Wyclef Jean and Daryl Hall on Their Hip-Hop ‘Rich Girl’ Update
Wyclef Jean, the assiduously eclectic ex-Fugees member, has gathered an all-star line-up to collaborate on eight studio album, Clefication. Though the album is still in its beginning stages, Jean has worked with superstar EDM producers Avicii and Afrojack, DJ Khaled, Emeli Sandé and emerging Bronx singer Jazzy Amra, who Clef says reminds him of former bandmate Lauryn Hill. “Dominican from the Bronx,” he explains, “but sings with that old soul.” A handful of A-list rappers are currently on his wish list.
As of now, he seems most excited about a cover of the 1977 Hall and Oates chart-topper “Rich Girl,” complete with a Pusha T guest verse and none other than Daryl Hall providing the chorus. Though the album isn’t due until next summer, he is anticipating “Rich Girl” as the first single.
“My brain thinks like Thelonious Monk when it comes to that kind of stuff,” Jean tells Rolling Stone, barefoot and poolside behind his New Jersey home. “So it’s like, yes, the white and black keys connect in the middle. You can call me country, you can call him hip-hop, you can call him EDM, but when we get into the studio, it’s just called music. So for me, definitely ‘Rich Girl’ feels good for the start.”
Jean had started the track by performing over a sample, snagging Pusha T for a cameo. “He’s like Miles Davis to me,” says Jean. “It’s like the muted horn. . . . Now when Pusha got on the record I still had a problem. The problem was the legend is alive, why am I sampling him?”
Jean says that Heads Music CEO Madeline Nelson became obsessed with getting Hall on the track, and soon the rapper was up at Daryl’s House Club in Pawling, New York for a roughly 90-minute session.
“For me, oh this is incredible,” says Jean. “I get to see Daryl Hall and do what I do best. Who’s a bigger fan than me? I’m like obsessed with them. He’s like. ‘What are you thinking?’ And I’m like ‘Wow, what am I thinking? What was you thinking when you wrote that shit?'”
“I’ll tell you,” Hall tells Rolling Stone. “It seemed like we were friends from a long time ago. It’s a very natural relationship, so it’s probably one that will continue. I’m a fan of his too. I’m an R&B singer, so I grew up in that kind of an environment, so it’s a natural extension of the kind of music that I listened to and interacted with as a child.” Though Hall does admit, “It’s not like I sit down and listen to lots and lots of rap music, no.”
Clefication will be Jean’s first album in six years, following an unsuccessful bid to run for president of Haiti. Though the hip-hop landscape has changed dramatically, Jean feels no pressure.
“With me, when I left, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to do music, I’m gonna go help my country,’ I did not leave because I was in the bottom of the charts, or it was over for me. I left when I was at the peak of my songwriting. I wrote the biggest song of all time, [Shakira’s] ‘Hips Don’t Lie.'”