THE FUGEES COME HOME: 'WE ARE A FAMILY, WE FIGHT AND THEN WE MAKE UP'

The highly anticipated, Homeric homecoming of the Fugees, soon to be in Italy for a single performance at the FilaForum in Assago (Saturday 10 December). Their first recording together since the highly successful '.The score", nine years ago: the piece just delivered to the radios, "Take it easy"It is a frantic chase, a rushing torrent of over five minutes in which the magnificent three of them spout rhymes as in the good old school days of hip hop. Conversing with them, on the other hand, one struggles to get the words out of their mouths, not least because the most talkative of the group, Lauryn Hill, is not in the game. "'Take it easy' was kind of a warm-up for us. It's pure hip hop to the core, in that raw form that you still hear around today,' explain Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel, holed up in New York's Platinum Sound studios completing work on the new album expected early next year. "The message of the song is an invitation to take things as lightly as the reality of the world around us allows. An invitation to reflect and put things back in place'.
Is he also referring to the interpersonal relations between the three, who in the past have not been spared controversy and venomous barbs (a few years ago Wyclef dedicated the not-so-friendly 'Fake ass Pras' to his cousin Pras Michel)? The answer is laconic: 'We are brother and sister: we quarrel, but we remain family. In the recording studio these days, we're finding our way back home'. As in the days of 'The Score', indeed. A special record, even listening to it with today's ears... 'The reason is simple, that album worked because it was born spontaneously, in an organic environment. It was the product of a special chemical interaction between the three of us. It is the same now, each of us has a strong personality, our own musical background, a distinct spirituality'. Are the journalists right, then, who on the basis of the first single predicted a sort of return to the roots for the Fugees? "No, it's not a return to the past but an evolution even though we are still us, of course. You know what they say, the drum stays the same even when the beat changes. The soul of the Fugees has remained the same, but in all this time we have learnt many things. We have matured not only as musicians but above all as human beings'. What to expect, then, from the new record? "The typical Fugees sound: hip hop, reggae, r&b, soul, rock, that Creole element that comes from our Haitian origins. A fusion of everything that is part of our style and our way of being. We still adore Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley, the greatest of them all, and it only pleases us that other bands after us have followed the same path. When we all got together in the studio a great positive energy was generated immediately. And that is why we decided to come on tour in Europe straight away' (first date in London on 25 November). What will the concert be like? "We will have a large live band with us, probably about ten musicians. We will do new pieces and well-known pieces, we will do dance music and acoustic music. Above all, we will be in the middle of the audience, to create an intimate atmosphere even in ten-thousand-seat arenas. People will be part of the show. And with us will be the best singer of all time, Lauryn Hill...'. Having completed the rapprochement (which began last year with a surprise performance at the 'Block Party' festival organised by the African-American comedian Dave Chappelle, later documented in a film), it remains to be seen how much room there will be in the future for the Fugees, three cocks in a henhouse who in nine years have gone their separate ways and stuck their beaks out just about everywhere. Pras and Wyclef do not give an opinion: 'We don't know that, we can't look that far ahead. The only thing we do know is that today we are fully focused on the group, that we have a lot of energy on us and that we can't wait to come to Europe and have fun.

Interview conducted and taken from www.rockol.it