the groove, you were just singing the hooks, because you thought it was cool.

Haiti is my country. The same way the Beatles are received in England - that's how Wyclef Jean is received in Haiti, do you know what I mean?

I do music for the love of it, and I've been doing it from a very young age: about 11.

I like to go against the grain, against what's out there. Every day is like a challenge.

I want to be part of a different kind of celebrity, one that thinks not just about charity but policy.

I'm hands-on with everything, always trying to reach the real people.

All that violence in the world, we need to stop that

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

With Yele Haiti, the first thing was I'm proud of the organization and the work that the organization has done, and in the future hope to continue doing.

When I'm rhyming it's all in my head... Like the slaves, when they were picking cotton, they would block out their minds. They would sing.

Whenever I would get in trouble with my dad, my mom would always save me. So that's why I like my mom - she cool.

Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn't talking. He wanted me to go to theology school - I didn't want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him I was a minister through music.

As a producer, I always want to know what makes the kids tick.

I really have fans that are from 14 or 15 years old to 60.

I'm like a hippie. At the end of the day, that's what my voice caters to.

I'm like Cab Calloway: I love the entertainment, and I've loved entertaining people ever since I was little.

I'm most comfortable when you just give me a guitar and I just sing.

If I can't take five years out to serve my country as president, then everything I've been singing about, like equal rights, doesn't mean anything.

My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it

Rap records don't make you feel good no more. Six months after release, it can't come back as a classic

What I'm trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.

When I was 11 years old, I started playing guitar.

When the Fugees were big, we made a whole lot of money, and what happened was that I saved my money and never spent it.

When I rap, I get to express myself in a way where putting words together is like poetry, and sometimes it's better to talk in certain expressions than sing, you know? So I love, I love to rhyme when I want to express certain things.

When I want to be popular, I pull on a guitar and sing a song. Pras did not affect me because, in the realm of politics, he has never stood up for anything.

When you enter the realm of politics, you don't enter it because you want to be popular. When I want to be popular, I pull on a guitar and sing a song.

I don't have to be president to do great things for my country, but at the same time, to get legislation and policy passed, you have to be in some kind of office. So I don't know what the future will lead to.

I know that the nice shines I have on is going to pass. The nice cars will pass. All that will stay is the music and the work. That's where I get the inspiration to help people out and work

What I learned from people like Carlos Santana is that you cannot get too happy after working for five years in the industry. It takes years and years, and I learned to keep a straight head and keep on working harder and harder.

There are celebrities who have charities, but you don't see them on the ground. Angelina is on the ground doing things.

When you throw on a Bob Marley record, it's nothing but lighters up in the air. All the thugs in the dance are just going calm down. I don't know no other artist that you can throw in the middle of a dance like that.

We're fortunate enough to work with everybody when they're just getting started.

When you're an artist, if you get a 10-year run-some are over 10 years - and you're successful, if you make over $20 million, then you gotta figure the money that you dished out and you spent on videos and studio time and all that stuff, you were just better off investing $4 or $5 million.

When I have to make records for people and records for myself, it's two different approaches.

On all my records, I just write about what people are going through, so when I go through the airport, I'm going through what you're going through. So I write it just like we go through it.

She looks the most beautiful when she's in the field natural, no makeup, nothing, Because you see Angelina, the angel. It doesn't get any better than that.

My dad didn't want to hear that you was going into the studio-you came back late at night and he didn't understand that, that theory didn't exist in his mind.

My heart is filled with tears for the victims and all those who have lost loved ones in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. No one can challenge Mother Nature. All we can do now is band together the best we can as one family and help everyone get back on their feet.

Right now I've got to do something with Carlos Santana, getting ready to come out with Jerry Wonder's group City High.

Right now, I've got the lead in what I'm doing. I'm in the best position. No one expects me to come in at number one, and I'm not concerned with it either. Let me come in at number 20, I'll be happy.

I would be writing so many songs in my head while I'm making 30 Whoppers and six fries. That's why it never got me down or whatever. Of course, I got fired because the place got stuck up.

I broke the stereotype. Then I picked up the wand and conducted, using my hip-hop vibe. Right there was an experience for me and for them. We are living in a new millennium, a new era. Hip-hop and string instrumentation was brought together.

I always have a producer to the side of me, and I never want to do a record by myself.

He rules, he's real tough when it comes to business. I'm like a sponge right now. I know I can pick up things from him.

I think the greatest thing about America is the American dream. America allows you take that dream and bring it back to your country and help you inspire more people.

I went in to record the Philharmonic. I wrote down the parts, and I was inside the studio with 62 pieces outside the studio. They never saw my face or what I looked like.

Our music is more rebel music. We do music for society, for humanity, to help and to heal.

Some girls get turned on by being called a bitch.

Masquerade was on the Net for like four months, five months before it came out. Right now, everyone's trying to see if they can come up with a code where they can prevent that from happening.

That's this new kid Governor, he sounds just like Marvin Gaye. And he's like only 23. We have another kid, Prolific.

When I think about the biggest studios in New York, they're owned by people that are not musicians or artists, and artists come in and spend their money there, and they'd rather do that, as opposed to getting the headache. So they pay someone else to get the headache.

We're building a movement, a one million man movement.

You all know I can play the guitar, you all know I can sing, but what you all forgot is these are all the beats that I come from.

When you're in the studio at a young age, you're not aware that there's a union where you can hire musicians. So you have all of this equipment and you just learn how to play it yourself.

When you're in the Caribbean, you're having the best time, you're hearing a lot of beats and rhythms that you don't hear in New York sometimes, 'cause then you come back and it's snowing.

When I first heard Bob Marley I was 12 years old. I had just come to the United States from Haiti, and was living in the Marlborough Houses in Brooklyn.

When we produce our stuff, we're cool. But when you're producing artists, you take the role of a psychiatrist - a musical psychiatrist. You have to work slowly with an artist to show them how to do it. It's all about just doing the best music for the individual.

When you're sleeping or getting up to go to school, that's when we're just leaving the studio, and we'll be gone for three hours and then come back and be working another 15 to 20 hours.

We produce, and we have producers we work with.

When I go into the studio... I want it to say something, but at the same time, I want the chicks to dig it. It's got to be sexy.

We're living in the modern age now. I call it the Year of the Matrix. Back in the day, you had these mixed-tape circuits where if you wanted to get (unreleased) music to your fans, you could go through DJs. Now all our fans have to do is go to their phones, and they'll be the first ones to hear something. And we're not talking about a ring tone here. We're talking about downloading a whole song, or a video.

What I picked up on Michael Jackson - because I study people when I watch them - the way that he counts his rhythm with his feet and his neck at the same time is crazy... so he's hearing multiple things at once. And I don't know anybody who does that.

The record company is happy because they feel they have things that they can play. I'm happy because I feel I have enough records to bump in the street and in the dance hall with the reggae, so I'm cool with that.

We're trying to be one of the Number One studios in New York City, which we are.

When you go to Carnival every year, you bounce to, you-know the different music that make it to Carnival in Trinidad. It don't matter about the country you're from.

You be in a club with these girls and they're looking at you, giving you play, but you don't want no play, because you realize the next week Jay-Z comes into town and it's the exact same thing. If you value your life, you're not gonna be doing that type of thing.

What Sammy Sosa has done for the Dominican Republic, that's what I think I can do for Haiti.

We just dropped some very honest lyrics about where we come from and what's going on.

When you pick up The Carnival, you get the big genre.

We try to bring a lot of live musicianship to the music. A lot of grooves. We're Caribbean; we from the islands. Out of the music industry, I'd say we're the Caribbean producers of the world.

You gotta be born with it, baby. We walk with the lip, we talk with the slang. And we pretty. We pretty, baby. We move like Ali in his young days. We good with the jab, good with the stab.

You get conflicts all of the time. But you have to know how to play the chess game. We come with results, and we come with solutions.

Being a New Yorker, you get there and you take your sneakers off, you're cooperating, but man, that line be long! I mean, you do definitely want to be safe, but at the same time, it annoys you sometimes, 'cause you just want to get to where you want to get to.

I specialize in lyrics and melodies. I'm good with themes.

I sequenced the album like a radio station. Around midday, you'll hear more of the commercial hip-hop stuff. When the nighttime comes, you'll hear more of the depth of the records, when the beat stops and we get into the culture and the conscious vibe and the reggae.

Right now, we're working on a script for my life story and two kids coming from Haiti to America. One turns out to be a musician, one is a gangster. That's all I can say.

Preval is probably the man who can deal with those problems better than anyone else.

Definitely when I got on the plane to go back to Haiti, it was an emotional thing for me. It definitely touched my heart when I landed. I cried.

As a child growing up in Haiti I experienced the wrath and destructive power of hurricanes. My heart is filled with tears for the victims and all those who have lost loved ones in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

You never really know how you come to the earth, it's really a mystery, and when you leave, it's sort of a mystery too-but somehow, whoever you're a part of, you have a natural connection with them, and if you tune in, you can tell if they're still here or they're not.

The way that we're moving forward toward music, it's all about using music together. We have hip-hop, we have rock, (but) all the kids now, we all listen to the same thing. If you're listening to rock, you're listening to rap.

The way that I could describe Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, it was just glowing. What connects them is that they share the same goals. They love kids and that is just a connection right there. When you love kids the conversation is endless. It's forever.

They said somehow I used to run out of the house and while the Carnival's passing, with no clothes on, and I'm jigging my body, they used to come and pull me in. They said that ever since I was little, I always had the rhythm in me.