Consumer Guide Album

Wyclef Jean: Wyclef Jean Presents the Carnival Featuring Refugee Allstars [Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1997]
From kompas to reggae, Celia Cruz to Neville Brothers, the diasporan flavors ("Jaspora," one title spells it, nicely kreyolizing the Greek/Jewish term) are half decoration, half concept, and less than integral either way. Like his soul brother Puff Daddy, master of the simplistic strategy with which the Fugees wrested dominance of hip hop songwriting from the moribund Death Row consortium last year, Wyclef doesn't feature the grandiose depth charges with which Wu-Tang torpedoed hip hop beatmastering well before that. He uses the sampler--augmented by the live quote, the honored guest, and now the genre excursion--like MC Hammer before him, for one-dimensional tunes on which to float his well-articulated morality tales and popwise carnivalesque. Cognoscenti may bitch that it's only r&b, but r&b has been the shit for half a century, and this is where it lives. A−