For his latest single, Wyclef Jean literally looked to the stars.
Producing Borrowed Time, premiering exclusively on usatoday.com, the rapper used sounds recorded by the Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since last year. It's part of a collaboration between NASA and Apple Music, which have partnered with a handful of artists including Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to provide sounds from Juno to incorporate into their music.
"I was interested to hear what was coming from Jupiter," says Jean, 47. "What I heard was a collage of vibrations that sounded to me like a piano. I heard low tones, mid-range, high tones — it almost sounded like a new patch of sonics that have not been revealed yet to the public."
The whirring sounds of the giant planet can be heard throughout the track, which is taken from Jean's first studio album in eight years, Carnival III: The Fall and Rise of a Refugee (out Sept. 15). Writing the uplifting anthem, the hip-hop icon was inspired by socially conscious songs such as John Lennon's Imagine and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, as he sings about overcoming obstacles and cherishing life.
"The whole idea of this record is, between Earth and space, we’re really on borrowed time," Jean says. "So we have to love each other, not hate each other. We have to try and be progressive and move things forward, not backward."
With this song, "I have to send a message to the world to say, 'It's OK to fall and it’s OK to get beat up and thrown down,' " he continues. "But the idea is to get up, dust yourself off and keep running."
Like his previous two Carnival albums — his 1997 debut The Carnival and its 2007 follow-up, Carnival Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant — Jean's latest effort details the stumbles and successes of immigrants. But the Haitian native does not get explicitly political, choosing instead to rap on Borrowed Time about his vision for a just, harmonious world.
"Borrowed Time is a song where I’m talking to the administration, but (also) America as a whole," Jean says. "If I was to target Donald Trump, I’d basically be giving Donald Trump attention and I think he gets enough attention. He sucks the air out of the entire room every day on the news."
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