Quotes from Wyclef Jean

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

When I rap, I get to express myself in a way where putting words together is like poetry, and sometimes it's better to talk in certain expressions than sing, you know? So I love, I love to rhyme when I want to express certain things.

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

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

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

I feel that life is short, so we should be disciplined, but at the same time we should have a good time.

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?

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

I'm like a hippie. At the end of the day, that's what my voice caters to.

There's not a hip-hop artist that didn't snatch of piece of Bob Marley. It's totally impossible.

That's the best way to feed the human mind. That's how Bob Marley did it. He never put it in your face. After you got the groove, you were just singing the hooks, because you thought it was cool.

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

What I learned from people like Carlos Santana is that you cannot get too happy after working for five years in the industry. It takes years and years, and I learned to keep a straight head and keep on working harder and harder.

It was important that I became successful. People say they do it for the love, and yes, you do it for the love, but you want to be successful.

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

I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.

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

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 want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

Wyclef is a musician that tried to unite as many musicians at once as possible. I am trying to be successful at that. The greatest challenge is that, I just got arrested for protesting in NYC for cutting the school budgets... And I think that it's important to stand up. Schools are important.

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.

If I can't take five years out to serve my country as president, then everything I've been singing about, like equal rights, doesn't mean anything.

All that violence in the world, we need to stop that.