The extramarital affair between Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill during the late 1990s was one of the worst-kept secrets in black entertainment, but now the producer wants his fans to know more. This week, Jean released a new autobiography, Purpose, which details why the hip-hop group the Fuguees broke up, but Ebony News and Lifestyle Editor Jamilah Lemieux wants to know why Jean decided he couldn't contain this juicy tidbit, which involves children, any longer.
The Wyclef/Lauryn affair news is not hardly new. What most fans didn't know, however, is that Jean (allegedly) believed that Hill's son Zion was his and, upon discovering that he was the child of Rohan Marley, the singer was devastated and heartbroken … which led to the demise of the Fugees.
Jean's is certainly a life story worth telling—-rising from the slums of Haiti, struggling in the ghettoes of New Jersey and Brooklyn and then becoming a multi-platinum recording artist/producer. Despite a number of commercial and critical disappointments, he is a remarkably talented individual with an enviable catalogue that includes a few modern-day classics. Hell, he ran for president of a country when most of his former musical peers are trying to get signed to Young Money or mentioned on a gossip blog (which says a lot about, well, a lot, but we'll focus on that some other time.)
So why, in 2012, do we need to know the low down on this nearly-two-decades-ago affair, especially considering that the child in question is now old enough to watch the reveal play out on Twitter?
Read Jamilah Lemieux's entire piece at Ebony.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.