Source: WENN

While I’m always for people lending a helping hand to folks, and Lauryn Hill could definitely use some help paying off her tax debt (and with a few other things), the idea that Wyclef Jean would offer out of all the people in the world just seems…odd. But that’s what he has done.

In an interview with DJ Green Lantern and Boss Lady on the Sirius radio show Invasion Radio, ‘Clef acted as if he wasn’t aware of her tax troubles or that she was even facing sentencing (which was postponed this week until early May), but he wanted to make it clear that despite their past squabbles, he wouldn’t want to see her end up in jail, or to see anything bad happen to her at all.

“That’s deep. What I could say to that is that at the end of the day, my heart goes out to her. I’m realizing…I have not been following that news at all…But I definitely wish her the best. That’s definitely a serious issue. Once again, if she’s listening, at the end of the day, my door is always open. I never closed my door to her in a sense of, if she ever needed anything, I was never the one to block–but she had mad people around her. But at the end of the day it’s one thing I learned about life. We could beef as much as we want, but if something was to really happen to her, I would feel bad. My arms is open…This is the first that I’m hearing about this news…but if she’s listening, I’m open.”

Hmmm. And on top of that, ‘Clef discussed the attempts in the past to get the Fugees back together and why each time was futile. A lot of if had to do with a lack of trust between members he claims, and he talks about how it led to him creating the very epic “Hips Don’t Lie” with Shakira–one of the best selling singles of all-time:

“Dave Chappelle got the Fugees together. He came and met us individually, and he didn’t have a deep story. He was just like, ‘I love the band. I think you guys should come rock with me.’ He’s funny, he’s pure, and he’s honest, and I felt other people were trying to get the band back together so that they could make billions. It’s hard with the Fugees because money never came first for us, integrity always come first. We ended up doing that, I thought it was great. When we went to the studio, keep in mind, when we did The Score, or when I met L and Pras when I was little…it was clear what everybody did in the group. What I am to the Fugees is like what will.i.am is to the Black Eyed Peas, it’s clear. I felt like once we came back, I felt like that trust was lost. I didn’t have that title no more…So then I went on and I worked with Shakira and I gave her the biggest song of all time. Written by Wyclef Jean, get it straight. I felt sad about the Fugees thing though.”

“There has to be a level of trust on what is it that every individual is doing. Like me, I’m a producer. What I’m best at doing is, I know how to create artists. I know how to blow up artists. I do it over, and over and over again…The time that  I worked with Lauryn and the amount of stuff I put together with her, I haven’t come across a female remotely close. When she’s focused the talent is the most ridiculous. It sounds like four aliens in one. For me, I respected her in that sense and she respected me as a producer. But I think what hapened was, so much time had passed and so much new groups were coming out so it was like, “Does this dude still got it?” And then I went on and tapped that thing for Shakira, but I was more wanting to do it for the Fugees, but if I went to the Fugees I wouldn’t have had “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Seems ‘Clef and Lauryn have just been at odds for too long. But I wouldn’t encourage her to take this man’s offer, seeing as how he’s been dogging her in public for the last few years. Especially after that whole issue he brought up for his memoir claiming she told him that her son, Zion, was actually his. Just seems like another thing for him to throw back in her face in the future. Run Lauryn, RUN!

What do you think about his comments?

Source: Northjersey.com

A man who goes by the name of Aswad Ayinde (birth name: Charles McGill) is currently facing his second of five jury trials, three of which he is accused of raping and impregnating three of his five daughters while they were minors, reports NorthJersey.com.

In his current proceeding, Ayinde is facing two counts of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of sexual assault. This past Tuesday, his ex-wife Beverly Ayinde, whom he was married to for seventeen years, took the stand. In her testimony, she recounted the chilling details of the detestable horrors that went on in her home at the hands of Aswad. Beverly revealed that she simply could not believe that her 12-year-old daughter was really pregnant until her husband dropped the shocking bomb that he could be the father of their daughter’s unborn child.

 “He said, ‘She could be pregnant from me.’ My heart started racing,” Beverly testified.

She went on to express that between 1980 and 2006, Aswad sought to control every single aspect of her life and the lives of their children.

“He equaled himself to being a prophet. As time went on, he was god-like. I had to call him, ‘my god.’ He equated himself to Jesus Christ … He would sit us all down and lecture us about his greatness and his power … At another point, he equated himself to Prince and Michael Jackson,” Beverly told the courts.

Aswad is accused of deliberately impregnating his daughters in an attempt to create a “pure bloodline.” Beverly expressed to the courts that she blamed herself for not seeing this coming, as she revealed that four years prior to the pregnancy of her daughter, he told her that spirits were telling him to perform oral sex on the child, who was 8 at the time.

“I was shocked. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He tried to present it in this very godly, spiritual way,” she testified.

Her testimony also revealed that Aswad frequently walked around their home in the nude and sodomized one of their daughters at least 100 times. When asked why she never called police, Beverly said that he threatened to kill her children.

“He threatened he would kill my children. He would cut them up and put them in different places and I wouldn’t be able to prove anything because I didn’t have a birth certificate for any of them,” she tearfully admitted just after revealing that some of her children didn’t have birth certificates because Aswad delivered all but two of them himself in their home.

As stated earlier, this is the second of five jury trials that Aswad will have to face. Back in 2010 he was found guilty of molesting one of his other daughters. The molestation is said to have began when she was 8 years old and continued up until he impregnated her as a teenager. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. With all five trials combined, Aswad is being accused of raping all five of his daughters and impregnating three. If convicted on all counts in the present and pending trials, Aswad faces more than 100 years in prison. He is being tried for the rape of each daughter separately to prevent bias among jurors.

Aswad is known to the world as the man who directed the music video to accompany infamous Fugees track, “Killing Me Softly,” which went on to win Best R&B Video at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards.

Source: WENN

Unnecessary is the only word that actually comes to mind when I think about the references made to R&B songtress, Lauryn Hill in Wyclef Jean’s latest memoir, Purpose: An Immigrants Story, which hit bookshelves back in September. The book appears to cover various aspects of Jean’s life; however, the most talked about and seemingly most relevant story told is the one where he makes reference to his love affair with the former group member. Although this toxic romance was one that most Hip-Hop heads were already aware of, he took it a step further when he proceeded to drag old skeletons out of the closet surrounding their relationship, going as far as to say that he was deceived into believing that Lauryn’s first born child, Zion, was his. Now, whether his accusations were true or not, those are some pretty damaging words, especially considering the fact that the affair was now water under the bridge and he was now discussing a child who is old enough to understand what’s going on. But, whatever, this isn’t a Wyclef bashing session.

Many waited with anticipation for Hill to shoot out a rebuttal through her publicist either confirming, denying or even expressing her feelings on her former group member’s accusation, but for nearly two months she remained silent. And finally, when the hype around the memoir had died down and she felt like she was ready to speak on it, she broke her silence during a concert in Dallas. I respect the fact that she didn’t allow anyone to force her into responding and that she didn’t react in an emotional fit of rage. She was calm, cool and collected:

“A lot of misunderstanding out there. A lot of miscommunication out there. A lot of false information out there. And notice, out of all the people who talk talk talk, who’s the silent one.”

“There’s a lot of chatter, but me…. And you know why? Let me tell you why I don’t chat back. Because I know that my brothers and my sisters are often times pawns in a bigger scheme so when they, under pressure, attack me. It’s called the high road. Try taking it sometimes.”

Her level-headed and sensible response did something for me deep down inside. It was much deeper than me being a big Lauryn Hill fan and feeling content because she got the last word. In that moment I realized that it didn’t really matter if she ever responded to the claims because she was at peace with herself and the situation and furthermore, she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. She represented a woman who knew how to let go of the past and refused to slop around in the mud with someone who no longer held a position of importance in her life. It was eye-opening. It was liberating. It made me take inventory of how I handle the Wyclefs in my own life. Most of all, it got me to thinking and wondering how much happier and freer so many of us would be if we embarked on this high road as well.

I’m sure we all have at least one person in our lives running their traps about us. But, whether their statements are valid or not, we are not obligated to go tit for tat, especially when it comes to exes. Men sometimes have the ability to be extremely insensitive once a relationship is over and the things that come out of their mouths can be hurtful, but getting into petty disputes over it and always feeling the need to make sure people know “how it really went down” is only a backwards way of being dragged back into the relationship. In doing this, you ultimately limit yourself from moving past the situation and hinder your heart from fully healing. It is easy to feel as if you’ve lost when you’re not spitting hot venom back at those who are slamming you, but sometimes silence says so much more.

Jazmine Denise is a writer living in New York. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise

Source: WENN/Fayes Vision

While everyone has been throwing shade at Wyclef over his new memoir “Purpose” and wondering how Lauryn Hill and her son Zion will react to Clef’s allegation that he initially thought he was the Zions father, no one has even considered how Rohan, Zion’s actual father, might feel about all this. Well, leave it to TMZ to get the exclusive from the son of reggae legend Bob Marley who essentially says Wyclef is on one.

“[He] knew from jump that was my son from the day [Lauryn] was pregnant,” Rohan told the site.

Though he may need to take off the rose colored glasses on this point, Rohan doesn’t even think Lauryn and Wyclef were messing around at the same time that he was involved with the “miseducated” singer. From his view:

“They were definitely not messing around, or he would never have given me the okay.”

That would be kind of messed up for Wyclef to tell Rohan to date Lauryn if he was still sleeping with her, but considering Wyclef was cheating on his wife at the same time, we can’t expect too much from him. As far as Rohan is concerned,  Wyclef is ”just saying false things to get book headlines.” Wyclef on the other hand is sticking to his story, telling TMZ:

“There is no way that I would have shown up in the hospital in that circumstance to wait for a baby to be born if it was not mine. The idea of a memoir is to tell the truth. I know that often the truth hurts, but a lie hurts even more.”

Um, so does that mean Rohan wasn’t at the hospital when Zion was born? This whole situation is getting a little too twisted.

Whose story do you believe?

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A lot of Lauryn Hill fans have a bit of a bone to pick with Wyclef now that they’ve gotten word of his new memoir and the details about the questionable paternity of the singer’s first son, Zion, included therein. Yesterday, Wendy Williams got Wyclef to have a little seat on her couch and explain why he was digging all this dirt up 12 years later, and when Wendy asked the former Fugees member if he gave L-Boogie a heads up about the book, he said this:

No I didn’t call Lauryn because Lauryn knows the story. There’s over a thousand people who know this story. What I wanted history to document was the truth.

When Lauryn did “The Miseducation there were a lot of Lauryn Hill fans saying, “Clef done broke Lauryn Hill’s heart.” After Wyclef Jean, Lauryn had five kids and my responsibility is to apologize for sins in my twenties, but we all have to move forward as adults. If you read the entire book, I am not disrespecting Lauryn in any form, in any sense.

Wyclef went on to say that the chances of the Fugees getting back together after all of this drama are slim to none, and also said he doesn’t have any contact with Lauryn Hill at all — just as his wife would have it. According to him, in his book he’s just telling his own truth.

Are you going to check out Wyclef’s “Purpose” memoir?

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Source: WENN

In the last 72 hours, two men from Lauryn Hill’s past have come out the woodwork to talk about their relationship with the troubled singer and they aren’t portraying her in the best light. On Friday, we told you how Rohan was subtly putting Lauryn on blast about some behavior that he just couldn’t accept as a man; now, her former bandmate Wyclef wants us to believe that L-Boogie tried to pull a Maury Povich on him and declare he was the father of her oldest son when he isn’t.

The allegation is exposed in Wyclef’s new memoir, “Purpose,” in which he talks about his extramarital affair with Lauryn during the same time she was involved with Rohan Marley. As we know now, Rohan is the father of Lauryn’s son, Zion, but Wyclef claims she initially lied and told him otherwise.

“In that moment something died between us,” he wrote. “I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that. She could no longer be my muse. Our love spell was broken.”

Now I’m not trying to say Wyclef is lying, I just want to know why he’s talking about this in the first place. He claims that Lauryn’s lie is what broke up the Fugees in 1997, but there’s really nothing to be gained from revealing this information—other than increased book sales, of course. It’s sort of hard to take a man who was cheating on his own wife seriously about his love spell with another woman being broken because of a lie she told. I need him to spend as much time analyzing his own shortcomings and the lies he told his own wife in his memoir rather than exposing someone else’s, particularly when a child, who is now 12 years of age and old enough to have access to this information, is involved.

What do you think about Wyclef writing about Zion’s paternity in his new memoir?

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billboard

After it was reported yesterday that Lauryn Hill was facing serious tax evasion charges for failing to report her income to the IRS between 2005-2007, Ms. Hill took to her Tumblr to issue a statement about the unfortunate matter. Even though the Tumblr account looks like it could be fake, the official Twitter account of Lauryn linked directly to the statements which makes it credible.

Hill goes into length as to why she had to distance herself and her family from “society.” In fact, the statement delivers the kind of explanation that Hill has been communicating via scant interviews and her Unplugged album after she distanced herself from the music industry in 2000. Although L Boogie explains in this letter that she was in communication with the IRS about her situation, much of her statement delves into demystifying her absence from the music scene. It’s a letter to her fans in essence. Peep it in its entirety below:

“For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground.  I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.  Having put the lives and needs of other people before my own for multiple years, and having made hundreds of millions of dollars for certain institutions, under complex and sometimes severe circumstances, I began to require growth and more equitable treatment, but was met with resistance.  I entered into my craft full of optimism (which I still possess), but immediately saw the suppressive force with which the system attempts to maintain it’s control over a given paradigm.  I’ve seen people promote addiction, use sabotage, black listing, media bullying and any other coercion technique they could, to prevent artists from knowing their true value, or exercising their full power.  These devices of control, no matter how well intentioned (or not), can have a devastating outcome on the lives of people, especially creative types who must grow and exist within a certain environment and according to a certain pace, in order to live and create optimally.

I kept my life relatively simple, even after huge successes, but it became increasingly obvious that certain indulgences and privileges were expected to come at the expense of my free soul, free mind, and therefore my health and integrity. So I left a more mainstream and public life, in order to wean both myself, and my family, away from a lifestyle that required distortion and compromise as a means for maintaining it.  During this critical healing time, there were very few people accessible to me who had not already been seduced or affected by this machine, and therefore who could be trusted to not try and influence or coerce me back into a dynamic of compromise. Individual growth was expected to take place unnaturally, or stagnated outright, subject to marketing and politics.  Addressing critical issues like pop culture cannibalism or its manipulation of the young at the expense of everything, was frowned upon and discouraged by limiting funding, or denying it outright.  When one has a prolific creative output like I did/do, and is then forced to stop, the effects can be dangerous both emotionally and psychologically, both for the artist and those in need of that resource.  It was critically important that I find a suitable pathway within which to exist, without being distorted or economically strong-armed.

During this period of crisis, much was said about me, both slanted and inaccurate, by those who had become dependent on my creative force, yet unwilling to fully acknowledge the importance of my contribution, nor compensate me equitably for it.  This was done in an effort to smear my public image, in order to directly affect my ability to earn independently of this system.  It took a long time to locate and nurture a community of people strong enough to resist the incredibly unhealthy tide, and more importantly see through it.  If I had not been able to make contact with, and establish this community, my life, safety and freedom, would have been directly affected as well as the lives, safety and freedom of my family.  Failure to create a non toxic, non exploitative environment was not an option.

As my potential to work, and therefore earn freely, was being threatened, I did whatever needed to be done in order to insulate my family from the climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism that I was surrounded by.  This was absolutely critical while trying to find and establish a new and very necessary community of healthy people, and also heal and detoxify myself and my family while raising my young children.

There were no exotic trips, no fleet of cars, just an all out war for safety, integrity, wholeness and health, without mistreatment denial, and/or exploitation.  In order to liberate myself from those who found it ok to oppose my wholeness, free speech and integral growth by inflicting different forms of punitive action against it, I used my resources to sustain our safety and survival until I was able to restore my ability to earn outside of it!

When artists experience danger and crisis under the effects of this kind of insidious manipulation, everyone easily accepts that there was something either dysfunctional or defective with the artist, rather than look at, and fully examine, the system and its means and policies of exploiting/’doing business’.  Not only is this unrealistic, it is very dark in its motivation, conveniently targeting the object of their hero worship by removing any evidence that they ‘needed’ or celebrated this very same resource just years, months or moments before.  Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities, people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers, committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego.  Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

It was this schism and the hypocrisy, violence and social cannibalism it enabled, that I wanted and needed to be freed from, not from art or music, but the suppression/repression and reduction of that art and music to a bottom line alone, without regard for anything else.  Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual.  I Love making art, I Love making music, these are as natural and necessary for me almost as breathing or talking.  To be denied the right to pursue it according to my ability, as well as be properly acknowledged and compensated for it, in an attempt to control, is manipulation directed at my most basic rights!  These forms of expression, along with others, effectively comprise my free speech!  Defending, preserving, and protecting these rights are critically important, especially in a paradigm where veiled racism, sexism, ageism, nepotism, and deliberate economic control are still blatant realities!!!

Learning from the past, insulating friends and family from the influence of external manipulation and corruption, is far more important to me than being misunderstood for a season!  I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities, but I did however put my safety, health and freedom and the freedom, safety and health of my family first over all other material concerns!  I also embraced my right to resist a system intentionally opposing my right to whole and integral survival.

I conveyed all of this when questioned as to why I did not file taxes during this time period.  Obviously, the danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution.

My intention has always been to get this situation rectified.  When I was working consistently without being affected by the interferences mentioned above, I filed and paid my taxes.  This only stopped when it was necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of myself and my family.

As this, and other areas of issue are resolved and set straight, I am able to get back to doing what I should be doing, the way it should be done.  This is part of that process.  To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue.  I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.”

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hiphopwired.com

Does anyone know where Lauryn Hill lives these days anyways? We know that part of the time she’s in Jamaica so maybe that’s why Ms. Hill has fallen so behind on paying Uncle Sam. But this is no joke, as the Feds have charged Lauren with “willfully failing to file income tax returns” on at least $1.6 million of earned income between 2005-2007.

The Fugees star will have to appear in court  on June 29. If convicted, she’ll face a maximum penalty of up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. SMH. These celebrities really need to get their finances in order or at least hire someone reliable to manage it for them.

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Just one day before Haiti’s presidential election, singer/rapper/ producer Wyclef Jean was shot in the hand in his home country. The incident took place in Port-au-Prince. The Grammy award winning artist was in Haiti to campaign on behalf of presidential candidate Michell Martelly. Wyclef was once a candidate for Haiti’s  presidential election himself, but was kicked off of the ballot due to residency requirements. The singer’s charity foundation Yele was one of the first organizations on the ground after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.

Details of the circumstances surrounding the shooting are still unclear, but Wyclef’s publicist said that the wound was superficial and that Wyclef has been released from the hospital.

Do you think Wyclef will run for president again?

[Source]