Happy Friday. Happy weekend. Happy start of September!

As summer comes to a close, I’d like to spend a few minutes sharing the backstory of perhaps one of the greatest summer songs of all time: Shakira and Wyclef Jean’s “Hips Don’t Lie.” The international hit has one of the stranger creation stories you’ll hear about a pop song.

Wyclef came on the show this week to talk about it, and a lot of other things. He’s just launched an impressive seven-album release schedule, releasing records focused on specific musical genres, something he can do quite well, as a musical prodigy and multi-instrumentalist.

Wyclef told me about the ideas behind the new album, and we also spent a lot of time talking about his entire career and what it takes to be able to make so many hits for so many different people. I had to ask him how he does it.

ME: “In order for a hit to be a hit, a real hit song, the song has to have blank _________”

Wyclef: In order for the hit to be a hit song, it cannot be a hit.

ME: Explain.

Wyclef: Hits come and go, right?... Hits come and they go. So don't even think about writing hits, right? Just write a cultural phenomenon.

ME: What does that mean?

Wyclef: That means write a movement, right? Because a movement is bigger than a song. When you approach it from the level of I'm about to move people, right, and I'm gonna move them, whether they listen to this song or not, then the ideology of the writing just becomes different, right? Because now “Hips Don't Lie” becomes bigger than just “Hips Don't Lie,” right? It becomes like a union of the world, right?

ME: Where were you trying to move people with that song?

Wyclef: The biggest songs that I've written has been a movement of unification.

ME: You're moving everyone towards togetherness.

Wyclef: I defy that law of you know, you got to be Indian, you got to be African, you got to be Latin, you know. You gotta be European. You gotta be American. I put all of y'all together, and y'all like “Hips Don't Lie.” Everybody got hips. So that's the energy, you know. If you look at The Score, you know a song like “Ready or Not” — you know that sample is Enya, right? But what happens is when you draw from that energy again, and you mix it with the energy of what we're doing, it becomes magical.

We ain't worried about a hit record. We worried about a movement because when you do a movement, some kid in Ethiopia gonna catch it, some kid in Brooklyn gonna catch it.

More music wisdom from Wyclef in the chat, which you can find on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. I won’t spoil the behind-the-scenes story of how “Hips Don’t Lie” came together, but know it involves a Dirty Dancing soundtrack, a late-night fast food joint, and a studio showdown over… hips.

Enjoy, and happy weekend!
–Sam

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