Jean 2000 |top| | Wyclef

The track, which appeared on Wyclef's album The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book , featured The Rock's iconic wrestling catchphrase as the central hook. While Johnson did not rap on the track, he appeared in the music video and provided vocal interjections, marking one of his earliest major crossovers into mainstream pop culture outside of the ring.

The year cemented Wyclef as an — not the biggest rapper, but the most unpredictable. He proved that a hip-hop artist could sing off-key on purpose, quote Shakespeare, reference Bob Marley and Tupac in the same breath, and still sell records. The template he built in 2000 would influence later genre-blurring artists like M.I.A., Childish Gambino, and Janelle Monáe. wyclef jean 2000

Then there was the weirdness. "Kenny Rogers – Pharoahe Monch Dub Plate" featured Wyclef pretending to call Kenny Rogers on the phone. There was a live cover of The Police’s "Every Breath You Take." And then there was the outlier: A cover of The Cars’ "Drive," sang entirely in a broken robotic vocoder. The track, which appeared on Wyclef's album The

If the 1990s belonged to The Fugees—the trio that redefined hip-hop with The Score —then the dawn of the new millennium belonged squarely to Wyclef Jean. While many artists struggled to navigate the Y2K transition, Wyclef Jean in 2000 was not just surviving; he was thriving, experimenting, and cementing his legacy as one of the most unpredictable, controversial, and brilliant forces in popular music. He proved that a hip-hop artist could sing

. The track used the wrestler’s famous catchphrase to create a high-energy anthem that sampled everything from John Denver to Slick Rick. "Perfect Gentleman"