www.urbanjoint.com/wyclefjean - Artist page with free MP3 music downloads on UrbanJoint

"Preacher's Son is my first album," he insists. "It's the first album I've ever done where I focus on my songwriting more than anything else. That's why I call it Volume One -- because its a movement back to music. Being a hip-hop musician, being from a reggae background and of Haitian descent, I have a lot of music in my mind. For the first time on any record, I'm going back to that music."Even heard superficially, Preacher's Son makes this clear. Clef draws from the islands, from the streets, from faraway cultures brought close by the daily news -- from the blues and jazz and myriad strains of songs sung a thousand ways around the planet.Listen more closely, and the words form complex, vivid pictures. Here are memories of neighborhood parties ("a barbecue, like we used to do," sings guest diva Patti LaBelle on "Celebration") and of innocent times lost ("Sometimes when I dream, that's when I wake up," Clef reveals on "Industry," "and I kind of hope the Fugees didn't break up"). Beaches, heated by the guitar of Carlos Santana, beckon in the seductive Latin vibe of "Three Nights in Rio de Janeiro," while Missy Elliott kicks off the festivities in a more unlikely spot with the sizzling single, "Party to Damascus."But days and nights can drag out long and lonely. Clef, partnering with Redman, pays homage on "Baby Daddy" to men who sacrifice to take care of kids who aren't even their own. ("It's not easy for a guy to raise kids that dont belong to him," he says. "But they love the mother of that child and so they end up loving the kids too. We never give those guys the credit they deserve.")And sometimes, when hopelessness sets in, so does fear and fury. Clef knows these moments too. On "Life in New York," he unfolds a desolate panorama, filled with "money, drugs, and bitches, cops, judges, snitches - jealous dudes that hate us." Yet in the opening moments of this track, as he surveys this wasteland, Clef proclaims, "It feels good to be back in New York.""No matter what you say about New York," he shrugs, "somehow we always pull through. We can always turn a negative into a positive."Click here to read more about Wyclef!