Wyclef Jean has always used music as an outlet for his heart, a way to document his harrowing, romantic journey through life. It only makes sense that he'd transfer those storytelling skills to paper one day. "Purpose: An Immigrant's Story" is just that: Jean's attempt to give fans a close up look at his life and career covering everything from the Fugees breakup to his attempted run for presidency after the 2012 earthquake in Haiti.

Jean is arguably one of the most influential voices in hip-hop. He first came to prominence in the 1990s with his group, The Fugees, whose album "The Score," went multiplatinum, won two Grammys, and became one of the bestselling hip-hop records ever. In his first book, "Purpose" Jean recounts his path to fame from his impoverished childhood in "Baby Doc" Duvalier's Haiti and the mean streets of Brooklyn and Newark to blinding lights of the world stage.

The son of a pastor and grandson of a Vodou priest, Jean was born and raised in the slums of Haiti, moving with his family to New York when he was nine. He lived in Brooklyn's notorious Marlboro projects until his father took them to Newark, where he converted a burnt-out funeral home into a house for his family and a church for his congregation.

According to Jean, this is just the first of seven books the artist plans to write. "I'm gonna write seven books, and the first one was a memoir because of one of the things I learned when I ran for president and got bamboozled," Jean said in an interview with MTV News.

"The mass world, what they know about Wyclef is basically that he can sing, he can produce, he can write songs, but they don't know how smart musicians actually are and where they're from. The memoir, [it] was important to me that it's raw, it's honest, it's like my music and if you're reading it, you just feel like you're a one-on-one conversation opposed to reading something."

First reviews of the book have highlighted Jean's confessional, diary-like writing style.

"I felt that it was important that history document the true story, firsthand," said Jean to TheGrio. "I wanted the book to be like a conversation, and it was important to tell it in the raw sense, because - the thing about me? I'm not trying to be popular; I'm a refugee. My first album was 'Blunted on Reality,' so being honest and blunt is always the way to be, as far as I'm concerned. If I make a mistake, I make a mistake.

The confessional quality is only underscored more by the book's first leaked excerpt, which delves deep into the musician's relationship with Lauryn Hill. The passage sent Jean's fans into a spiral of e-gossiping.

"Now my Twitter is going off and a lot of people are like, 'Clef is going at L on this memoir' - not at all," he said, addressing the immediate feedback. "Because a true Fugees true fan is gonna want to know what happened to the group. It was very important for me to be as honest as I could be. And when you read my memoir, that's the age I was, that's the period [it was]."

Love and music drama aside, Jean reveals that the most challenging topic he covered was his time in Haiti immediately following the devastating 2010 earthquake.

"The hardest thing for me in the book was talking about Haiti's earthquake," he said. "Landing on the ground 24 hours after ... there was a young kid, and I knew he was going to die and he called [out] my name. There's no ambulances, no EMS, there's nothing but I have to give him hope to think that they're coming for him, so he can exit earth in a peaceful way. That made me understand the importance of life."

Jean spares nothing heart-wrenching in "Purpose." He confronts other equally difficult subjects head-on: The death of his father, his efforts to help rebuild his homeland, including the controversy surrounding Yéle, his aid organization, and his exploratory bid for president of the island nation.

"Purpose: An Immigrant's Story" is in stores now.