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Wyclef Jean: The Carnival

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Sony Music Entertainement
Released: 1997.06.27
Time:
 73:50
Category: Rap & Pop/Rock
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Rating: ********.. (8/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.wyclef.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2001.06.09
Price in €: 6,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Intro/Court/Clef/Intro (Dibango) - 5:06
[2] Apocalypse (Jean) - 3:49
[3] Guantanamera (Fernandez/Marti/Orbon/Seeger) - 4:30
[4] Pablo Diablo (Interlude) - 0:39
[5] Bubblegoose (Jean/Remi) - 3:49
[6] Prelude to "To All the Girls" (Interlude) - 0:29
[7] To All the Girls (Bailey/David/Hammond/Jackson/Jean/Leibrand/McKay/O'Brien/Robinson/White/Wright) - 4:18
[8] Down Lo Ho (Interlude) - 1:13
[9] Anything Can Happen (Duplessis/Jean) - 4:36
[10] Gone Till November (Jean) - 3:27
[11] Words of Wisdom (Interlude) - 0:45
[12] Year of the Dragon (Duplessis/Hill/Jean/Summers) - 4:07
[13] Sang Fézi (Jean/Price) - 4:02
[14] Fresh Interlude - 1:45
[15] Mona Lisa (Jean) - 4:30
[16] Street Jeopardy (Duplessis/Forte/Jean) - 3:57
[17] Killer Mc (Interlude) - 0:32
[18] We Trying to Stay Alive (Forte/Gibb/Gibb/Gibb/Jean/Michel) - 3:11
[19] Gunpowder (Jean) - 4:24
[20] Closing Arguments - 1:35
[21] Enter the Carnival (Interlude) - 0:24
[22] Jaspora (Jean) - 4:03
[23] Yele (Jean) - 5:24
[24] Carnival (Duplessis/Jean) - 3:14

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


WYCLEF JEAN - Guitar, Keyboards, Producer, Executive Producer

JERRY "Te Bass" DUPLESSIS - Bass Guitar, Producer
THE NEVILLE BROTHERS - Performer
LAURYN HILL - Arranger, Performer, Executive Producer
CELIA CRUZ - Performer
CRAZY SAM & DA VERBAL ASSASSINS - Performer
JOHN FORTÉ - Performer
MELKY SEDECK - Performer
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA - Performer

MARCIA GRIFFITHS - Backing Vocals
RITA MARLEY - Backing Vocals
JUDY MOWATT - Backing Vocals

SALAAM REMI - Producer, Engineer, Mixing
PRAS - Performer, Executive Producer
BRIAN DOZORETZ - Engineer, Mixing Assistant
SONNY KOMPANEK - Arranger
WARREN RIKER - Mastering, Mixing
RUDY - Assistant Engineer
TONY GONZALES - Assistant Engineer
PAUL EPWORTH - Assistant Engineer
RAWLE GITTENS - Mixing Assistant
ALEX OLSSON - Mixing Assistant
JAY NICHOLAS - Mixing Assistant
MIKE ROACH - Mixing Assistant
STORM JEFFERSON - Mixing Assistant
DJ SKRIBBLE - Scratching
FUNKMASTER FLEX - Scratching
WILL KENNEDY - Digital Imaging
MANUEL LECUONA - Mastering
TOMAS MUSCIONICO - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1997 CD Columbia 67974
1997 LP Columbia 67974
1997 CD Columbia 67974
1997 CS Columbia 67974
1997 Columbia 67974



The Score was one of those rare hip-hop albums that came out of nowhere and rewrote the rules. In the aftermath of its success, many pundits predicted that rap would move away from gangsta and toward a richer, more varied existence. Given such heady praise, perhaps it was reasonable that Wyclef Jean, the guitarist and male rapper for the Fugees, decided to follow The Score with a solo project. However, Wyclef Jean Presents the Carnival comes across like Jean presenting his case that he is the true genius in the Fugees. And he's partially right. He has the ambition and drive common to many great artists, but he lacks the skills to fulfill his vision. Of course, the very fact that he has an original vision makes Jean one of the more compelling figures of late-'90s hip-hop. Not content to rely solely on hip-hop, Jean adds all manners of influences to his music. You can hear reggae, soul, disco, Caribbean rhythms, worldbeat and opera scattered throughout The Carnival, giving the record the riotous atmosphere of its title. Even so, Jean occaisonally tries too hard, forcing disparate genres to mix and spending more time on production than songwriting. But even with all its faults, The Carnival delivers great thrills when operating at full strength, demonstrating that Jean is at least half a genius.

Leo Stanley, All-Music Guide



"Taste the culture, know who you are," exhorts a voice in the opening seconds of The Carnival. While Fugees mastermind Wyclef sets a high goal for his first solo album, essentially a follow-up to the Brooklyn hip-hoppers' multiplatinum The Score, he never succumbs to feel-goodism or preachiness while traveling the songlines. Including everything from over-the-top operatic scatting to Bee Gees samples and Celia Cruz as part of its rhythm nation, The Carnival proves that, "Killing Me Softly" or no, the rapper/producer is far from losing his knack for mad fun and games. And, indeed, if you're not careful, you may end up learning something: witness the ballad "Gone Till November," a drug runner's unflinching lament.

Rickey Wright, Amazon.com



The inevitable "solo artist vanity project" can indeed be a prickly pear, often ending up self-indulgent and even disastrous. Once members of a successful group get some cash in their pockets and have their record company's undivided attention (at long last), they start going a little bit crazy. And if any hip-hop group has that kind of power right now, it's the Fugees, with multi-platinum sales around the globe and a Grammy in their back pocket. So who does Wyclef, the major creative force behind the Fugees' success, think he is with this new album? I'd say he's a damn good musician and conceptualist. Presents The Carnival... isn't a pure hip-hop album, but it wears the Fugees' musical roots on its sleeve, and the album helps to bring "world" music to hip-hop fans and vice-versa, leaving everyone satisfied in the end. Mixing the Fugees' broad musical vision with an interesting assortment of talent from around the world, Wyclef has created an amazing party album, and perhaps the best soundtrack to summer that we'll hear this year. After an amusing courtroom drama skit (other related pieces show up throughout the album), "Apocalypse" starts things off on a strange, if not intriguing, foot. Consisting of a silky smooth hip-hop track laced with an interesting female vocal loop, Wyclef goes about his lyrical business with ease, rapping about the last days and time ("100 horsemen at your door") as if it were a trip to the store to buy some milk. Mixing general apocalyptic images (an oddly prevalent and frankly overused trend in rap these days) with a tale of police harassment over the track's cheerful strains is ironic and mildly disturbing, whether it is meant to be or not (it probably is). This gentle tale flows nicely into an updated version of the Celia Cruz classic "Guantanamera," combining the original sentiment of the Latin folk chestnut with a hip-hop flair, including raps by Wyclef and Lauryn Hill and cutting by Funkmaster Flex. And since we're still working on the vanity project angle here, Wyclef even throws Celia Cruz herself into the mix on the intro. Why not? The results on the non-rap side of things are just as interesting and effective: "Gunpowder," a thinly veiled but compelling Bob Marley tribute (or is that rip-off?) is backed by Marley's original back-up singers, the I-Threes. "Sang Fezi" (with Lauryn Hill), "Yele," "Gone Till November" and "Carnival" are utterly enjoyable in their non-hip-hopness, showing off Wyclef's range. And "Gone Till November" is unique, to say the least: a folk song with a hip-hop beat that is backed by the New York Philharmonic. But the true party pleasers on the album are the infectious hip-hop songs, including "Anything Can Happen," "Year Of The Dragon," "Street Jeopardy," "To All The Girls," and "We Trying To Stay Alive," despite the latter's questionably chosen (read: lazy and Puff Daddy-esque) Bee Gees sample. As a whole the album flows well and contains imagination, spirit and tongue-in-cheek humor, which should make it appealing to a wide range of listeners, the least of whom will be Fugees fans. Forget the party mix tape for the beach this summer, just go down to The Carnival.

Brain Coleman - Aug 08, 1997
CMJ New Music Report Issue: 532



WYCLEF JEAN is enne echte Jecke! Mitsamt seinem Hofstaat, dem REFUGEE CAMP, gibt sich der Carnivals-Prinz auf seinem Solo-Debüt die Ehre, wobei Mikrophonmariechen Lauryn und Edelmann Pras jedoch zu keinem Zeitpunkt Zweifel daran aufkommen lassen, wer hier innerhalb des mächtigen Dreigestirns das Zepter fest in Händen hält. WYCLEF, das wandelnde Musiklexikon, bedient sich bei fast allen möglichen und unmöglichen (BEE GEES!) Quellen der Musikgeschichte und setzt diese in einen Kontext aus tiefstem Roots-Reggae, heißester Calypso-Rhythmik, filigranen Klassik-Ausflügen (!), stampfenden Disco-Hüpfern und State-of-the-art-HipHop: die ersten Singleauskopplungen "We Trying To Stay Alive" und das die kubanische Sangeslegende CELIA CRUZ featurende Chart-Diadem "Guantanamera" stellen nur zwei - vielleicht lediglich die schillerndsten - der Carnivals-Umzugswagen dar. Multilingual in Englisch und Creolisch (wie auf dem vorzüglich "House Of The Rising Sun" samplenden "Sang Fezi") vorgetragen, läßt uns WYCLEF seine Vision von bewußtseinserweiternder "HipHop-World Music" teilen: seine Rhymes erzählen von einer Welt zwischen Apokalypse, Vertreibung ("Yele") und Straßengewalt ("Street Jeopardy" mit fetten Reimen von Newcomer FORTE), aber auch von Zwischenmenschlichem ("To All The Girls" und "Mona Lisa"). HipHop-Headz werden dabei besonders "Year Of The Dragon", "Anything Can Happen" und den lyrisch wie musikalisch äußerst mächtigen Opener "Apocalypse" zu schätzen wissen. Und selbst die Gästeliste des schillernd-bunten Carnivals-Zuges läßt sich sehen: FUNKMASTER FLEX scratcht auf der neuen Single; das N.Y. PHILARMONIC ORCHESTRA intoniert WYCLEFs epische HipHop-Symphonie "Gone 'till November"; SALAAM REMI produziert das smooth-kickende "Bubblegoose"; SKRIBBLE begleitet DJ-technisch die Engelschoräle der NEVILLE BROTHERS auf dem Midtempo-LostLoveSong "Mona Lisa"; und die MARLEYschen Familienbande zählen sich auf der u. a. von Lauryns Schwiegermutter RITA MARLEY begleiteten Reggae-Reminiszenz "Gunpowder" aus. Ein Debüt-Album, das sich erfreulich weit über die oftmals beängstigend eng gesteckten HipHop-Grenzen hinwegsetzt. Mal sehen, was L. Boogie und John Forte uns auf ihren kurz bevorstehenden Ego-Trips Schönes bescheren - "Anything Can Happen", würde WYCLEF sagen.

Chris Maruhn / © Intro - Musik & so
mehr unter www.intro.de



Ein Fugee im Alleingang: HipHop und mehr - so könnte das Motto für das Solodebüt von Wyclef Jean lauten. Mit "The Carnival" gelang dem Fugees-Kopf eine finessenreiche Collage aus haitianischen, brasilianischen und südstaatlichen Klängen. Am meisten Spaß macht dieser "Carnival", wenn (wie in dem brillanten "Apocalypse") lässige Grooves mit stahlenden Melodien flirten. Dazu gibt es Samples von den Bee Gees oder Earth, Wind & Fire - und ein Gastspiel der Neville Brothers.

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