Wyclef Jean’s new single — My Girl — has summer banger written all over it. The track, featuring newcomer Sasha Mari, released on Tuesday, and Dubai’s club-goers will be amongst the first to hear it live when he plays at Billionaire Mansion in the city’s Business Bay neighbourhood on April 28.
“The beautiful thing is a love the intimacy,” he says of his upcoming performance. “As I was DJing as a kid in a club, I was always like ‘I’m gonna turn the club into Brooklyn basements’. We don’t usually see that, we always see the artist a certain way. To get that chance to be intimate, raw, with my guitar in my hands, no hype, just a DJ and [tearing] out my heart, having fun, I think that’s the cool thing.”
Seeing a Grammy award-winning artist in a small club just after he releases a new single? Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.
“It sounds like something we could all tell our kids about, like ‘I was with Clef in a club in Dubai, it was crazy’. And they’ll be like, ‘who’s Clef, ma?’, he says with a laugh, speaking over the phone from New York on Tuesday evening.
Following the single this autumn will be his new album, Carnival III: The Road Back TO Clefification. “The reason why [it is called that] is it’s like the road back to music. I had left for a minute, went to Haiti, helped my people, that’s the vibe coming back. Any real Wyclef fans know my albums are a body of work from beginning to end, I try to find great people not based off of hype, for the musicality. On this album I have Emeli Sande, Daryl Hall, Pusher T — it’s going to be very eclectic.”
My Girl, meanwhile, has a female-centric message — no surprise there. The video shows a Wyclef as a young boy proclaiming his love, and is set in Flatbush, Brooklyn, near Wyclef’s childhood stomping grounds.
“A comes a time where the king gotta crown the queen,” he says of the message. “It’s telling you to crown what’s in your heart. We have these memes up and it’s so funny, some people would put their dog as their queen, other people put their cars, their daughter. I put my daughter for my meme. It’s just saying crown somebody, acknowledge somebody, let them know they are the person for you. It could just be a friend. Whatever you feel is that person.”
What’s brought about this feeling right now?
“As Wyclef, there are certain things that I am known to do, there’s a responsibility that I have. This generation, when they look for Wyclef music, there is a certain message that it has without preaching to them, and they listen. It’s real simple: we have to embrace our women, love our women and treat them right. Even if you don’t pay for it, your daughter will, or your daughter’s daughter will.”
That message should translate to how we celebrate our heroes, too, he says, when I mention the rough week music fans have had following the deaths of Prince, Billy Paul and Papa Wemba.
“It reminds us we are human. We have to give people accolades while they are alive. Just because people are not in the charts all the time, doesn’t mean they are not geniuses in their spaces.
“We all have a birthdate and a death date. The most important thing is what do we do with that small space in the middle. Prince represented that space in the middle.”
Don’t miss it
Wyclef Jean will be at Billionaire Mansion at the Taj Hotel in Business Bay, Dubai, on Thursday. The event is Dh350 per person (Dh500 with drinks) including dinner at either the in-house rustic Italian or Japanese restaurants. Call 04-3483000.
