On “The Streets Pronounce Me Dead,” the striking mission statement of Wyclef Jean’s back-to-basics album From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion, Wyclef imagines himself as his own funeral, where his career is eulogized in brutal terms.
“Haters started talking, saying I went left/ Akon took my spot/ will.i.am took my vest,” he raps.
Wyclef beats on his coffin from the inside in protest, but the indignities keep coming: “Then a rapper stood up, said ... Last time I remember him was ‘Gone 'Til November’/ He say, ‘He don’t spit no more, all he do is sing songs’/ Last time he felt me was when I rhymed with Big Pun.”
From the Hut is Wyclef’s attempt refute those criticisms, a return to rap that pairs him with street-king DJ Drama to toughen up his sound and introduce a harder, meaner Wyclef to a younger audience. The premise is sound; after all, Mos Def recently released his best album in a decade by cutting back on the somnambulistic singing and focusing on meat-and-potatoes rap.
But instead of dramatically emerging from that coffin to vindicate himself, as he dreams in the song, From the Hut is the sound of his corpse continuing to decay.The album is a remarkable, total failure, a record that further tatters the reputation it set out to save. It’s not just that Wyclef isn’t much of a rapper to begin withhis flow is slow and cautious, like he’s reading from a teleprompterit’s that Wyclef’s version of hard is so soft, so out of touch, that even with DJ Drama’s assistance the disc sounds as tame as a Black Eyed Peas children's record.
As if for maximum embarrassment, “The Streets Pronounce Me Dead” is followed immediately by a track that underscores exactly why the streets dismissed him: “Slumdog Millionaire,” a shamelessly cutesy rewrite of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” cash-register chings and all, that pairs Wyclef with the oddest M.I.A. stand-in ever: Cyndi Lauper, who raps in a harsh Brooklyn accent as her alter ego, Luscious Loo.
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Let that sink in for a moment. Does that sound like anything anyone on the streetsor anyone periodwould ever want to hear? And why Cyndi Lauper? Was MC Skat Kat unavailable?
