"The Fugees, who exploded out of the then-burgeoning North Jersey scene - around Newark and The Oranges - were a trio of artists with vastly different experience and talent. Wyclef, the eldest, was Haitian-born and Brooklyn-bred. South Orange's Lauryn Hill, the youngest, was perhaps the most stunningly and undeniably talented. Pras had Brooklyn roots and an ear for the streets... The group's Bayyan-produced 1994 debut, Blunted On Reality, was far from satisfying... Even with mediocre sales of 275,000, Ruffhouse gave them the advance they needed for a second album. "We had $135,000, took a little advance and bought studio equipment with the rest," Pras recalls. The results: a top-of-the-line home studio downstairs in Wyclef's uncle's home in East Orange - the Booga Basement..." Peep the video to the classic lead single, "Fu-Gee La" + more continued below...
"The Fugees' masterpiece was released in February 1996, eventually blown up by a song that wasn't even a single. Mixing Caribbean flavor with Hill's R&B power-pipes while beating about a hip-hop heart, the album appealed to music fans of all stripes, eventually selling nearly six million units in the US and, according to Pras, 18 million worldwide. "Clef brought the musicality, Lauryn brought the soulfulness and I brought the ruffneck," he explains. "And when it meshed together it was perfect." Enjoy Wyclef & Pras breakdown several classics from the album below. Peace to Brian Coleman.
