Throughout his Grammy-winning career as a rapper, musician, songwriter and producer, much of Wyclef Jean ’s recorded output highlights Jamaican music culture’s vast influence. There’s the Fugees (Wyclef, Ms. Lauryn Hill , Pras Michel) covering Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry”; his co-writing/co-producing a reggae hit for Whitney Houston (“Your Love Is My Love”); starting his own Jamaican style sound system, Refugee Sound; and making dub plates, the specialized recordings that are essential to ‘killing’ an opponent in a sound clash.
Yet he’s never recorded a reggae album — that is, until now. See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news One Night in Kingston is Wyclef’s debut roots reggae venture, recorded at The Compound in Kingston, Jamaica, a studio/rehearsal space owned by reggae artist Tom Jones, a.k.
a. Panic, the album’s executive producer. Panic is also a writer on the project and a featured artist on the track “Walking to Higher Ground.
” “I’ve known Panic for over 20 years; he said, ‘yo, we need a Wyclef Jean reggae album,’ so he brought me into the studio,” Wyclef explained. “I don’t know when it’s coming out. I never put a date on music because that means it isn’t good.
Music has to be like a Lauryn Hill album, the best album of all time.” At the 2024 BET Awards on Sunday (June 30), Wyclef shared the stage with Hill at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, helping close out the show alongside he.