Credit: Matt Johnson

During their prime, The Fugees were unstoppable. Comprised of Lauryn Hill, Michel Pras and Wyclef Jean, the trio are often considered one of the most impactful alternative hip-hop groups of all time and their 1996 album, The Score, is one of the highest-selling rap projects of all time.

Formed in Maplewood, New Jersey, where Hill and Pras went to high school, Pras suggested that his cousin, Wyclef Jean, join the group, which initially began as a band. Originally performing as The Tranzlator Crew, the band included Johnny Wise on drums, Ti Bass on guitar, and DJ Leon.

In 1993, having played concerts and built a local buzz in New Jersey and New York, the group signed with the label Ruffhouse. Ready to record their debut album but feeling like The Tranzlator Crew would be hard to market, the group changed their name to The Fugees, a diminutive of The Refugees.

The Fugees only released two studio albums. However, their second project, The Score, was a genre-defining record that profoundly impacted the culture. Lauryn Hill, the trio’s frontwoman, proceeded to do great things. However, by the turn of the millennium, the collective and its members were nowhere to be seen.

Although they had massive success during the 1990s, The Fugees haven’t released much music as solo artists, and the little that they have has gone relatively unnoticed. Following her debut, Hill went off the radar. Wyclef Jean appeared on Shakira’s pop anthem, ‘Hips Don’t Lie’, but in his solo music decided to return to his roots and made the switch to recording in his native language of Haitian Creole, disconnecting himself from the mainstream.

Although Jean became a relatively quiet figure, in 2020, during a conversation with Bacardi for their YouTube series Rum Talk, the rapper reflected on his career and revealed the exact moment he respected the “call of Wu-Tang Clan”.

While speaking about The Fugees’ early days, Wyclef Jean explained how out of place the trio was alongside gritty New York rap acts like Nas, Mobb Deep, and Wu-Tang Clan. Jean then proceeded to tell a story about the Staten Island collective.

Setting the scene, Jean told Rum Talk, “Here’s my Wu-Tang story. So, The Fugees had a show. I think it was [at] The Armory, uptown. So, at the time, people were trying to figure out… there was a word in hip-hop, the word was ‘Alternative’. When the Fugees came out, we [were] completely weird. They were like, ‘Well, they’re Caribbean. Then there’s a girl who sings soul. They’re alternative!'”

The ‘Sweetest Girl’ rapper then recalled a concert The Fugees had that quickly went wrong, beginning, “So we’re doing this show uptown. It’s Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, and The Fugees. I get there, and we’re unloading in our Winnebago. [We had] the drums, and Jerry’s bringing in the bass, but this is a straight-up street show! So we get up there, and I remember this so vividly because there was a fight that broke out with Wu-tang on the outside!”

Jean remembered how after the brawl broke out, he bumped into one of the craziest members of the Clan, describing, “When this fight breaks out, all hell breaks loose [but] people gotta get the money! So I don’t know what happened, but a dude starts to walk, he’s by himself, he’s in black, and it looks like he’s coming out of nowhere, and he was like, ‘I love The Fugees, but I’ma whoop somebody’s ass today’, and it’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard!”

The lyricist then detailed a shadowy showdown, adding, “We find ourselves in the middle of the rumble in the jungle…we amongst the middle. Now it’s a standoff with Ol’ Dirty Bastard and us. So I’m there, there was Pras, we got Jerry, my man Spider, and this is when I had to respect the call of Wu-Tang Clan.”

The “call” of Wu-Tang Clan Jean was referencing was the actual call to war made by Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Describing it’s power, Jean unveiled, “Before then, I would just hear it on records and see it in music videos, and I was like ‘There’s no way these guys have a chain of command like that!’ So all of a sudden ODB [makes a noise], and I promise you not, I saw motherfuckers coming from the trees, I saw people coming from under the stairs…They were ganged up!”

Wu-Tang Clan has always been a large collective. However, Wyclef admitted that he was shocked at how coordinated the group were and left in disbelief after seeing their chain of command in action.