By Stacey Chapman

How did you get involved with DIRTY?

Wyclef Jean: When I got the script I was like, damn, another black man playing a drug dealer. I thought how can I take the character twist it and add a little eeriness to it in a respectable way. So I called Chris Fisher (the director) and said "Listen man, I've been checking this role. I can probably throw an accent on this guy and make him come from Kingston and throw him back to California." The director really loved it.

How much time did it take for you to get that accent fined tuned?

Wyclef Jean: I'm Haitian and I grew up with Jamaicans. So, it was just about the depth and how hard he wanted the accent to sound. I could have made the accent harder. It took me about a week to get the dialect down packed.

The creativity you express in your music is there anyway that that can be shown in your acting as well or is it an entirely a different thing?

Wyclef Jean: No, I think it all works together.

Do you use improvisation in both music and acting?

Wyclef Jean: Yeah. I just zone out with it. It's cool.

The movie that you're in is about loyalty and snitching and there is a similar situation in hip-hop right now concerning Busta Rhymes. Busta's body guard was killed at his video shoot and has yet talked to the police. Do you have any comment on that and how it relates to the movie?

Wyclef Jean: At the end of the day everyone abides by a code and the code is you can't betray your family. People want to feel a sense of loyalty. I can't really comment on Busta Rhymes because I don't know the depth and exactly what happened, but I can comment on hip-hop as a whole. In hip-hop we come from a school of loyalty. When you come from the streets, one of the things that is taught, at a very young age, is it's not good to be a rat. I think that philosophy is always portrayed within the music.

I had time to speak to Michael Gondry about BLOCK PARTY and he said that even he and possibly Dave Chappell didn't know that there was going to be a Fugees reunion until about five minutes before.

Wyclef Jean: You are so right. When you talk about the Fugees you are talking about Rock and Roll. Everyone was trying to put the Fugees back together. There's no such thing. The Fugees never broke up in the first place. All we kept doing was moving forward doing solo projects. Dave Chappell's angle was, "Yo, you know I got this block party and I would love for you guys to play." That's it. And it was done with such simplicity. It didn't hit us that we haven't played together in like nine years until it was time for us to go on stage.

What did it feel like?

Wyclef Jean: It felt like WOW. It was an incredible moment of time captured on film.

How did you decide what songs to play? We just vibed. The music was a natural plus. We never have a set list. We just go with the vibe.

What was it like filming in Brooklyn, having that moment take place in the neighborhood?

Wyclef Jean: It was incredible for us.

Angelina (Jolie) says great things about working with your charity. What is your reaction to that? She claims to work with you in the future

Wyclef Jean: The foundation is YeleHaiti. The website is YeleHaiti.org. Angelina is part of the same movement as me. You got two people in this world. You got people who sit around and talk about it and then you have the doers. I'm part of the doer's committee. She is part of the doer's committee. The doers committee means you physically take yourself and lend your celebrity to the people. There is the scene in BLOCK PARTY where you have the speech with the kids. Do you feel kids are important to you?

Wyclef Jean: Kids are most important and that's why we have the foundation. Kids are the future.

How would that relate to DIRTY because there is a message to kids as well?

Wyclef Jean: Crime doesn't pay. No matter what you do, karma is karma and it's going to get back to you. Also, really know who your friends are.

What's coming up next?

Wyclef Jean: I just did a song with Shakira called Hips Don't Lie which will be her first single off the album. I have a documentary called the GHOSTS OF CITE DU SOLEIL. We are trying to get that into Cannes right now. It's about kids in Haiti who identify themselves with Hip-Hoppers. All the kids in the movie are dead.

Do you have any acting plans? Are you writing any movies now?

Wyclef Jean: I'm writing a script. I feel that it's important that certain movies are shot in Haiti. I'm trying to encourage people to go back to Haiti. So, right now I'm writing a script called Carnival.

With this movie in mind, is there anyone you want to cast or you want to work with?

Wyclef Jean: Independent movies are doing so well right now; I don't think you need a well known actor or actress. If you cast the greatest actor that nobody knows you're "starting life" with someone.

Can you tell us something about the new Fugees album?

Wyclef Jean: I call it Fugee rehab. We are basically vibing. We don't have a budget where you give us money and we do an album and the record company makes 300 million dollars. That's corny. The Fugees signed a deal with Verizon. Now you can download whole songs like "Take it Easy" and "Foxy, Foxy" onto your computers and phones. When is the next album expected?

Wyclef Jean: It's expected when Jesus Christ comes back. In the bible it says like a thief in the night, you always know he's coming, but it's like when.

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DIRTY opens on February 24th, 2006