Monday, April 03, 2000
Wyclef Jean has fun amid chaos
BY CHRIS VARIAS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
All hell broke loose at that sleepy little Cincinnati Jesuit college Saturday night.
It happened when the clock struck 10. Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born Brooklyn rap star, had spent the previous 40 minutes of his concert at Xavier University's Schmidt Fieldhouse begging the crowd to get louder and to get crazier, and the results were minimal.
Then he suggested that fans seated in the general-admission bleachers should bum rush the reserved-seating main floor.
Most GA ticket-holders found this agreeable, and most security guards decided not to fight a losing battle.
“No disrespect,” Wyclef said to the guards.
The bleachers emptied out, the floor filled up, and for the next hour the crowd put forth the “party” vibe Wyclef had been wanting.
Re-energized by the crowd, Wyclef would “start the whole show over again,” he said, and his DJ spun House of Pain's “Jump Around” for the second time.
He didn't actually reset to the beginning. A version of “No Woman, No Cry” was the show's first song; “Jump Around” was the third, and it proved to be the only song he'd play twice.
Wyclef, who first gained popularity as a member of the Fugees, possesses the type of overloaded mind that wouldn't allow him to do something so rigid as repeat his set list song for song. In fact, it's unlikely there will be a show so disjointed in Cincinnati again this year.
A random sampling of songs he performed: a version of the Cuban standard “Guajira Guantanamera,” with Wyclef leading the way on guitar like a hip-hop Ry Cooder; an a cappella, marijuana-praising rewrite of Ben E. King's “Stand By Me;” “Give Up the Funk,” which Wyclef and his five-man band rendered faithful to Parliament's version; Dylan's “Knockin' on Heaven's Door.” The latter was the night's worst song, overwrought sentimentality better suited for that other Fugee, the killjoy Lauryn Hill.
A random sampling of songs his DJ spun, in a lengthy segment Wyclef dubbed “'80s flashback”: Rob Base's “It Takes Two”; A-ha's “Take On Me”; Men at Work's “Down Under”; Michael Jackson's “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'.”
To hear him direct his DJ was as enjoyable as him directing his band. Maybe after the rap thing dries up, he can start his own DJ business. If he can stir well-mannered undergrads into civil disobedience, surely he can make a wedding reception break into the electric slide.
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Wyclef Jean has fun amid chaos
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