Haiti is my country. The same way the Beatles are received in England – that’s how Wyclef Jean is received in Haiti, do you know what I mean?

When I want to be popular, I pull on a guitar and sing a song. Pras did not affect me because, in the realm of politics, he has never stood up for anything.

Right now I’m trying to help my sister with her school situation, ’cause she’s real smart. Besides me, my other brother’s a lawyer… my parents stressed education a lot.

It was important to me to go back to the grungy, because all of a sudden you get excited again, ’cause there’s another whole dimension of ‘Clef that you wasn’t expecting to hear.

When I’m rhyming it’s all in my head… Like the slaves, when they were picking cotton, they would block out their minds. They would sing.

I went in to record the Philharmonic. I wrote down the parts, and I was inside the studio with 62 pieces outside the studio. They never saw my face or what I looked like.

We’re trying to be one of the Number One studios in New York City, which we are.

There are celebrities who have charities, but you don’t see them on the ground. Angelina is on the ground doing things.

My grandfather was a voodoo priest. A lot of my life dealt with spirituality. I can close my eyes and remember where I come from.

Rap records don’t make you feel good no more. Six months after release, it can’t come back as a classic.

I didn’t grow up to call a woman a ho. That’s just how I was brought up. I won’t call a girl a bitch, unless she wants me to call her a bitch.

You get conflicts all of the time. But you have to know how to play the chess game. We come with results, and we come with solutions.

I like to go against the grain, against what’s out there. Every day is like a challenge.

When you enter the realm of politics, you don’t enter it because you want to be popular. When I want to be popular, I pull on a guitar and sing a song.

I don’t only think that you should have your own studio, but you should also have your own studio, your own mastering facility, your own post room so you can cut your own videos.

I try to bring something different to all the artists I work with.

Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn’t talking. He wanted me to go to theology school – I didn’t want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him...

It’s not fake. I don’t need to go in the studio, throw in a record, do a loop and put it out. To find an artist, you’ve gotta find the artist that brings it to...

When we produce our stuff, we’re cool. But when you’re producing artists, you take the role of a psychiatrist – a musical psychiatrist. You have to work slowly with an artist to show them how...

No matter what happens today, yesterday was historical. The only thing that erupted was the thirst to vote.

I lived in the projects and the ghetto, and turned the negative into a positive.

What I’m trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.

It’s ike being in college and being undecided about your major. As soon as you choose your major, you focus in on it.

Right now, we’re working on a script for my life story and two kids coming from Haiti to America. One turns out to be a musician, one is a gangster. That’s all I can say.

I want to be part of a different kind of celebrity, one that thinks not just about charity but policy.

For everybody who lost somebody out there and stuff, when you need therapy, music is the best way.

On all my records, I just write about what people are going through, so when I go through the airport, I’m going through what you’re going through. So I write it just like we go...

In the next seven years, we plan to just take over the whole industry.

As a producer, I always want to know what makes the kids tick.

When you throw on a Bob Marley record, it’s nothing but lighters up in the air. All the thugs in the dance are just going calm down. I don’t know no other artist that you...

When you go to Carnival every year, you bounce to, you-know the different music that make it to Carnival in Trinidad. It don’t matter about the country you’re from.

Preval is probably the man who can deal with those problems better than anyone else.

You get quick money, it’s beautiful, there’s sunshine, but at the end of the day, you find out it’s all a masquerade, baby. It’s not what it seems.

When I was 11 years old, I started playing guitar.

I think it’s cool to do stuff in a different language. Basically, I learned English through listening to rap. A lot of people think it’s funny. But it’s true; I used to try to get...

My dad didn’t want to hear that you was going into the studio-you came back late at night and he didn’t understand that, that theory didn’t exist in his mind.

I’m the hip-hop Quincy Jones of today.

That’s this new kid Governor, he sounds just like Marvin Gaye. And he’s like only 23. We have another kid, Prolific.

I know country people who have The Carnival.

We’re fortunate enough to work with everybody when they’re just getting started.

I do music for the love of it, and I’ve been doing it from a very young age: about 11.

When I think about the biggest studios in New York, they’re owned by people that are not musicians or artists, and artists come in and spend their money there, and they’d rather do that, as...

I’m going to do an all-guitar album because I’ve been playing since I was 13. My Caribbean style mixed with my rock style. I want to do a musicians’ album-just the guitar talking with different...

We’re living in the modern age now. I call it the Year of the Matrix. Back in the day, you had these mixed-tape circuits where if you wanted to get (unreleased) music to your fans,...

You know, I’m a modern day Harry Belafonte; I got the swagger of the island.

When the Fugees were big, we made a whole lot of money, and what happened was that I saved my money and never spent it.

You all know I can play the guitar, you all know I can sing, but what you all forgot is these are all the beats that I come from.

The last rocker out of Jersey was Bon Jovi, right? You haven’t seen some new young blood.

I’m hands-on with everything, always trying to reach the real people.

You never really know how you come to the earth, it’s really a mystery, and when you leave, it’s sort of a mystery too-but somehow, whoever you’re a part of, you have a natural connection...