Earlier this week, Wyclef Jean dropped a bomb on the music world when he revealed in his new memoir, Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, that Lauryn Hill once had him caught up in a paternity scandal. And though Jean’s revelation has stirred up plenty of controversy, he says he has no regrets about airing his and Hill’s dirty laundry.
“Autobiography means that I’m gonna give it to you, and I’m gonna spit to you the year and the era of what it was,” he explained in a recent interview with MTV News. “Throughout the years, there’s always been different things that’s been said, and I just went into deep detail for y’all.”
And part of that detail was revealing that Hill previously made him believe that her first son, Zion, was actually his.
“I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that,” an excerpt from the book reads. “She could no longer be my muse. Our love spell was broken.”
‘Clef eventually learned that it was Hill’s then-boyfriend, Rohan Marley, who was the father of her child, but he claims he still got a bad rap after the end of their affair.
“When [The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill] came out, y’all was mad at me,” he said, referring to songs like “Ex-Factor,” “All the girls was like, ‘Oh, we can’t believe Wyclef broke Lauryn Hill’s heart.’”
However, ‘Clef stresses that he holds no ill will towards Hill in revealing their troubled past.
“It’s important because at the end of the day, I’m not coming at L,” he said. “This is a period of my life, and that’s how I felt. If anything, I just brought closure to a chapter — because at the end of the day, I didn’t do Miseducation, so there was no closure in my chapter.”
Sadly, ‘Clef isn’t alone. Check out some other stars that have been in paternity scandals below. –nicholas robinson
