"My girl from Martinique -- let's see ... she's what?" asks Jean, to no one in particular. "What are Martinique women known for?" Admiral T is stumped; they skip that one and move on to Jamaican women, then Trinidadian ones.

"My ghetto girl!" exclaims Jean, relishing the phrase. "My ghetto girl -- I need a good line for her! Like: 'My ghetto girl will always hide my pistol.'" He laughs heartily. (Jean says his wife, Marie Claudinette Jean, is a "'hood kinda girl," though she's also a designer of her own couture clothing line, Fusha. The pair have dated since childhood and they still live, sans children, in New Jersey.)

"I need to come up with a really good one for the ghetto girl," says Jean. Instead, he races into another room and returns with a small keyboard, which he begins tinkering with. Intrigued by the sound of his notes, Jean hooks the keyboard up to a mic so he can add them to Wonder's beat. Twenty minutes later he's back with a guitar. Half an hour later he's back with menus from a nearby Caribbean restaurant, instructing his assistant to take our dinner orders. Evidently no one is leaving this studio anytime soon.

By the time I do leave, well into the night, Jean hasn't eaten his dinner yet. He hasn't stopped playing with his studio toys, either. Poised at the mic, he's merrily delivering lyrics and, obviously, just getting revved up. His collaboration with Admiral T is shaping into a relentlessly energetic track with a hip-hop beat and a world-beat soul.

When I asked Jean where he sees himself in 20 years, he answered me without flinching. There was no talk of a Fugees reunion -- although he says he's not opposed to one. ("The world needs another Fugees record," he'd told me, adding that such a record would sell "like Michael Jackson numbers, like 'Thriller' numbers.") There was no talk of a forthcoming clothing line, a high-profile retirement, or a lucrative career playing a thug in Hollywood productions -- which makes him one of the only hip-hop stars in existence not banking on one or more of the above.

"I'm just a music man," is what he told me. "I don't see myself without a guitar in my hand, playing for a crowd."

Playing for a crowd, indeed. If one spirit reigns in the world of Platinum Sounds -- which is the world of Wyclef Jean -- it's the spirit of play. And that, I realize, is why rumors of Jean's greatness are not overrated. Artistically inconsistent as he is, Jean is one of the few left in hip-hop who are in it for one reason: the love of music. He has fun listening to it, making it, collaborating on it, experimenting with it -- even if he's alternately failing miserably and innovating brilliantly. Being "just a music man" is no small feat in a music industry that more and more resembles a corporate ladder. As he dances his way from one room to another -- here perfecting the bass on Wonder's beat, there chanting lyrics, slightly off key -- Jean seems content to remain on his rung, as long as he can make merry, meaningful music there.

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