Wyclef Jean Recalls Being Scared to Tell Whitney Houston She Was ‘Flat’ While Recording: ‘I Could Hear a Needle Drop’

Can you imagine giving Whitney Houston feedback? Wyclef Jean can.

During the Storytellers event with Mark Ronson at Tribeca Festival on Saturday, June 7, both musicians recalled anecdotes from their experiences in the music industry, which included Jean, 55, critiquing the “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” singer during a recording session.

Jean said that Houston’s producer and manager, Clive Davis, was working with the singer on her comeback album and wanted to collaborate with him. “I’m doing Whitney’s comeback album and I need you to give me a song,” Jean recalled the industry legend telling him.

“And so I went in, was trying to figure out, I was like, ‘Whitney’s from the church, I’m from the church.’ ” The hook to the song is “my love is your love,” which is also the title of the 1998 hit. “So Clive is like, ‘Man, I got to get this thing right.’ So this was a crazy experience,” Jean continued.

“So now Whitney is recording this song, and I just remember, and I hear a note, and the note sounds flat to me. It sounds flat. Now I’m terrified. I got to tell Whitney Houston she flat. But we got our jobs as producers, we don’t fly the airplane. And I’m like shook man. ‘I’m like going to buckle these.’ “

Jean paused the recording session and said to the Bodyguard star, “Ms. Houston, you were flat.”

“And she said, “Sweetheart, you was what?’ ‘You was flat.’ I could hear a needle drop. I was like, ‘Oh, I ain’t fired.’ ” Thirty seconds passed by before Houston, who was known as the Voice, responded to Jean’s critique.

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“She said, ‘I wasn’t flat baby. I just bent the note.’ And that was a lesson because I went back and I heard it and she’s such an amazing singer that she meant this kid like a BB King vibe,” Jean continued.

“So for me, that was one of the ‘wow’ moments because when you can be honest with that artist, so much magic is going to happen.”

He also mentioned how her daughter Bobbi Kristina was at the recording session, and he was able to record her saying “sing mommy” for the track as a surprise for the singer. “And her mom is in the booth so she can’t hear it, Jean added.

“And then she says, “Sing mommy.” And then I sampled it and then I held it on. So Whitney didn’t hear her daughter’s voice till the final version and she cried.”

The rapper told Rolling Stone in 2012 after her death that he was “very nervous” when Houston came into the studio to record the song. “But when she walked in, I gotta tell you, she lit up the room to the point where we forgot that she was a diva. We just thought she was a friend from back in the day in Newark,” he recalled.

Jean also mentioned how his favorite memory of Houston was her bringing her daughter to the studio with her. “She was recording one of her biggest comeback records ever – and it really wasn’t about the comeback record,” he told the publication.

“It was about making sure that her daughter was there with her, experiencing what she was experiencing. This is the Whitney that I know.”

Houston died in February 2012, the day before the Grammy Awards, when she accidentally drowned in a Beverly Hills hotel room. She was 48 years old.