Wyclef Jean is reflecting on the moment he and the Fugees clashed with 2Pac.
During a conversation with Genius marking the 30th anniversary of the group’s groundbreaking 1996 album, The Score — which dropped the same day as Pac’s All Eyez on Me — Clef broke down how certain bars from the track “Cowboys” were taken the wrong way by the late rap icon.
“Rappers want to be actors / So they play the Jesse James call-up card / And get they bones fractured / You ain’t got no guns, you off to the precinct /Inside tough guys are feminine like Sheena Easton,” Wyclef spits on the track alongside Outsidaz rapper Pace Won.
The tension escalated when 2Pac fired back on the unreleased track, “When We Ride on Our Enemies,” rapping: “Heard the Fugees was tryna to do me / Look bitch, I’ll cut your face, this ain’t no muthafuckin’ movie / Then, we watch the other two die slow / Castrated entertainin’ at my muthafuckin’ sideshow.”
Still, Wyclef insists the bars from “Cowboys” were never directed at ‘Pac. “There ain’t no issues,” the Grammy-winning artist said. “We never did nothing to disrespect ‘Pac.”
According to Clef, it wasn’t personal beef but more about the energy surrounding Shakur at the time — especially with his “everybody gonna get it” mentality, and the fact that the Fugees were flying the East Coast flag.
“We wasn’t gonna go there,” he added. “I’m saying, like, ‘Go ahead. You can have that. We good.'”
Elsewhere in the chat, Wyclef — who is preparing to drop Quantum Leap, a bold monthly rollout featuring seven straight albums — took a moment to honor his late friend and collaborator John Forté.
“Forté literally is the fourth Fugee, for real,” Wyclef shared. “We were all childhood friends. The subtlety [of his passing], it really fucked all of us up.”
He went on to praise Forté for helping transform The Score into more than just another rap album, calling it a lo-fi classic.
“Tribe Called Quest had Q-Tip; we had John Forté,” he said. “He brought a whole other perspective to The Score. He was the kind of dude — he’d do a verse, and you’d have to go back and rewrite yours. He was the only person who could anchor a track like ‘Cowboys’ with that many ill MCs on it.”
John Forté passed away last month at his home in Chilmark, Massachusetts. He was 50 years old.
