In a 2016 interview, he said, “When we went in to do The Score it wasn’t like to do music. According to Wyclef, The Fugees didn’t just want to make an album, they wanted to launch a movement. Instead of following the trends of the day - such as sampling loops of familiar songs - they would give birth to a sound that was uniquely their own, implementing their own musicianship into the equation. When The Fugees began to work on The Score, they were intent on placing their imprint upon the music. Remi agreed and invited them to his house for a session. He thought if Remi could make hits with Jamaican artists that he could have the same level of success with Haitian rappers. The origins of the song came when product manager at Colombia Records Jeff Burroughs reached out to Remi.
“I had a reputation for bridging the gap between Jamaican artists and the rap artists with what was happening in hip-hop radio in New York,” Remi told Okayplayer. It was Remi’s penchant for infusing melodic dancehall and reggae rhythms with break-beats and samples that created an organic, diasporic connectivity with The Fugees.
He laced them with a banger in the form of the “ Nappy Heads – Remix.” The song would become the first Fugees record to hit the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 49. But their fortunes changed dramatically when the trio from New Jersey linked up with Salaam Remi, a young producer who at a young age already racked up credits for Biz Markie, Shabba Ranks, and Black Sheep. A blip on the radar - ultra-talented but iconoclastic, they were almost lost in the shuffle. The Fugees could have been relegated to the fringes of the hip-hop scene.
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Released in 1994, the response to their debut was lukewarm the album received mixed reviews and never cracked the Billboard 200 charts. The group eventually caught the attention of Ronald Kahlis Bell, a co-founder of the legendary funk band Kool & the Gang, who guided them in the early days.Įventually, the group signed their first record deal with Ruffhouse/Columbia and finished recording their debut album, Blunted on Reality. Pras introduced Lauryn to Clef and The Tranzlator Crew and the The Fugees (short for Refugees, a nod to their Caribbean roots) was born. At Columbia High School - located in Maplewood, New Jersey - Pras met a freshman named Lauryn Hill, who was already a gifted singer and MC. Both being preachers’ kids in Brooklyn, New York, Clef and Pras developed as musicians by playing in their family’s churches, blending elements of gospel, reggae, and soul.Ĭlef and Pras both relocated to Newark, New Jersey as teenagers and lived in neighborhoods with large populations of people from the Caribbean diaspora. Hill's dual-threat presence, Jean's booming toasts, and Pras' knotty rhymes made Fugees a shining example of balance The Score's sonic palette, which honored the New York area's then-burgeoning underground through precise use of massive hits and crate-dug gems, made the group's second album a key part of hip-hop's 1990s explosion.Wyclef Jean and his younger cousin Pras Michel both were born in Haiti and came to the United States as children. The former allowed her to show off her reference-packed, thoughtful MC skills, while the latter established her rich, confident alto as one of R&B's great voices. "Ready or Not," which flipped a late-'60s single by the Philly soul outfit The Delfonics into a rallying cry for Black music, and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," a boom-bap-propelled cover of the ode to musicians made famous by Roberta Flack in the early '70s, both defined late-'90s hip-hop and turned Hill into one of its biggest female stars.
(If you use the intricate, incisive rhymes the trio casts across The Score as a predictor, the answer is "a lot.")įugees' take on the swaggering yet claustrophobic sonics of '90s East Coast hip-hop give The Score a charge that remains electric decades later, as the boastful "Fu-Gee-La" and the hazy title track prove. Its lyrics are pointed and political, while also being laced with wit: "How many mics do we rip on the daily?" Hill and Jean crow on "How Many Mics," the album's first proper song. The homespun hip-hop production on The Score gives it a vibe not unlike a lengthy listening session with friends, complete with running gags that bust up the room its sample list includes hooks from classic soul sides and sound-system-worthy beats, as well as bits borrowed from Enya, Francisco Tárrega, and The Moody Blues. The album that came out of that cellar, 1996's The Score, became one of the defining hip-hop albums of the '90s and launched Jean and his bandmates Lauryn Hill and Pras to stardom. When the New Jersey hip-hop trio Fugees regrouped to record their second album, they went underground-to the basement of Wyclef Jean's uncle, which was transformed into a recording studio and rechristened as the Booga Basement.