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Wyclef Jean strolls into a room on Florida Atlantic University's Boca Raton campus and knocks fists with his interviewer as if he's offering some sort of secret handshake. Donning a jersey emblazoned with the word refugee and a sharp, white straw fedora cocked to one side, the solo artist and member of the on-again, off-again hip-hop trio the Fugees is here to promote his new album, Welcome to Haiti Creole 101. He sits on a folding chair in the front of the room and starts singing random sound bites into a microphone on the table in front of him. He's extremely laid-back and speaks in a voice so gentle you're convinced you've spoken to him before.

Although he's fresh from a long-awaited Fugees reunion show in New York -- the band has yet to record a follow-up to its 1996 multiplatinum album, The Score -- Jean is focused these days on his native Haiti. As its title suggests, his latest CD is an attempt to educate his fans on the culture, language and musical traditions of the island nation and how it has shaped his own life and career.

"It's really a blueprint of my life," he explains. "Growing up in Haiti and then Brooklyn, it explains why I'm always ready to ride and die for Haiti. I also wanted to release it for the 200-year anniversary of Haiti."

Welcome to Haiti Creole 101 is a multilingual affair, with Jean singing in Creole, Spanish, French and English, but its strong, feel-good Caribbean vibe mixed with street rap communicates a sort of universal language. "Hip-hop is in English, but this album is in Creole, yet you can still understand it. I did it so everyone can experience it," he says.

Jean also wanted to give his fellow Haitians something they could relate to. "I want young Haitians to be proud to speak Creole," he notes. "When we come to this country as immigrants, we shouldn't be picked on or teased because of where we come from."

He felt it was important to make the album because he noticed his young cousins were listening only to rap stars such as Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Fearing they would lose all sense of their Haitian culture, he got the idea to make an album mixing hip-hop with traditional Haitian rhythms known as comp�s. "It's a way to educate the young ones coming up," he says. "You can flip your lingo and mix it with Creole. I want to show these kids you can sell a million records even if it's not in English."

The pop star recalls not being able to speak much English as a boy and what an impression the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" had on him. "I liked it because it was [sung in] broken English and I could understand it," Jean explains. "Listening to that music changed my life."

Now, he hopes his music will have the same effect on younger generations. "When I was little in Haiti, I was very poor," he relates. "I'm from the school beyond hard knocks; I'm from the school of naked clothes. I remember me and my brother trading pants back and forth for a month."

These days, he's particularly preoccupied with restoring hope and resources to hurricane-ravaged Haiti. He's also upset with the way the American media portray the country. "When you see Haiti in the news here, you, as a Haitian, are scared to go back home," Jean admits. "They have brainwashed Haitians in America. Brooklyn is dangerous; the whole world is dangerous."

To help his homeland, Jean is launching Yele, a foundation to bring awareness to Haiti. "In Creole, yele means cry of freedom. It's not a cry for me but more of a cry for the country. It will be a revolution," he argues. "The whole thing is still in the embryo stage right now, but it will be based in New York, and we will raise millions to rebuild Haiti." Jean adds that Yele's Web site, which isn't up yet, will form a link among people of all ethnicities so they can share their life experiences and ideas on how to help Haiti. He is even going so far as to urge his fellow Haitian-Americans to return to their native land to visit schools and tell kids what they're doing in America to inspire them. "You might want to sponsor a village of 50 kids," he says. "One of them might be Wyclef someday."

On Dec. 5, Jean will host an all-star concert in Haiti to benefit relief efforts there. "The Fugees will play, and I'm working on getting 50 Cent, Lil Jon, Sean Paul and many others," he says. "It's going to cost $1 million to put it on, but we want to show that these people aren't animals and they deserve helping. It's really my Christmas gift to my country. For us, it's about being in Haiti; the fact that these kids see me gives them inspiration."

He emphasizes the country's severe need for supplies. "In Haiti, these people can use whatever you've got -- beds, food, everything," he says. "Our job is to make sure the stuff really gets there. The rebels have blocked the roads from Port-au-Prince to Gona�ves for some particular reason, and we're going there to find out why."

Of course, any conversation with Jean will eventually lead to the Fugees, whose personal differences and successful solo careers have kept them from reuniting until recently. Since The Score made stars of the band, Jean has publicly dissed his bandmate and cousin Pras in song, while Lauryn Hill has become a mother and an enormously popular solo artist following the release of 1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Yet Jean insists the band is primed for a comeback, arguing that the public is hungry for a pop group that wasn't conceived in a record-company boardroom.

"The Fugees wasn't man-made. It's something God put together," he says. "The Fugees is not three people; it's a movement. When you do an album like The Score, you put continuity in it, and the fans want more." As for the possibility of a new tour and album, he hints: "In the future, the fans will get to hear it again."

Jean, who has produced songs for Whitney Houston, Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, has been keenly aware of both his own talent and the fickleness of music fans since he was 17 years old, when he recorded a gospel album with some of his cousins. "We sold it at the church, and three people bought it," Jean remembers. "I told my dad, 'We're doing all of this for the man upstairs and the people at our church can't even buy the record?' Then, my dad told me God had given me this gift, and I started to understand what he was saying."

Although Jean says he's not religious, he is spiritual. "I base my religion on spirituality," he explains. "You have good, and you have evil. But I know I can get through to the crack dealers and rapists [with my music] quicker than any minister can."

As is evident by his charity work and renewed focus on Haiti, Jean is not simply motivated by stardom and wealth. "I don't get moved by money, but I'm a businessman," he says. "What moves me is that I can move people. Jay-Z, Puffy -- I think they all wanna move people, too.

"I came in the game as an artist at 16 or 17 years old," he adds. "I'm not an [unknown] artist anymore. I don't have to answer to anybody. Hip-hop is the culture we are. Rap is something I do."

The Fugees: A timeline

1987: While attending the same high school in New Jersey, Lauryn Hill and Prakazrel Michel, a.k.a. Pras, start performing together. Pras' cousin Wyclef Jean joins the group, which they called the Tranzlator Crew.

1993: The trio signs to Ruffhouse/Columbia and renames itself the Fugees, which is short for Refugees.

1994: They release their debut album, Blunted on Reality, but it has little impact on the music world.

1995: The Fugees top the Billboard Hot Dance Music Maxi-Singles chart for three weeks with "Fu-gee-la."

February 1996: The Fugees release their second CD, The Score.

April 1996: The Score goes double-platinum, and the Fugees hit the Top 10 with a remake of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly."

September 1996: The Fugees win an MTV Video Music Award for Best R&B Video for "Killing Me Softly." The Score, meanwhile, has gone five times platinum.

January 1997: The Fugees win two Grammy Awards: for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "Killing Me Softly" and for Best Rap Album for The Score.

August 1997: Hill gives birth to son Zion David. Rumors spread that the baby is Jean's, but the father is really Rohan Marley, son of reggae legend Bob Marley.

June 1997: Jean releases his debut solo album, The Carnival, which goes gold two months later.

August 1998: Jean denies pulling a gun on Blaze magazine editor Jesse Washington after learning Washington had planned to run a negative review of The Carnival. Hill releases her first solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Pras has a summer hit with "Ghetto Supastar."

November 2002: Jean goes public and says the Fugees didn't break up and that they're trying to work "stuff" out. He also dismisses rumors of any lyrical battle among Fugees bandmates.

July 2003: Jean calls Pras "the Milli Vanilli of hip-hop" and releases the song "Fake Ass Pras," dissing his cousin with lyrics such as, "The fans want the Fugees back together/The only thing they don't want is the third member."

September 2004: The Fugees reunite for comedian Dave Chappelle's block party in Brooklyn. The band will perform together again in Haiti this December. According to Jean's press representative, all the Fugees will enter the studio after Hill finishes her next solo album, which is due out next year.