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Welcome to The Stumped, a website of writing + design by two brothers. Pick something - and get reading.
Welcome to The Stumped, a website of writing + design by two brothers. Pick something - and get reading.
If The Fugees need a theme song, something for embodiment and representation, it should be “Fu Gee La,” for a lot of intensity belies its joyous sounds. Unlike the childlike glee and wonder of its primarily playground structures - the hopscotch of “Ooo la la la!” and the tire swing from “It’s the way that we rock” to “when we doing our thing” - the lyrics are sinister. The Fugees tear around the jungle gym, waving their hands, cackling with gratitude, all the while preparing for “Armageddon.” They tightrope the line between a belly full of laughter and the discomfort which can come from too much of the same. And it is the very contradiction of a refugee’s existence, the intimate pride in what’s lost, gone, and the struggle against accepting an oft apathetic or even cruel savior, that this song best conveys.
This predicament is at the fore, represented best by intimate weaponization. It is an immediate self destruction, self mutilation. Wyclef has replaced his destroyed arm with a “mic,” and his entire body is “made of hand grenades.” Initiating a war for survival, he transforms himself and, in a touch of brash virtuosity, entire ethnic groups; he’s backed by “Haitian Sicilians,” after all. On a battlefield, the Fugees do not discriminate; they employ the oppressive, “90 degree” heat of Haiti while spreading the chill of Sicily's most stereotypical “gun nozzles.”
In the span of one song, the group establishes solely their own enigma. Where are these refugees from, exactly? Their lyrics “fast like Ramadan,” yet are decadent, like a chocolate cake layered with caution, at every turn. Whom do they respect? They threaten “Chicken George” and allow the miraculous to be swallowed by horror: Stevie Wonder is given sight, only to witness “crack babies kill their own families.” What do they believe? They relax by turning “Brooklyn rooftops into Brooklyn tee-pees,” yet explicit demand we respect “Jersey.”
If it’s all too baffling, too much for a single listen, find comfort in Lauryn Hill’s laughter. This is “their thing.” Keep listening - you just might find a home here.
