Why Wyclef Jean Stepped Out of the Spotlight: 'People Don't Understand When You Say It's Lonely at the Top'
Gone Till November? Nope, Wyclef is back!
It’s been eight years since the Grammy-winning music star’s last studio album, but Wyclef Jean is finally stepping back into the spotlight with the Sept. 15 release of The Carnival III.
“Coming back into music is like drinking water, it’s a natural thing,” Jean, 47, tells PEOPLE. “It’s a space of belonging.”
But he didn’t always feel that way. Nearly a decade ago the former Fugees frontman and Shakira‘s “Hips Don’t Lie” collaborator decided to take a step back from the music scene. “It was like when John Lennon left The Beatles for a minute and he went to just try and find himself,” says Jean. “I don’t think people understand when you say ‘It’s lonely at the top.'”
The decision to take time off coincided with his highly publicized run for president of Haiti in 2010, following the earthquake that devastated his birth country. “Besides losing my father, the hardest thing I could have ever done was going into the space of politics,” he says. Not long after announcing his candidacy, Jean was deemed ineligible for office, due to his not residing in the country.
“It was really a dark space, but for me, within the course of history I had to sacrifice myself like that for my country. I don’t feel like I got defeated. I feel like even though they took me out of the race, the part that they don’t talk about is what was it that I was fighting for.” Says Jean, “Me running gave so much attention that today we have a younger government in the country. To know that I was part of that cycle change, to me was the most important.”
Despite the ordeal taking a toll on him, he says it was something he did for his country, and for himself.
As for the current political climate in America, he says he’ll never retire from trying to make a difference.
But these days the musician, who lives in New Jersey with wife Claudinette, daughter Angelina and the family’s poodle, says he’s happy to get back to the music that started it all. Says Jean, “It feels like I haven’t missed a beat.”
