*By Michael Teich*
Music artist and producer Wyclef Jean is a three-time Grammy winner, cannabis entrepreneur, and a former presidential candidate of Haiti.
Now, he's looking to create the world's first hip-hop guitar.
"It's a whole new instrument," Jean said Wednesday in an interview on Cheddar. "It's software-based with actually real strings."
When Jean isn't piloting his latest projects, he's acting as a mentor for up-and-coming artists. The music mogul recently partnered with Fiverr, a digital marketplace for freelancers, and will offer his advice to users of the company's new platform, Fiverr Pro Music and Audio.
Freelancing is a delicate balance –– one that many Americans are forced to strike in a gig economy. A recent study from the [Department of Labor](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nr0.htm) found that 10.1 percent of workers earn their keep in "alternative environments," like temp agencies or freelance industries.
And the music business isn't exactly hospitable: In 2017, recording artists only earned [12 percent](https://www.businessinsider.com/musicians-received-12-percent-43-billion-generated-by-music-industry-study-2018-8?utm_source=reddit.com) of the income produced by the industry, a marginal piece of a $43 billion market in the U.S.
His latest partnership with Fiverr allows Jean to help artists and enter a classroom, albeit a virtual one.
“If I wasn’t going to be famous, I was going to be a teacher.”
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/wyclef-jean-2).
The charismatic founder of a startup company that claimed to be revolutionizing the way college students apply for financial aid, was convicted on Friday.
A federal judge has ruled that The New York Times and other newspapers can proceed with a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
A magazine journalist’s account of being added to a group chat of U.S. national security officials has raised questions about the Signal app.
The next time you get a call about an upcoming medical appointment you may not be talking to a human. Hospitals are increasingly using AI assistants.
Schools are turning to AI-powered surveillance technology to monitor students on school-issued devices like laptops and tablets. But there are risks.
Hours after a series of outages that left X unavailable to thousands of users, Elon Musk is claiming that the social media platform is being targeted in a “massive cyberattack." Musk said on a post Monday that the attacker is either a large, coordinated group or a country. Complaints about outages spiked Monday at 6 a.m. Eastern and again at 10 a.m, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com. A sustained outage appeared to begin just after noon Eastern.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame has revealed its 12 finalists for 2025. Members of the public have a week to vote for their favorites online.
An insider account being billed as an “explosive” memoir about “seven critical years” at Facebook/Meta will be published next week.
Extinction is still forever. But scientists at a biotech company are trying what they say is the next best thing to restoring ancient beasts.
The typically tight-lipped CIA is peeling back the curtain on some of its secrets with an upcoming presentation at South By Southwest festival.
