Lost Ones
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Everythig is everything
Doo-Wop...
Rather say you don't know than make a stupid, ignorant comment like you did
Music News: 15 Years Of 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill' Update: 2023 Tour! APPLE MUSIC GREASTEST ALBUM?
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Lost Ones
Ex-Factor
Nothing really matters
Everythig is everything
Doo-Wop...
Rather say you don't know than make a stupid, ignorant comment like you did
a tour de force of soul,political awareness,groove,hiphop & love both bitter and sweet
read yesterday that she out of jail..
^^^^
KENDRICK LAMAR, LAURYN HILL, NAS & A TRIBE CALLED QUEST TO BE ARCHIVED IN HARVARD LIBRARY
blame it on MEKA January 27, 2017
For the past several years 9th Wonder has been an “artist-in-residence” professor at North Carolina Central University, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania, and since 2012 he has been a Harvard University Fellow at The Dubois Institute.
Under the direction of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Dr. Marcy Morgan, and in collaboration with the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute (HARI), 9th has spent the last few years cultivating and curating “These Are The Breaks,” an archive of influential hip hop albums that are widely considered to be a “standard of the culture.”
Taking to his Instagram page, 9th has revealed the first four albums that will be entered and will forever remain in the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University: A Tribe Called Quest‘s The Low End Theory (1991), Nas‘ Illmatic (1994), Lauryn Hill‘s The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (1998), and Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp A Butterfly (2015).
These are 9th’s first four of a planned 200 albums to be archived, and 9th has expressed that they will be entered “in no particular order.” A minimum of ten albums will be archived into the collection each year.
Alongside the selected albums, versions of earlier recordings containing the original music used for their samples in the albums will be included as well. These vinyls will be made accessible for listening at the Loeb Music Library, and can be played via turntables.
A digital copy of the Loeb Classic Crates Collection archive, along with other material, is also available on the HARI’s Classic Crates website.
http://2dopeboyz.com/2017/01/27/kendrick-lamar-lauryn-hill-nas-a-tribe-called-quest-harvard-archive/
blame it on MEKA January 27, 2017
For the past several years 9th Wonder has been an “artist-in-residence” professor at North Carolina Central University, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania, and since 2012 he has been a Harvard University Fellow at The Dubois Institute.
Under the direction of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Dr. Marcy Morgan, and in collaboration with the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute (HARI), 9th has spent the last few years cultivating and curating “These Are The Breaks,” an archive of influential hip hop albums that are widely considered to be a “standard of the culture.”
Taking to his Instagram page, 9th has revealed the first four albums that will be entered and will forever remain in the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University: A Tribe Called Quest‘s The Low End Theory (1991), Nas‘ Illmatic (1994), Lauryn Hill‘s The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (1998), and Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp A Butterfly (2015).
These are 9th’s first four of a planned 200 albums to be archived, and 9th has expressed that they will be entered “in no particular order.” A minimum of ten albums will be archived into the collection each year.
Alongside the selected albums, versions of earlier recordings containing the original music used for their samples in the albums will be included as well. These vinyls will be made accessible for listening at the Loeb Music Library, and can be played via turntables.
A digital copy of the Loeb Classic Crates Collection archive, along with other material, is also available on the HARI’s Classic Crates website.
http://2dopeboyz.com/2017/01/27/kendrick-lamar-lauryn-hill-nas-a-tribe-called-quest-harvard-archive/
It's a classic because it was a game changer,it changed the sound,look and the way people enbraced music again from a woman's perspective and to be honest alot of other artist,especially female's have tried to duplicate that but(beyonce and the likes) but couldn't.
The Mystery of Lauryn Hill
She made one of the best albums of the Nineties with ‘Miseducation’ and then had a public breakdown with ‘Unplugged.’ What happened?
By TOURÉ
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Lauryn Hill performs at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
In 1998, when Lauryn Hill was recording her debut solo album, she was on a mission. “She was aiming for big hits so she could outshine the Fugees and outshine Wyclef,” says someone familiar with the sessions. Her 1996 album with the Fugees, The Score, had sold more than 17 million copies and made her rich and famous, but something was missing. After The Score, many perceived Wyclef Jean as the group’s musical genius. Hill began plotting an album of her own that would change that. “Her solo career wasn’t based on ‘I wanna do an album,'” says Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson. “It was based on not being Wyclef’s side girl.”
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Twelve million people bought The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Hill was established as one of the great female MCs, a quadruple threat: a rapper as well as a world-class singer, songwriter and producer. She was critically acclaimed and extremely rich. In 1998 and ’99, sources say, Hill grossed $40 million from royalties, advances, touring, merchandising and other revenues, and pocketed about $25 million of that. When Hill was thirteen years old, she already knew she would grow up to become an entertainer. In ’98, Hill became an international superstar.
500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Hollywood beckoned her onto the A list. Sources say she was offered a role in Charlie’s Angels, but she turned the part down, and Lucy Liu took the job. Hill met with Matt Damon about being in The Bourne Identity, with Brad Pitt about a part in The Mexican and with the Wachowski brothers about a role in the last two films in the Matrix trilogy. She turned down lots of work. “Lauryn wasn’t trying to do anything,” says Pras Michel of the Fugees, almost lamenting. But she did begin developing a biography of Bob Marley in which she was to play his wife, Rita; started producing a romantic-comedy film set in the world of soul food called Sauce, in which she was to star; and accepted a prize part in the adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved but had to drop out because she got pregnant. The doors were open for Hill to create a multimedia entertainment empire of the sort that J. Lo, Janet and Madonna have built. Hill could have been J. Lo with political substance. Someone who once worked with Hill says with regret, “She woulda been bigger than J. Lo.” Instead, she disappeared.
“I think Lauryn grew to despise who Lauryn Hill was,” a friend says. “Not that she despised herself as a human being, but she despised the manufactured international-superstar magazine cover girl who wasn’t able to go out of the house looking a little tattered on a given day. Because Lauryn is such a perfectionist, she always sought to give the fans what they wanted, so a simple run to the grocery store had to have the right heels and jeans. Artists are a lot more calculating than the public sometimes knows. It don’t happen by accident that the jeans fall the right way, the hat is cocked to the side just so. All of that stuff is thought about, and Lauryn put a lot of pressure on herself after all that success. And then one day she said, ‘Fuck it.'”
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In 2000, Hill became close with Brother Anthony, a shadowy spiritual adviser, then abruptly fired her management team and the people around her. In 2001, she recorded her MTV Unplugged 2.0. Few bought the album, but many talked about how she could be heard on the record breaking down in tears and saying, “I’m crazy and deranged . . . . I’m emotionally unstable,” and repeatedly rejecting celebrity and the illusions that make it possible. “I used to get dressed for y’all; I don’t do that anymore,” she said on the album. “I used to be a performer, and I really don’t consider myself a performer anymore . . . . I had created this public persona, this public illusion, and it held me hostage. I couldn’t be a real person, because you’re too afraid of what your public will say. At that point, I had to do some dying.”
Her honesty was both touching and confusing. She was rejecting so much of what she’d spent years being. The only thing that was clear was that she was suffering. “Artists do fall apart,” a record executive says. “The most commonly held falsity in the game is that they have it all together. They fall apart. Look at Mariah, Whitney, Michael, all the great ones. They all have a moment where you go, ‘Are they really all there?’ And I think Lauryn chose to expose that to the world.”
Until recently, the twenty-eight-year-old Hill lived in a high-end hotel in Miami with Rohan Marley, the man she called her husband, and her four children. Her fourth child was born this past summer. Sources say that not long ago, Hill moved out of the hotel and that her relationship with Marley may be over.
She now insists on being called Ms. Hill, not Lauryn, and is working on a new album, albeit very slowly. “I heard from a friend that she don’t really wanna do music right now,” Pras says. “I heard from another friend that she wants to do a Fugees album.”
So what caused the Lauryn Hill of Miseducation, viewed as regal and brilliant, to morph into the Lauryn Hill of Unplugged, seen as possibly unstable, and then into someone willfully absent from the public? Confidential conversations with more than twenty friends and industry figures and a lengthy interview with Pras have clarified much of what has happened during the five years since her zenith. “I don’t think she’s crazy,” Pras says. “People tend to say that when they don’t understand what someone’s going through. Walk in her shoes, and see what would you do.”
Hill was born in 1975 and raised in middle-class South Orange, New Jersey. By her teens, she was determined to have a career in entertainment. At thirteen, she sang on Showtime at the Apollo. The audience was rough on her, and after the show she cried. In 1998, her mother, Valerie Hill, told Rolling Stone about her post Apollo talk with her young daughter. “I said . . . now, if every time they don’t scream and holler you’re gonna cry, then perhaps this isn’t for you,” Valerie recalled. “And she looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses. To her, the mere suggestion that this wasn’t for her was crazy.” At seventeen, Lauryn had a role on the daytime soap As the World Turns; two years later she appeared in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and had a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill. Meanwhile, she was also spending nights working on music with friends Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel. She was eighteen when the band’s 1994 debut, Blunted on Reality, flopped, but, two years later, with The Score, the Fugees’ cover of “Killing Me Softly” made her a star. She was sex-symbol beautiful, and her music and public persona seemed politically savvy and spiritually aware.
After the explosion of The Score, Jean began recording a solo album. Hill and Pras supported him emotionally and creatively. But when Hill started writing her own songs, Jean showed no interest. Pras says, “I remember when Pepsi wanted her for a commercial, and they were like, ‘All we want is you. We don’t need the other two cats.’ She said, ‘Without them I’m not doing it.’ There’s a lot of things she didn’t do because of the group. Then when she goes to work on her [music] and she doesn’t have the support, that can have an effect mentally. She felt – this is based on conversations we had – she felt there was no support on that angle. When you feel the ones you stuck your neck out for ain’t doin’ the same for you, it brings a certain animosity and bitterness.”
Inside ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’
Once, the three Fugees were close friends, but now Pras has little good to say about Jean. “He’s the cancer of the [Fugees],” Pras says. “He’s the cancer. You can quote me. He’s the reason why it got wrecked to begin with, he’s the reason why it’s not fixed.” Is he the reason for Hill’s troubles? “Maybe, indirectly, she’s where she’s at because of him,” Pras says. “Maybe. But not directly.” Jean politely declined to be interviewed. “I’m somewhere else in my head,” he says on the phone from his studio. “Certain things I don’t talk about. I’m in another zone.” He pauses. “I wish it didn’t go down the way it went.”
Hill responded to an e-mail request for an interview. “I am not available for free interviews at this time,” she wrote. “The only interviews I will consider are those that amply compensate me for my time, energy and story.” It was signed “Ms. Hill.” She asks for money, friends say, because she feels she’s been exploited by the media and the record industry. When Oneworld magazine contacted her about a cover story, she demanded $10,000.
People close to the Fugees say there has always been competition between Jean and Hill. “Not competing for something in particular,” says one. “It’s more competing just who’s better, who’s greater.” Hill’s solo music was intended to settle the matter. When Jean finally came around and offered his production assistance on the record, she no longer wanted it. “She said [to Jean], ‘I’m thinking about working with this producer and that producer,'” a friend says. “He said, ‘Oh, no – I’m producing your whole album.’ She chewed on that for a minute and then said, ‘Nah, I got my own vision.’ That’s when who Lauryn really is started to take form.”
At the same time, Hill’s love life began to get really complicated. For years she’d been clandestinely dating Jean. Their relationship started long before he married his current wife and continued afterward. But Pras says, “I think he was kinda, like, playing with her emotions.”
But in the summer of ’96, when the Fugees were on the Smoking Grooves Tour, she met Rohan Marley, who was on the tour with his brother Ziggy, both sons of Bob Marley. At first Hill was uninterested in Rohan – a former University of Miami football player – because she was still seeing Jean. “Honestly, she didn’t even want the relationship,” says a friend. “Everyone was pushing her towards [Marley] to get her out of the other thing. They pushed her towards him, like, “Why don’t you give him a chance, come on, go out on a date. Just do it,’ not knowing that this man had all this other baggage and drama in his life.”
Pras singled out Hill’s first pregnancy as a turning point for the group. “When she got pregnant, definitely things started goin’on,” he says. “Things got crazy.” While Hill’s stomach grew, the Fugee camp wondered whether the baby was Marley’s or Jean’s. Says a friend, “The conversation between everyone on the low was no one knew until that baby came out.” The day Hill went into labor, Jean told a source he was flying to her side to see his new child. “People don’t know how calculating she can be,” a friend says. “Lauryn used Ro to pull herself out of the relationship with Clef, and she happened to get pregnant. She hoped that baby was Wyclef’s, because it would’ve forced his hand. But it wasn’t.” Hill named her first child Zion Marley.
For years, Hill claimed that she was married to Rohan Marley, but at some point after Zion was born, Hill got another surprise: Someone told her Marley already had a wife. On March 18th, 1993, when he was a sophomore at the University of Miami, Marley married an eighteen-year-old woman from New Jersey in a ceremony in Miami. “The reason [Hill and Marley] aren’t married is because Ro is already married,” says a friend. Sources say Marley has two children from the marriage.
Hill decided to ignore it. “I think she was kinda like, ‘Put it in the closet and don’t even pay attention to it,'” says a friend. Rolling Stone could find no record of the dissolution of Marley’s marriage, and even now it’s unclear whether Hill and Marley were ever married in a conventional sense. “She has her own rules about life,” another friend says. “According to her, she’s married. Marriage to her is not a piece of paper, and it’s not part of some civilization – civil-lies-action. If you say to her, ‘You’re not married,’ she’ll say, ‘What, do I have to get a government official to tell me I’m married?'”
It was critical that on Miseducation, Hill was credited as the sole auteur. “That was why she had to be seen as doing it all herself,” says someone familiar with the sessions. “To show, ‘I’m better than [Wyclef]. He’s getting credit as the genius in the group. I’m the genius in the group.'”
But when musicians collaborate in the studio, it’s often difficult to establish exactly who has written what. “It gets real gray in the studio,” one artist says. At the time, people close to her suggested Hill needed documentation that would define everyone’s role, but she was against the idea. “Lauryn said, ‘We all love each other,'” a friend says. “‘This ain’t about documents. This is blessed.'”
The album was released crediting Hill with having produced, written and arranged all the music except one track, and Hill was established as a self-contained musical genius. Then she was sued by four men who had worked on the record who alleged that she had claimed full credit for music that they’d been at least partly responsible for. Her label, Columbia, urged her to settle, but she wanted to fight. “She felt settling would’ve been an admission of guilt,” says a friend. “She was very concerned about credit. It’s what eluded her from the past success [with the Fugees]. She didn’t wanna be just a pretty face and a pretty voice. She wanted people to know she knows what she’s doing.” But she had to go into depositions and discuss making her art with lawyers. “That fucked with her,” another friend says.
Eventually, Hill settled the suit. A source says the four producers were paid $5 million.It wasn’t nearly as painful financially as it was emotionally. A friend says, “That was the beginning of a chain effect that would turn everything a little crazy.” She was far from the first recording artist to have a crisis of faith and career, but few have had such a crisis so publicly.
She was a working mother of two, who, according to many, was unhappy in her relationship. She felt pressure to look like a model every time she left the house. She had several members of her family working for her or being supported by her. “To have your whole family depend on you for their well-being, that can be a lot of pressure,” says Ahmir Thompson. “I said, ‘If I was in that situation, I would snap.'” And she felt betrayed by the musicians she’d thought of as family and thus was increasingly mistrustful of people in general. Friends say she wanted to get out but didn’t know how. “It was tough for her to admit all that to someone,” a friend says. “So I think she spoke to God, and maybe it wasn’t God, but somebody showed up.” Another friend says, “A person came in, and they divided and conquered. They destroyed this whole thing.”
Around this time, Hill met a religious figure named Brother Anthony, a tall black man in his forties. Within three months she was going to Bible study with him two or three times a week. A friend says Brother Anthony taught Hill that “she should be whoever she wants to be, because she doesn’t owe her fans anything. God didn’t create us to be beholden unto people and entertain them. God holds us to be the people that we want to be.”
The two became inseparable, and Hill began starting many of her sentences with the words, “Brother Anthony says . . .” Shortly after recording Unplugged, Hill told MTV Online, “I met someone who has an understanding of the Bible like no one else I ever met in my life. I just sat at [his] feet and ingested pure Scripture for about a year.” But Hill’s friends found Brother Anthony bizarre. “His whole demeanor was real possessive, aggressive and crooked to me,” a friend says. “You know how people are slick? He’s a quick talker.”
No one was certain what church he was from or what religion he belonged to. “I don’t think he had a religion,” a friend says. “I think he was more like, ‘My interpretation of the Bible is the only interpretation of the Bible. I’m the only one on earth that knows the truth.'”
“Brother Anthony was definitely on some other shit,” Pras says. “I had a tape of [his teachings]. That shit is ill. Fucked me up. I can’t really explain it. It was some weird shit, man. It was some real cult shit. When I heard the tape, I couldn’t believe that this dude was really serious. He was sayin’, ‘Give up all your money.’ I don’t know if that meant ‘Give it to me’ or whatever, but on the tape he said, ‘Money doesn’t mean anything.'”
Many believe Brother Anthony drove a wedge between Hill and the rest of the world. “It was like she was being brain washed by this man,” a friend says, “believing everything he was saying and tellin’ her what to do.” Another friend says, “I think he’s just looking at a cash cow.”
She recorded her MTV Unplugged 2.0 in July 2001 while she was pregnant with her third child, Joshua. In a rehearsal the day before, Hill ripped up her throat but refused to reschedule, and on the record her voice is raspy and ragged. She accompanied herself on guitar, the lone instrument on the album, which was courageous given that she hadn’t been studying very long. But a veteran industry executive says, “Anyone with ears can hear there are only three chords being played on every song. I saw it with a roomful of professionals, and someone said, ‘I feel like jumpin’ out a window.'”
“A lesser artist, it would’ve never been released,” an industry insider says. “A lesser artist would’ve been shot and thrown out the window.” Unplugged sold just 470,000 records, a failure. Another industry insider says, “I’m sure Columbia lost money on it.”
In the past few years, Hill has been in Miami, where she’s working on a new album. She’s determined to get full credit this time. “A lot of different people have been called down there and had strange experiences,” says an industry figure. Sources say the musicians are required to sign a waiver giving Hill sole writing credit for the tracks they work on. The sessions have gone slowly. A few people spoke of her flying in a gang of top-flight musicians, putting them up in a nice hotel and paying for their time. But for more than a week they sat around each day, expecting to play, then getting a call saying, “We’ll start tomorrow.” Eventually they all left without ever getting into the studio.
While no one is clear what stage of completion the tracks are in, those who’ve heard the music describe it as thrilling. “What she’s doing and where she’s going with it, ain’t nobody even touching her,” says an industry insider. “Nobody’s even thinking that way. In the sad state of music we’re in, I feel deprived knowing that she’s got some real flavor that she’s holding back.”
“She gonna sit down and record until she feels happy,” a friend says. “Whoever can’t wait, she don’t care.” Some sources say she’s spent more than $2.5 million, and Columbia has cut off her recording budget. The label denies this and maintains that Hill’s new album will be out next year.
“Plenty of artists spend $2 million,” says an industry insider, “but she had to fly all these people around and she had to build a studio in her Miami apartment, because she couldn’t drive half a mile to the studio. Columbia bent over backwards for her, in pure self-interest, and I think they still believe in her, but you can’t abuse the system like that. You can’t do that.”
Several of Hill’s friends and associates are clearly worried about her. “She’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” one says. “But not, like, two faces but, like, eight faces of that. You don’t know who you’re gonna get from one hour to the next. Not just one day to the next but one hour.” Others recall Hill talking entirely in Bible-speak, “quoting Scripture, fanatically religious,” one friend says. She sometimes answers business questions by saying things like, “We’ll see what God has in store.” A few tell a story in which Hill asked people to work with her on the new album, but when they asked how much they would be paid, she said, “Do it for God,” meaning, do it for free, and God will reward you.
“I feel like she’s lost,” a friend says. “Something’s not right. I just feel like she’s sad and lonely and alone. I think she wants to cry out for help, but she has too much pride.”
Others disagree. “Really, it’s about restructuring her life and her lifestyle,” an associate says. “I think maybe for a long time she thought she knew what she wanted. But, in reality, she didn’t. She’s gonna come through it, but she doesn’t think anything’s wrong with her. She used [Brother Anthony] to get rid of stuff in her life that she didn’t wanna struggle with. She used him to her advantage, then she went too far, and she doesn’t know how to come back. It’ll be a process. It’ll be a couple of years.”
“She wants to do another album,” a friend says. “Deep down, Lauryn is still Lauryn. She always wanted to be famous, she always wanted to sing, she always wanted to hear the applause. That’s what she grew up to do. So to now not want it, that’s not believable. She wants it the way Brother Anthony thinks it should be. His opinion is the only opinion that matters to her.”
Many still have faith in her. “Sometimes people gotta find themselves, man,” Pras says. “I don’t believe that’s crazy. People go through certain things, they gotta fight certain demons, and she’s entitled to do that. Because her life isn’t to please people. At the end of the day, Lauryn is not happy with herself. She’s not gonna do some disc because she gotta make money for Sony. It just so happens that she’s done something that captured a moment in people’s lives. They want more of that, but she’s not ready to give that.”
This story is from the October 30th, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-mystery-of-lauryn-hill-249020/
She made one of the best albums of the Nineties with ‘Miseducation’ and then had a public breakdown with ‘Unplugged.’ What happened?
By TOURÉ
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lauryn hill shoreline mountain view california
Lauryn Hill performs at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
In 1998, when Lauryn Hill was recording her debut solo album, she was on a mission. “She was aiming for big hits so she could outshine the Fugees and outshine Wyclef,” says someone familiar with the sessions. Her 1996 album with the Fugees, The Score, had sold more than 17 million copies and made her rich and famous, but something was missing. After The Score, many perceived Wyclef Jean as the group’s musical genius. Hill began plotting an album of her own that would change that. “Her solo career wasn’t based on ‘I wanna do an album,'” says Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson. “It was based on not being Wyclef’s side girl.”
inRead invented by Teads
Twelve million people bought The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Hill was established as one of the great female MCs, a quadruple threat: a rapper as well as a world-class singer, songwriter and producer. She was critically acclaimed and extremely rich. In 1998 and ’99, sources say, Hill grossed $40 million from royalties, advances, touring, merchandising and other revenues, and pocketed about $25 million of that. When Hill was thirteen years old, she already knew she would grow up to become an entertainer. In ’98, Hill became an international superstar.
500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Hollywood beckoned her onto the A list. Sources say she was offered a role in Charlie’s Angels, but she turned the part down, and Lucy Liu took the job. Hill met with Matt Damon about being in The Bourne Identity, with Brad Pitt about a part in The Mexican and with the Wachowski brothers about a role in the last two films in the Matrix trilogy. She turned down lots of work. “Lauryn wasn’t trying to do anything,” says Pras Michel of the Fugees, almost lamenting. But she did begin developing a biography of Bob Marley in which she was to play his wife, Rita; started producing a romantic-comedy film set in the world of soul food called Sauce, in which she was to star; and accepted a prize part in the adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved but had to drop out because she got pregnant. The doors were open for Hill to create a multimedia entertainment empire of the sort that J. Lo, Janet and Madonna have built. Hill could have been J. Lo with political substance. Someone who once worked with Hill says with regret, “She woulda been bigger than J. Lo.” Instead, she disappeared.
“I think Lauryn grew to despise who Lauryn Hill was,” a friend says. “Not that she despised herself as a human being, but she despised the manufactured international-superstar magazine cover girl who wasn’t able to go out of the house looking a little tattered on a given day. Because Lauryn is such a perfectionist, she always sought to give the fans what they wanted, so a simple run to the grocery store had to have the right heels and jeans. Artists are a lot more calculating than the public sometimes knows. It don’t happen by accident that the jeans fall the right way, the hat is cocked to the side just so. All of that stuff is thought about, and Lauryn put a lot of pressure on herself after all that success. And then one day she said, ‘Fuck it.'”
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In 2000, Hill became close with Brother Anthony, a shadowy spiritual adviser, then abruptly fired her management team and the people around her. In 2001, she recorded her MTV Unplugged 2.0. Few bought the album, but many talked about how she could be heard on the record breaking down in tears and saying, “I’m crazy and deranged . . . . I’m emotionally unstable,” and repeatedly rejecting celebrity and the illusions that make it possible. “I used to get dressed for y’all; I don’t do that anymore,” she said on the album. “I used to be a performer, and I really don’t consider myself a performer anymore . . . . I had created this public persona, this public illusion, and it held me hostage. I couldn’t be a real person, because you’re too afraid of what your public will say. At that point, I had to do some dying.”
Her honesty was both touching and confusing. She was rejecting so much of what she’d spent years being. The only thing that was clear was that she was suffering. “Artists do fall apart,” a record executive says. “The most commonly held falsity in the game is that they have it all together. They fall apart. Look at Mariah, Whitney, Michael, all the great ones. They all have a moment where you go, ‘Are they really all there?’ And I think Lauryn chose to expose that to the world.”
Until recently, the twenty-eight-year-old Hill lived in a high-end hotel in Miami with Rohan Marley, the man she called her husband, and her four children. Her fourth child was born this past summer. Sources say that not long ago, Hill moved out of the hotel and that her relationship with Marley may be over.
She now insists on being called Ms. Hill, not Lauryn, and is working on a new album, albeit very slowly. “I heard from a friend that she don’t really wanna do music right now,” Pras says. “I heard from another friend that she wants to do a Fugees album.”
So what caused the Lauryn Hill of Miseducation, viewed as regal and brilliant, to morph into the Lauryn Hill of Unplugged, seen as possibly unstable, and then into someone willfully absent from the public? Confidential conversations with more than twenty friends and industry figures and a lengthy interview with Pras have clarified much of what has happened during the five years since her zenith. “I don’t think she’s crazy,” Pras says. “People tend to say that when they don’t understand what someone’s going through. Walk in her shoes, and see what would you do.”
Hill was born in 1975 and raised in middle-class South Orange, New Jersey. By her teens, she was determined to have a career in entertainment. At thirteen, she sang on Showtime at the Apollo. The audience was rough on her, and after the show she cried. In 1998, her mother, Valerie Hill, told Rolling Stone about her post Apollo talk with her young daughter. “I said . . . now, if every time they don’t scream and holler you’re gonna cry, then perhaps this isn’t for you,” Valerie recalled. “And she looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses. To her, the mere suggestion that this wasn’t for her was crazy.” At seventeen, Lauryn had a role on the daytime soap As the World Turns; two years later she appeared in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and had a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill. Meanwhile, she was also spending nights working on music with friends Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel. She was eighteen when the band’s 1994 debut, Blunted on Reality, flopped, but, two years later, with The Score, the Fugees’ cover of “Killing Me Softly” made her a star. She was sex-symbol beautiful, and her music and public persona seemed politically savvy and spiritually aware.
After the explosion of The Score, Jean began recording a solo album. Hill and Pras supported him emotionally and creatively. But when Hill started writing her own songs, Jean showed no interest. Pras says, “I remember when Pepsi wanted her for a commercial, and they were like, ‘All we want is you. We don’t need the other two cats.’ She said, ‘Without them I’m not doing it.’ There’s a lot of things she didn’t do because of the group. Then when she goes to work on her [music] and she doesn’t have the support, that can have an effect mentally. She felt – this is based on conversations we had – she felt there was no support on that angle. When you feel the ones you stuck your neck out for ain’t doin’ the same for you, it brings a certain animosity and bitterness.”
Inside ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’
Once, the three Fugees were close friends, but now Pras has little good to say about Jean. “He’s the cancer of the [Fugees],” Pras says. “He’s the cancer. You can quote me. He’s the reason why it got wrecked to begin with, he’s the reason why it’s not fixed.” Is he the reason for Hill’s troubles? “Maybe, indirectly, she’s where she’s at because of him,” Pras says. “Maybe. But not directly.” Jean politely declined to be interviewed. “I’m somewhere else in my head,” he says on the phone from his studio. “Certain things I don’t talk about. I’m in another zone.” He pauses. “I wish it didn’t go down the way it went.”
Hill responded to an e-mail request for an interview. “I am not available for free interviews at this time,” she wrote. “The only interviews I will consider are those that amply compensate me for my time, energy and story.” It was signed “Ms. Hill.” She asks for money, friends say, because she feels she’s been exploited by the media and the record industry. When Oneworld magazine contacted her about a cover story, she demanded $10,000.
People close to the Fugees say there has always been competition between Jean and Hill. “Not competing for something in particular,” says one. “It’s more competing just who’s better, who’s greater.” Hill’s solo music was intended to settle the matter. When Jean finally came around and offered his production assistance on the record, she no longer wanted it. “She said [to Jean], ‘I’m thinking about working with this producer and that producer,'” a friend says. “He said, ‘Oh, no – I’m producing your whole album.’ She chewed on that for a minute and then said, ‘Nah, I got my own vision.’ That’s when who Lauryn really is started to take form.”
At the same time, Hill’s love life began to get really complicated. For years she’d been clandestinely dating Jean. Their relationship started long before he married his current wife and continued afterward. But Pras says, “I think he was kinda, like, playing with her emotions.”
But in the summer of ’96, when the Fugees were on the Smoking Grooves Tour, she met Rohan Marley, who was on the tour with his brother Ziggy, both sons of Bob Marley. At first Hill was uninterested in Rohan – a former University of Miami football player – because she was still seeing Jean. “Honestly, she didn’t even want the relationship,” says a friend. “Everyone was pushing her towards [Marley] to get her out of the other thing. They pushed her towards him, like, “Why don’t you give him a chance, come on, go out on a date. Just do it,’ not knowing that this man had all this other baggage and drama in his life.”
Pras singled out Hill’s first pregnancy as a turning point for the group. “When she got pregnant, definitely things started goin’on,” he says. “Things got crazy.” While Hill’s stomach grew, the Fugee camp wondered whether the baby was Marley’s or Jean’s. Says a friend, “The conversation between everyone on the low was no one knew until that baby came out.” The day Hill went into labor, Jean told a source he was flying to her side to see his new child. “People don’t know how calculating she can be,” a friend says. “Lauryn used Ro to pull herself out of the relationship with Clef, and she happened to get pregnant. She hoped that baby was Wyclef’s, because it would’ve forced his hand. But it wasn’t.” Hill named her first child Zion Marley.
For years, Hill claimed that she was married to Rohan Marley, but at some point after Zion was born, Hill got another surprise: Someone told her Marley already had a wife. On March 18th, 1993, when he was a sophomore at the University of Miami, Marley married an eighteen-year-old woman from New Jersey in a ceremony in Miami. “The reason [Hill and Marley] aren’t married is because Ro is already married,” says a friend. Sources say Marley has two children from the marriage.
Hill decided to ignore it. “I think she was kinda like, ‘Put it in the closet and don’t even pay attention to it,'” says a friend. Rolling Stone could find no record of the dissolution of Marley’s marriage, and even now it’s unclear whether Hill and Marley were ever married in a conventional sense. “She has her own rules about life,” another friend says. “According to her, she’s married. Marriage to her is not a piece of paper, and it’s not part of some civilization – civil-lies-action. If you say to her, ‘You’re not married,’ she’ll say, ‘What, do I have to get a government official to tell me I’m married?'”
It was critical that on Miseducation, Hill was credited as the sole auteur. “That was why she had to be seen as doing it all herself,” says someone familiar with the sessions. “To show, ‘I’m better than [Wyclef]. He’s getting credit as the genius in the group. I’m the genius in the group.'”
But when musicians collaborate in the studio, it’s often difficult to establish exactly who has written what. “It gets real gray in the studio,” one artist says. At the time, people close to her suggested Hill needed documentation that would define everyone’s role, but she was against the idea. “Lauryn said, ‘We all love each other,'” a friend says. “‘This ain’t about documents. This is blessed.'”
The album was released crediting Hill with having produced, written and arranged all the music except one track, and Hill was established as a self-contained musical genius. Then she was sued by four men who had worked on the record who alleged that she had claimed full credit for music that they’d been at least partly responsible for. Her label, Columbia, urged her to settle, but she wanted to fight. “She felt settling would’ve been an admission of guilt,” says a friend. “She was very concerned about credit. It’s what eluded her from the past success [with the Fugees]. She didn’t wanna be just a pretty face and a pretty voice. She wanted people to know she knows what she’s doing.” But she had to go into depositions and discuss making her art with lawyers. “That fucked with her,” another friend says.
Eventually, Hill settled the suit. A source says the four producers were paid $5 million.It wasn’t nearly as painful financially as it was emotionally. A friend says, “That was the beginning of a chain effect that would turn everything a little crazy.” She was far from the first recording artist to have a crisis of faith and career, but few have had such a crisis so publicly.
She was a working mother of two, who, according to many, was unhappy in her relationship. She felt pressure to look like a model every time she left the house. She had several members of her family working for her or being supported by her. “To have your whole family depend on you for their well-being, that can be a lot of pressure,” says Ahmir Thompson. “I said, ‘If I was in that situation, I would snap.'” And she felt betrayed by the musicians she’d thought of as family and thus was increasingly mistrustful of people in general. Friends say she wanted to get out but didn’t know how. “It was tough for her to admit all that to someone,” a friend says. “So I think she spoke to God, and maybe it wasn’t God, but somebody showed up.” Another friend says, “A person came in, and they divided and conquered. They destroyed this whole thing.”
Around this time, Hill met a religious figure named Brother Anthony, a tall black man in his forties. Within three months she was going to Bible study with him two or three times a week. A friend says Brother Anthony taught Hill that “she should be whoever she wants to be, because she doesn’t owe her fans anything. God didn’t create us to be beholden unto people and entertain them. God holds us to be the people that we want to be.”
The two became inseparable, and Hill began starting many of her sentences with the words, “Brother Anthony says . . .” Shortly after recording Unplugged, Hill told MTV Online, “I met someone who has an understanding of the Bible like no one else I ever met in my life. I just sat at [his] feet and ingested pure Scripture for about a year.” But Hill’s friends found Brother Anthony bizarre. “His whole demeanor was real possessive, aggressive and crooked to me,” a friend says. “You know how people are slick? He’s a quick talker.”
No one was certain what church he was from or what religion he belonged to. “I don’t think he had a religion,” a friend says. “I think he was more like, ‘My interpretation of the Bible is the only interpretation of the Bible. I’m the only one on earth that knows the truth.'”
“Brother Anthony was definitely on some other shit,” Pras says. “I had a tape of [his teachings]. That shit is ill. Fucked me up. I can’t really explain it. It was some weird shit, man. It was some real cult shit. When I heard the tape, I couldn’t believe that this dude was really serious. He was sayin’, ‘Give up all your money.’ I don’t know if that meant ‘Give it to me’ or whatever, but on the tape he said, ‘Money doesn’t mean anything.'”
Many believe Brother Anthony drove a wedge between Hill and the rest of the world. “It was like she was being brain washed by this man,” a friend says, “believing everything he was saying and tellin’ her what to do.” Another friend says, “I think he’s just looking at a cash cow.”
She recorded her MTV Unplugged 2.0 in July 2001 while she was pregnant with her third child, Joshua. In a rehearsal the day before, Hill ripped up her throat but refused to reschedule, and on the record her voice is raspy and ragged. She accompanied herself on guitar, the lone instrument on the album, which was courageous given that she hadn’t been studying very long. But a veteran industry executive says, “Anyone with ears can hear there are only three chords being played on every song. I saw it with a roomful of professionals, and someone said, ‘I feel like jumpin’ out a window.'”
“A lesser artist, it would’ve never been released,” an industry insider says. “A lesser artist would’ve been shot and thrown out the window.” Unplugged sold just 470,000 records, a failure. Another industry insider says, “I’m sure Columbia lost money on it.”
In the past few years, Hill has been in Miami, where she’s working on a new album. She’s determined to get full credit this time. “A lot of different people have been called down there and had strange experiences,” says an industry figure. Sources say the musicians are required to sign a waiver giving Hill sole writing credit for the tracks they work on. The sessions have gone slowly. A few people spoke of her flying in a gang of top-flight musicians, putting them up in a nice hotel and paying for their time. But for more than a week they sat around each day, expecting to play, then getting a call saying, “We’ll start tomorrow.” Eventually they all left without ever getting into the studio.
While no one is clear what stage of completion the tracks are in, those who’ve heard the music describe it as thrilling. “What she’s doing and where she’s going with it, ain’t nobody even touching her,” says an industry insider. “Nobody’s even thinking that way. In the sad state of music we’re in, I feel deprived knowing that she’s got some real flavor that she’s holding back.”
“She gonna sit down and record until she feels happy,” a friend says. “Whoever can’t wait, she don’t care.” Some sources say she’s spent more than $2.5 million, and Columbia has cut off her recording budget. The label denies this and maintains that Hill’s new album will be out next year.
“Plenty of artists spend $2 million,” says an industry insider, “but she had to fly all these people around and she had to build a studio in her Miami apartment, because she couldn’t drive half a mile to the studio. Columbia bent over backwards for her, in pure self-interest, and I think they still believe in her, but you can’t abuse the system like that. You can’t do that.”
Several of Hill’s friends and associates are clearly worried about her. “She’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” one says. “But not, like, two faces but, like, eight faces of that. You don’t know who you’re gonna get from one hour to the next. Not just one day to the next but one hour.” Others recall Hill talking entirely in Bible-speak, “quoting Scripture, fanatically religious,” one friend says. She sometimes answers business questions by saying things like, “We’ll see what God has in store.” A few tell a story in which Hill asked people to work with her on the new album, but when they asked how much they would be paid, she said, “Do it for God,” meaning, do it for free, and God will reward you.
“I feel like she’s lost,” a friend says. “Something’s not right. I just feel like she’s sad and lonely and alone. I think she wants to cry out for help, but she has too much pride.”
Others disagree. “Really, it’s about restructuring her life and her lifestyle,” an associate says. “I think maybe for a long time she thought she knew what she wanted. But, in reality, she didn’t. She’s gonna come through it, but she doesn’t think anything’s wrong with her. She used [Brother Anthony] to get rid of stuff in her life that she didn’t wanna struggle with. She used him to her advantage, then she went too far, and she doesn’t know how to come back. It’ll be a process. It’ll be a couple of years.”
“She wants to do another album,” a friend says. “Deep down, Lauryn is still Lauryn. She always wanted to be famous, she always wanted to sing, she always wanted to hear the applause. That’s what she grew up to do. So to now not want it, that’s not believable. She wants it the way Brother Anthony thinks it should be. His opinion is the only opinion that matters to her.”
Many still have faith in her. “Sometimes people gotta find themselves, man,” Pras says. “I don’t believe that’s crazy. People go through certain things, they gotta fight certain demons, and she’s entitled to do that. Because her life isn’t to please people. At the end of the day, Lauryn is not happy with herself. She’s not gonna do some disc because she gotta make money for Sony. It just so happens that she’s done something that captured a moment in people’s lives. They want more of that, but she’s not ready to give that.”
This story is from the October 30th, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-mystery-of-lauryn-hill-249020/
https://www.stereogum.com/1446392/d...ion-of-lauryn-hill/franchises/deconstructing/
Lauryn Hill currently sits inside a prison cell in Connecticut. The neo-soul legend is approximately halfway through a three-month sentence inside the Danbury penitentiary, located a little more than 80 miles from her hometown of South Orange, N.J., where she launched her illustrious career with the influential hip-hop trio The Fugees in the early 1990s.
On July 8, Hill reported to the minimal-security correctional facility close to one year after pleading guilty to tax evasion on $1.8 million earned between 2005 and 2007. Her incarceration marks the latest incident in a enduring string of personal problems that have included reclusive disappearances from the public spotlight, erratic performances upon returning onstage, lawsuits over proper songwriting credits, and numerous other troubles.
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Despite the tumultuous, and at times mysterious, struggles surrounding the former Fugees emcee and Grammy Award winner, it’s easy to forget how much she mattered at the height of her career throughout the 1990s. She’ll be in prison still when her seminal masterpiece, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, turns 15 years old on Sunday, August 25. But it’s that album, her lone studio record, which exhibited her undeniable talent and, more importantly helped propel hip-hop into the mainstream and international phenomenon that it’s become today.
On February 8, 1999, Time celebrated hip hop’s 20th anniversary by highlighting the impact of rap music and its affiliated culture in a 12-page cover story. While the publication examined the genre’s rich history dating back to the Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit “Rapper’s Delight,” they chose Lauryn Hill to grace the magazine’s cover. In doing so, Time effectively crowned her as hip hop’s matriarch — a decision reaffirmed weeks later when she shattered records at the 41st Grammy Awards.
Following the release of her full-length debut, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, the former Fugees member broke from the ranks of her East Coast rap group to become a superstar in her own right. Hill’s enormous success as part of the South Orange, N.J., trio, followed by her stunning solo album, made her one of hip hop’s most distinguished figures toward the end of the 20th century. To put her stature into perspective, Time had only placed 17 black figures on its cover throughout the 1990s (out of 525 covers). Only five — including Bill Cosby, Bill T. Jones, Toni Morrison, and Oprah Winfrey — worked in arts and entertainment. Lauryn Hill was the only musician. She was just 23 years old.
Hill exerted a self-awareness regarding her place in hip hop following Miseducation’s resounding success. “There are kids in the audiences now who weren’t born when there wasn’t hip-hop,” she told Time. “They grew up on it; it’s part of the culture. It’s a huge thing. It’s not segregated anymore. It’s not just in the Bronx, it’s all over the world.”
It appeared back then that Hill would lead a new generation of rappers that were intent on stepping beyond rap’s explicit and misogynistic status quo, and instead emphasize personal and conscientious themes. But her career took an unexpected turn. For more than a decade, Lauryn Hill’s story essentially grew into an urban legend, akin to Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum, who released his seminal album, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, within six months of Miseducation. Both records overwhelmingly exceeded initial expectations and catapulted their careers to unforeseen heights. But for entirely different reasons, each disappeared from the public eye amid periods of heightened exposure and commercial breakthrough. Hiatuses slowly turned indefinite and the question turned to if, not when, either would ever release a follow-up record.
Like Mangum — whose creative myth and subsequent admiration helped spark indie rock’s resurgence in the following decade — Hill’s public absence transformed her perception from a cosmopolitan artist into an enigmatic musician responsible for influencing the next wave of pop, soul, and rap stars in the 2000s. Not only did musicians revere Miseducation; the album became so beloved that even some religious congregations worked her songs into their services.
“Churches were substituting God in the lyrics [for the song “Nothing Even Matters”], D’Angelo, who collaborated with Hill on that song, told Rolling Stone in 2008. “Whenever they make a gospel version from a secular song, that’s significant.”
Hill was one of the first female rappers to appeal beyond hip-hop’s initial audience as she incorporated elements of soul, R&B, and reggae into her music. She wasn’t the first person to integrate disparate sounds or styles, given that rap’s first two decades were an exercise in that creative process. Acts like Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy perfected the art of rapping over samples and beats. Old School, New School, and Golden Age artists often sampled recordings in ways that innovatively juxtaposed genres, including the Fugees. But where Miseducation differed was in its cohesive production. Hill’s album drew from the songs of classic rockers (the Doors) and heralded contemporaries (Wu-Tang Clan), recognizable singles (Labi Siffre’s “I Got The…”) and deep cuts (Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam”). She remained rooted in older influences while arriving with a sound that was, by and large, her own.
Like her predecessors, Hill borrowed from others. But sometimes the greatest innovators aren’t the ones who construct brilliant ideas from scratch, and instead innovate through melding together different artistic statements, musical elements, and cultural messages. Without Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson probably wouldn’t be known as a precursor to rock ‘n’ roll several decades later. If Run D.M.C didn’t break though with their hit single “Walk This Way” in 1986, DJ Kool Herc likely wouldn’t be remembered as a hip-hop progenitor, and 1520 Sedgwick Avenue wouldn’t be widely recognized as hip-hop’s birthplace.
The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill represented a watershed moment for the genre as it shepherded in mainstream acceptance with a mainstream market beyond traditional rap circles. One way to understand Lauryn Hill’s impression on late-’90s popular music is to look at her sales figures. During the week Miseducation hit shelves, Hill sold more than 420,000 copies, breaking the record for release-week sales by any female artist. The Recording Industry Association Of America certified the album Gold a little more than month after it came out, and the record spent 81 total weeks in the Billboard 200. At the 1999 Grammys, Hill set two additional records for a female artist: She received 10 nominations and won five awards.
Hill’s female peers, who included Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, and Lil’ Kim, were each influential in their own way during the ’90s. These notable early female rappers created works that would pave the way for future female emcees. They achieved varying levels of popular acclaim and carved out a legacy as forerunners responsible for breaking down the genre’s gender barriers. Hill built upon their successes as she stepped beyond hip-hop’s traditional themes and lyrics in her work. She spoke about feminism, spirituality, and other parts of her life throughout Miseducation. And in doing so, she reached new and larger audiences receptive to her honesty and intimacy.
“What Lauryn is doing is opening doors for female artists who aren’t materialistic and flashing their titties,” Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA told VH1.com about a month after Miseducation’s release. “She represents a beauty and a wholesomeness that’s more down-to-earth. She makes music that people can relate to, which is why she’s done so well.”
Hill wasn’t the first hip-hop artist to be personal, but she helped pioneer conscientious songwriting in the genre in a way that hadn’t existed before. Audiences once hesitant toward the rap’s explicit content warmed up to her heartfelt approach. On “To Zion,” Hill professed her unconditional love for her unborn son and discussed the sacrifices she made in spite of her blossoming career. She confronted failed romantic relationships on “Ex-Factor,” simultaneously acknowledging her self-worth and heartbreak. Hill preached empowerment throughout Miseducation while delving into religion, self-ambition, fame, and perspective. All along, she managed conveyed a deeper universal meaning that resonated beyond prior genre barriers.
The album had such a widespread impact that many of Hill’s sales records remained intact until 2012 when Adele broke them upon releasing 21. Adele, like Hill, similarly emphasized a substance-over-style approach and crafted a souful record that focused on her voice, complementary vintage production and universal appeal. She’s an example of one artist that has approached Hill’s levels of success. But in many other areas, Hill’s work continues to trump other female superstars that have followed. Adele has listed Destiny’s Child, Pink, and Spice Girls as key influences growing up, but she says Hill’s impression has remained most evident.
In May 2011, Adele told Rhapsody TV: “I remember [Miseducation] being huge everywhere, even though I was really young and pretty oblivious to record sales and notoriety. But for some reason, I was very aware of how successful that record was. I was a big fan of Lauryn Hill when she was in the Fugees anyway and that was a record I grew up listening to, I analyzed it for about a month at the age of eight and was constantly wondering when I would be that passionate about something to write a record about, even though I didn’t know I was going to make a record when I was older.”
It’s in this sense that Hill made the most notable impact. Looking at hip-hop’s cultural milieu near the turn of the century, Miseducation helped transform the way larger audiences perceived rap music. In 2010, NPR’s Zoe Chace interviewed a then-reclusive Hill and aptly described her influence in saying that: “The story of her voice is also the story of the generation which came of age in the 1990s.” Like Adele and Chace, I’ve never experienced a world without hip hop. In that sense, Hill’s voice wasn’t simply associated with our generation. She defined it.
Similar to the way Adele or Chace experienced the record, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill fully resonated with me the first time I heard the album. It wasn’t because of her outspoken stance, love of God, or devotion to her unborn baby — it was the way that she sang that captivated me. Hill cries out with such conviction that you don’t need to hear every lyric, phrase, or verse to comprehend the overlying sentiment of her songs. It’s similar to the way Tom Waits’ longs on Closing Time, Brian Wilson daydreams on SMiLE, Joni Mitchell laments on Blue or Chuck D confronts on It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. Like the aforementioned greats, her efficacy as a songwriter, vocalist, and producer remains just as powerful as it did when the album first came out.
“Lauryn had that blend of toughness and soulfulness, melody and swagger,” Miseducation contributor John Legend told Rolling Stone in 2008. “She did it better than anybody still has done it. People are still trying to capture that moment.”
The moment Legend referred to in that interview has since percolated into mainstream pop, soul, and hip hop since the album’s 1998 release. One of Kanye West’s earliest nods came on his 2004 debut, The College Dropout, with his single “All Falls Down, ” a track on which he interpolated Hill’s “Mystery Of Iniquity.” In 2007, he claimed he could inherit her role as rap’s preeminent conscientious lyricist, stating in his song “Champion,” “Lauryn Hill say her heart was in Zion/ I wish her heart still was in rhymin’/ ‘Cause who the kids gon’ listen to? Huh?/ I guess me if it isn’t you.”
There’s a long list of other artists Hill has influenced. Talib Kweli wrote “Ms. Hill” about her decade out of the limelight. The late Amy Winehouse frequently included Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” as part of a medley during her Back To Black tour dates. More recently, Nicki Minaj expressed an unabashed admiration for Hill as well as disappointment regarding her inability to appear on the single “Champion,” a track off her esoteric 2012 sophomore release, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. Minaj, whom the New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica once called “the most influential female rapper of all time,” remains indebted to Hill’s influence.
“I wanted to get her on ‘Champion,'” Minaj told Funkmaster Flex in an interview with Hot 97 last year. “That would have been crazy, right? She was my fave … Lauryn to me is the goddess. I’d love to meet her.”
Those five artists represent a small contingency of individuals swayed by Hill, let alone the respect she garnered from her contemporaries. Miseducation included contributions from artists like Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, John Legend, and Carlos Santana. Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, and Common have featured Hill as a guest on their records; while Eminem, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, and Kendrick Lamar have referred to her by name in their own respective songs.
But then Hill left the public eye without explanation and slowly transformed into the enigmatic artist she’s become today. A mystifying decade followed her late-’90s ascent, self-imposed exile, and other rumored personal issues. Some believe her disappearance had to do with her growing distaste for the music industry’s business practices. Others felt she left the spotlight to focus on her motherhood and spirituality.
Rumors swirled that Hill had bipolar disorder, received spiritual misguidance, and underwent paternity disputes. She refused to do interviews for much of this period, but her disillusionment remained apparent throughout the lengthy interludes on her 2002 live album, MTV Unplugged No. 2.0.
She also endured an arduous legal battle after four musicians sued her for failure to properly credit their songwriting and production on The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.
The details of that lawsuit, which reportedly settled for $5 million, never fully surfaced. Some believe Hill caved despite her legal representation’s objections in order to put an end to a tumultuous fight.
Meanwhile, her skeptics claimed she should have given those musicians co-songwriting and production credit on 13 of the album’s 14 tracks (the liner notes state that Hill was the sole songwriter on 12 tracks). Few know what truly happened, but it the tussle cast a shadow on her musical legacy.
The details of that lawsuit, which reportedly settled for $5 million, never fully surfaced. Some believe Hill caved despite her legal representation’s objections in order to put an end to a tumultuous fight.
Meanwhile, her skeptics claimed she should have given those musicians co-songwriting and production credit on 13 of the album’s 14 tracks (the liner notes state that Hill was the sole songwriter on 12 tracks). Few know what truly happened, but it the tussle cast a shadow on her musical legacy.
After years of silence, Hill slowly launched a return and played occasional shows. She joined the Rock The Bells tour in 2010 to mixed fanfare and made appearances at Coachella and New Orleans Jazz Fest the following year. Along the way, critics lashed out at Hill for her erratic and unprofessional performances, including some gigs where she kept fans waiting for hours to hear a shell of her former self. Hill released occasional singles, including “Fearless Vampire Killer” and “Black Rage,” but a proper release never surfaced despite rumors that dozens of songs are finished.
The law eventually caught up with Hill’s free-spirited lifestyle in June 2012 when she was charged with tax evasion. Around that time, she explained in a Tumblr post — her primary medium for public communication — that she had withdrawn from society to protect her family’s safety amid a “climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism.” The singer added that she intended all along to fix the situation. Nevertheless, she pled guilty weeks later in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and stated through her lawyers she would agree to pay back taxes stemming from the three-year period.
“During this period of crisis, much was said about me both slanted and inaccurate, by those who had become dependent on my creative force, yet unwilling to fully acknowledge the importance of my contribution, nor compensate me equitably for it,” Hill said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo sentenced Hill to a three-month prison sentence, which she started serving last month. Once released, Hill will remain under house arrest for three months as part of yearlong supervised probation. Right before she headed to prison, Hill signed a $1 million contractwith Sony that effectively created a new label, Observe Creation Music, and obligates her to record five new songs, followed by a new album. Whether that release ever sees the light of day remains to be seen, but given her financial situation, she may have no choice but release an album — even if it’s not entirely on her own creative terms.
But that’ll have to wait until Hill finishes her sentence. For now, she has only posted one short message to the outside world that offered a brief glimpse into her life behind bars. She acknowledged her transition from international superstar to white-collar inmate has “taken some adjustment,” but largely remained hopeful about her incarceration.
“I cannot deny the favor I have encountered while in here, and general warm reception from a community of people who despite their circumstances, have found unique ways to make the best of them,” she wrote.
It’s been 15 years since Hill helped bridge the gap between hip hop and mainstream music, and still her legacy remains tied to far more than just the songs comprising The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. Her magnum opus told a highly personal story while gazing into the rise and fall of one of music’s most dynamic figures. Miseducation offers a lesson on the rigors of the music industry as much as it is an amalgam for mainstream music today.
I interviewed a lot of people for my story about Lauryn Hill's voice. I had to, because I didn't know if I'd be able to speak to her myself. The singer and rapper last released a recording eight years ago. She rarely performs in the U.S., and she almost never gives interviews. But her fans haven't forgotten her — they're still pleading for her to come back. Hill is a fantastic singer, as well as one of the greatest MCs of all time, and the story of her voice is the story of a generation.
It doesn't take much for a group of 30-somethings to get nostalgic about Hill. Put her solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, on at a bar, and it takes the crowd right back to college days or high-school summers. I met Daryl Lutz while he was hanging out with a group of friends on the deck of Marvin's Bar in downtown Washington, D.C.
"We went to school in Hampton, Va., and she came to do a show," he said. "It was one of the best times in my life — I mean, she spoke to me! We snuck backstage and I got her to sign my meal card. She said, 'This is your meal card, brother, you know?' I said, 'That's all I got.' She signed it, 'Eat well — L. Boogie.' That's something I'll never forget. I love her. I love her to death."
I heard tons of stories like Lutz's that night — mostly closed with this plea: "Come back, Lauryn. We need you. Come back!" People spoke directly into the microphone, as if it were a telephone line.
From New Ark To Israel
Hill became a star with the hip-hop trio The Fugees. Their second album, The Score, came out in 1996, and it was an instant classic. The group — Hill, Wyclef Jean and Prakazrel Michel — sounded like they were in perfect sync. On the first single, "Fu-gee-la," Hill sang the hook, rhymed a verse, then sang again. She was the total package, more so than any other rapper, male or female, has been.
She's one of slickest rappers ever: Her rhymes are dexterous, spiritual, hilarious, surprising. Without a doubt, she was the best-looking rapper the world had ever seen. And Hill was a soul singer with a real old-school, almost militant, politic. The second single was Hill's cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly." That recording has never really gone away, and its success built the expectations for Hill's solo record to a fever pitch. Particularly to women and young girls who listened to her then, she was a revelation. There was steel in her voice when she rapped; she sang like she really cared about our hopeless crushes and our impotent rages, like she really loved us. We thought maybe we could grow up to be like her.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out in 1998. It was like LeBron James' rookie year in the NBA. You knew he had the potential to be great after seeing him in high school — and then, right out of the gate, he's one of the best ball players in the league.
Jayson Jackson, part of Hill's management team, described the recording process this way: "The record was already inside her. She would go into the studio, and it would just pour out of her."
Lenesha Randolph sang backing vocals on Miseducation, and she describes herself today as the backing vocals "to all your favorite artists." She's on tour with Lady Gaga right now, but a formative influence on her singing was her work in the studio singing backup for Hill.
"I don't know if people are gonna like this album, because I'm just singing, and nobody wants to hear rappers sing," Hill told Randolph at the time. Randolph says she couldn't believe it. "I was like, 'What are you talking about?' " Randolph says. "I would just stare at her, like, look in her mouth! Because when you hear her sing, and then hear her speak — it had such power and volume and rasp. It was something to strive for."
The feeling that you get [when you hear me sing], I get first.
Lauryn Hill
Everything Is Everything
In 1998, everyone was listening to her sing: mothers, daughters, college students and little kids. As the rapper Nas described his audience, "listeners, bluntheads, fine ladies and prisoners." Miseducation crossed demographics and genres. It made people dance and cry and blast it from their speakers as they drove around with their best friends.
Jay Smooth, a longtime radio DJ, remembers there was a little sadness in the hip-hop community that there was less rhyming on the album than during Hill's time with The Fugees. "We may have missed out on the best rap album of all time," he says. Nevertheless, the album was a note that longtime fans of hip-hop had been craving for someone to hit. Smooth says that for people his age — the same age as Hill, the same age as people like Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls — "we saw our generation create something so powerful and innovative. They were speaking with a love and righteousness that we, perhaps naively, believed could change the world at that time."
Smooth compares the idealism of the hip-hop generation to the hippies before it. But just as the optimism of the '60s gave way to what he describes as "the malaise of the '70s," Smooth says that hip-hop had lost its way. The music grew more commercialized, and consequently more violent and self-involved, culminating in the deaths of Tupac in 1996, and then Biggie Smalls in 1997.
"It was right after that, in 1998, that Lauryn Hill's album came out," Smooth says. "And it seemed that she was that voice inside our soul — coming out and asking all of us, 'How could we have gone so wrong?' and 'Can we have some grown folks talking about loving ourselves, before it's too late? If it's not already too late?' "
'Look At Your Career,' They Said. 'Lauryn, Baby, Use Your Head'
Hill raked in the Grammys, including Album of the Year. But that same year, some of her collaborators filed suit, saying they weren't properly credited on the album. They settled out of court, and the stir over the suit prompted what seemed like a fall from grace for Lauryn Hill.
Shortly after the Grammys, in the winter of 1999, Hill disappeared from public life. For years afterward, her fans traded rumors — the prevailing theory was that she'd had some kind of breakdown. Smooth says he thinks the pressure put on her to save the hip-hop generation from itself might have broken her. She was also a busy mother: Over the past 10 years, she's had five children. Her MTV Unplugged album, which came out in 2002, seemed to reveal a person worn thin.
After Unplugged, those of us who grew up listening to her missed her voice in the same way we missed our hopeful youth. That powerful sound that represented great potential being fulfilled was silent.
"No one ever stops missing her," Smooth says. "Every time you say her name — like, 'Lauryn Hill walked into Home Depot' — you'll be hoping she starts tapping on a table and making a beat and singing."
This could be the year.
After Winter Must Come Spring
Lauryn Hill took the stage at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, Calif., just a few weeks ago. She's barely performed at all in the U.S. in the past 10 years. The band was restless and loud behind her, almost drowning her out at times. She looked completely regal, even in a carnival balloon-style jumpsuit, with her hair blown out and dyed maroon to match. She pranced around the stage in huge heels, shouting directions to the band, as though they were in rehearsal. When she rapped, her words flew by so fast, it seemed she was barely breathing. But when the sound guy brought her mic up and the band would breathe for a moment, her voice soared over the crowd. It was the same voice I'd grown up with, just as raw and present and full of soul as I remembered.
The reputation that surrounds Hill is wild — it's hard to know what to believe, because she does so few interviews. She's got handlers on top of handlers, publicists and managers who, you think, will lead you to her, and then they turn out to be red herrings. My editor and I chased them all down during the weekend of the Harmony Festival. I was told by various people to not touch her, don't look her in the eye; that instead of talking directly to you, she writes on a Post-It note and sticks it to your chest. I've also been told repeatedly not to call her "Lauryn" anything — she goes by Ms. Hill. This is the only rumor that turns out to be true, in my case. Because after her performance in Santa Rosa, when we ask Ms. Hill if we can ride with her back to the hotel and ask her some questions, she tells us to get in the car.
I ask her the question her fans have been asking each other for years: Why did you stop putting out music?
"There were a number of different reasons," she says. "But partly, the support system that I needed was not necessarily in place. There were things about myself, personal-growth things, that I had to go through in order to feel like it was worth it. In fact, as musicians and artists, it's important we have an environment — and I guess when I say environment, I really mean the [music] industry, that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes, the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society, or at least some aspect of society. And it's important that people be given the time that they need to go through, to grow, so that the consciousness level of the general public is properly affected. Oftentimes, I think people are forced to make decisions prematurely. And then that sound radiates."
This would sound self-important coming from many other artists, especially popular artists. But to someone who grew up with Hill, it makes sense. She did have a hand in shaping how we were feeling, or it seemed that she did. And the disappointment of her disappearance is just one in a catalog of disappointments that we experienced as we grew up.
Her voice sounds just the same: low and raspy, full of intensity and soul. It's no wonder. She tells me she grew up singing along with mostly male soul singers — "the Donny Hathaways, the Stevie Wonders, the Jackie Wilsons." As for her rhyming skills, she says she used to have a rapping voice and a singing voice. But now the voices have to become one, in order for her to get the kind of music mix that she wants in a live performance. It's a work in progress. It's so funny to hear that Hill is still working on her extraordinary voice — holding it out in front of her, waving it like a sheet to see what more she can shake out of it.
"I'm trying to open up my range and really sing more," she says. "With The Fugees initially, and even with Miseducation, it was very hip-hop — always a singing over beats. I don't think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more."
How You Gonna Win When You Ain't Right Within?
I ask her what it feels like to sing, and she flips the question on me — "Well, what's it like to hear me?" I tell her listening to her sing makes me feel both happy and sad. It feels like her voice comes from a higher place. I'm paraphrasing all the people I've interviewed about her.
"The feeling that you get," she says, "I get first. I think you have a delayed experience with the feeling that I usually get. When I have a creative insight, there is a high. I think back in the day, I made music as much as I did because it made me feel so good. I think you could argue that there is a creative addiction — but, you know, the healthy kind."
I ask her about having a voice that moves so many people, if there isn't a certain amount of responsibility that comes along with that.
"I think about it, and yet I don't think about it," she says. We pull into the hotel parking lot and she's about to continue, but we're interrupted by one of the festival employees, who comes up to the car to ask if someone-or-other's keys are in the Suburban we're riding in.
"No," Hill says with a laugh. "No one in here has those keys." After all, it's just Hill, me, the driver and my editor in the car. As the man walks away, Hill says, "He looks just like Matthew McConaughey. First, second cousin. He does! ... What I was I saying? Oh, I think if I was created with such power or an ability, then what's also been put in me is the blueprint for the responsibility part, as well. I have to take care of myself in order to take care of this gift, which has affected so many. I don't treat it lightly. It's important to me to be healthy and to be whole."
And Hill seems healthy and whole, squished up next to me in the car, making cracks about ridiculous-looking actors, chin in her hand as she thinks through the answers to my questions. She doesn't tell me to move back, or that she doesn't want to answer something. Watching her perform earlier in the day made me uneasy. I felt like I was watching a captain who had spent a life at sea, then lived on land for 10 years, stumbling a bit her first time back on the deck of a boat. But hearing her steadiness now, I feel hopeful. It's also a reality check: Why did we demand so much of this woman?
"I don't know if you know this, but I have five children," she says. "The youngest is 2 now, so she's old enough that I can leave her for a period of time and know she's going to be OK. That's one reason [Hill is starting to perform again]. And I think it's just time. I'm starting to get excited again. Believe it or not, I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first. I think people might realize, you know, 'We love the way she sounds, we love the music, but I think we just love how fearless she is. How boundless she is, when it comes to what she wants to do.' And I think that can be infectious."
This closes the interview. I thank her. She says, "You're welcome," and my editor and I leave the car. We sit on the stairs for a few minutes to catch our breath. We spent all weekend chasing Lauryn Hill, hoping to have this conversation about her voice. I compared it to a video game with infinite levels you didn't even know existed, like when you beat a level and you think you won, but then you go through a door and there's a whole other world you have to conquer. Getting to Lauryn Hill was like that.
Sara Sarasohn, my editor, compared the chase to the Israelites rising up and following the cloud over the Tent of Meeting. In the Torah, when the Israelites are wandering in the desert, there was a cloud over the Tent of Meeting, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. When the cloud lifted and moved, the Israelites would see it and know that it was time for them to move as well in their journey through the desert. It was like the presence of Hill was this cloud that we could see in the distance, and we were trying to follow it, and finally, we got to the Tent of Meeting.
Sitting on the stairs together, Sara and I couldn't help but cry, just a little. We talked to Lauryn Hill. And she's doing fine.
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Inside 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill'
Lawsuits, Grammys, a tiny attic studio in NJ: an oral history of hip-hop classic 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill' on its anniversary
www.rollingstone.com
Ex Factor – Lauryn Hill
Guilty pleasure (noun) Something, such as a film, television programme, or piece of music, that one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard. That’s according to everyone…
myonetrackmind.com
Inside ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’
Lawsuits, Grammys, and a tiny attic studio in New Jersey: an oral history of the hip-hop classic on its anniversaryBY LAURA CHECKOWAY
AUGUST 26, 2008
Lauryn Hill (Photo by Brian Ach/WireImage) BRIAN ACH/GETTY
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released in the final weeks of August 1998 and went on to sell more than 8 million copies, win five Grammys and earn a four-star review in Rolling Stone. Mary J. Blige hailed it as “one of the most incredible albums ever made” and the record influenced a generation of soul and hip-hop artists.
“Music is about to change,” Hill told Rolling Stone‘s Touré for his 1999 cover story. “I think now people feel a little more comfortable playing with the parameters. Writing more intensely.”
Miseducation‘s liner notes mostly credit Hill with producing, writing and arranging the entire album. It was, in fact, a huge group effort, as underlined by a lawsuit settled out of court in 2001 for a reported $5 million. To celebrate the album, Rolling Stone spoke with many of those responsible for making it: a then-little known pianist named John Legend, D’Angelo, engineer Commissioner Gordon, backup singers, New-Ark producers, Hill’s longtime companion Rohan Marley, and her Fugee bandmate Pras Michel.
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The Beginning:
Jayson Jackson (former manager, Lauryn Hill): The Fugees were on the road in the summer of ’96 and Lauryn called me like, “I can’t believe these muthafuckers. I’ve been talking about making my solo record for the longest and they’re doing everybody’s solo record but mine! I’m leaving the group, I’ve had it.” I was like, call [then-Sony Chairman] Donnie Ienner. And she was like, “I don’t wanna fuck with them, I just wanna get a whole new crew.”
Vada Nobles (producer/programmer): My friend Kilo called and said, “Yo, bring some music, Lauryn Hill wants us to come to her house!” In her living room, Lauryn had on a brown robe, she was pregnant. She was saying she’s moving on from the Fugees and considering doing a solo record. She was looking to put together her own creative support team. She came up with the name New-Ark. Her mother said that Lauryn prayed for a situation like this.
Commissioner Gordon Williams (engineer/project supervisor): In the beginning, the New-Ark guys were the core who put the basic tracks together. Vada was a programmer who made drum beats, Kilo [Rasheem Pugh] would write hooks and lyrics, Tejumold Newton played piano and Johari Newton played guitar.
Rohan Marley (Bob Marley’s son/father of Hill’s five children): She took these guys New-Ark from out of the ghetto in Newark and created a team and taught them what she knew. Nobody else wanted to work with her because there was little feud going on and Wyclef was telling people, “You work with Lauryn, you don’t work with me.”
Che Vicious (formerly Che Guevera; producer): I worked with ‘Clef and Lauryn knew I wasn’t happy with some of the business with ‘Clef, so she asked me to come co-produce. She wanted me and [producer/keyboardist] James Poyser at her utter disposal. We gave her a price for that. That’s when she brought Vada and New-Ark in. I call it the A team and B team. We never really worked together. By the time the album was done I actually had to re-do their stuff and make it stronger.
Jackson: Music was always a collaborative effort with her. With ‘Clef and Jerry Wonder [Fugees producer Jerry Duplessis], they just kicked ideas and that’s how music got made. So when she started on her own, she was lonely. I remember her talking about the New-Ark guys like, they’re cool dudes and they’re young. The genius of that record, it began with her and it ended with her. She wanted it to sound muddy, like an old record scratching and her engineer Gordon was able to capture it.
Lauryn Hill: [I wanted to] write songs that lyrically move me and have the integrity of reggae and the knock of hip-hop and the instrumentation of classic soul. [My engineer and I worked on] a sound that’s raw. I like the rawness of you being able to hear the scratch in the vocals. I don’t ever want that taken away. I don’t like to use compressors and take away my textures, because I was raised on music that was recorded before technology advanced to the place where it could be smooth. I wanna hear that thickness of sound. You can’t get that from a computer, because a computer’s too perfect. But that human element, that’s what makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I love that.
Commissioner Gordon: My wife, Suzette, signed Lauryn as a songwriter and said, “Lauryn wants to talk to you about doing a solo record.” Lauryn said, “I want you to be my co-pilot.” The recording took about a year and a half. Sony never wanted her to make a solo record; they wanted her to make another Fugees record.
Marley: Lauryn and her mom took [early versions of] her album to Sony Records and they said, “This is coffee table music. What is this shit? Coffee table music.” She took her shit and walked outta there.
Commissioner Gordon: No one believed. She said, “I wanna make my own record, have the baby and use these unknown guys.” They’re like, you’re Lauryn Hill, why aren’t you with Track Masters? It took a lot of courage to go down that road and we all felt like soldiers in her army. Lauryn will push you to the tenth level to get something the way that she’s hearing it. The divinity of the scenario was always overwhelming to me because I could feel it all the time.
Nobles: There was a female group called Ex Factor signed to Arista and we did a song called “Ex Factor” for them. And then we started working on a song called “Loved Real Hard Once” — the title got switched [to “When It Hurts So Bad”]. Those were the first two records that we worked on. We were making songs for other people and the songs started becoming too personal and we were like, wait a minute, this is your story. We were having a conversation about her relationship in the little studio in her attic in South Orange, and that’s how “I Used to Love Him” came about. It was about ‘Clef.
Pras Michel (founding member, the Fugees): Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill…Some of our frustrations have been let out to the press and some would argue that you don’t wash dirty laundry in public. But we’re all grown now and understand the impact we had on each other’s lives. The album emotionally grabs you because it was her true feelings of things that happened during that period of her life.
Hill: The album is not about me bein’ upset about a love lost. It’s not even really about bein’ upset about bein’ stabbed in the back.
“To Zion”
Jackson: She called me and sang a verse of “Zion” and I was literally in tears. I went through that with her as a friend, Wendy Williams blowing her spot about her pregnancy on the radio. No one knew! It was definitely a Where’s Waldo? moment ’cause no one knew who Lauryn was dating.
Marley: She ended up having a child from myself and ones telling her she need to abort the child. Those songs, it’s all her experience.
Che Vicious: I’d gotten into a bunch of Spanish records. I lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn and there was this little studio apartment on the top floor that didn’t have air conditioning. I could only go in there for 20 minutes at a time to make tracks because it was too hot. And one of those 20 minutes is when I made “Zion.” I came in with the track and Lauryn teared up and said, “I have this idea to do a song about my baby and I didn’t know what the music should sound like until I heard that track.”
Nobles: Out of all the records, “Zion” was her baby because it was about her child. Can’t nobody interfere with that right there. That drum roll inspired Kanye’s “Jesus Walks,” I know it did!
Commissioner Gordon: I remember the first time she sang “To Zion” to me I almost started crying on the spot. Che put together a drum loop and she came over right next to me at the board and started singing “Zion” in my ear. These circumstances she’s singing about I know first hand. I’m at the label hearing everybody say, “How’s this girl gonna get pregnant now?!” Then Carlos [Santana] played his guitar in Miami at Circle House Studios. It was a swap. She wanted Carlos to play “Zion” and she did a song for Supernatural.
“Doo Wop (That Thing)”
Nobles: There was a box set that said “doo wop” sitting on the floor — the title for her single “Doo Wop (That Thing)” came off that box. We were making a song warning women about slick men, but there’s some bad girls out here, so we gotta tell both sides. I thought the music was cheesy, it wasn’t hard enough, so I put a really heavy drum in there just to give it some edge, something hip-hop.
Lenesha Randolph (backup singer): In November 1997, I get a phone call asking if I was available to come to Chung King Studios. Lauryn came in eating spaghetti pomodoro and garlic bread and explained where she’s trying to go with this album and how she wants it to be a reflection of all of us. I was an 18-year-old girl that just wanted to sing. For “Doo Wop” she said, “I wanna play with ’50s and ’60s harmonies, like barbershop guys on the corner and then we all just jumped in harmonizing a cappella “whooo whoo whoo whoo.” She directed us and from there history was made.
Commissioner Gordon: When I mixed “Doo Wop” at Sony Studios, it was 128 tracks — two 48-track machines plus two 24 two-inch machines all running at the same time. When James Poyser came in for “Superstar,” we rented a harpsichord that was so old it fell out of tune really quickly so we had to have the tuner actually there. By the time James finished playing it once it was out of tune.
The Move to Jamaica
Marley: One time at Chung King Studios she was like, “I can’t do this, there’s too many people popping in.” I said, “Let’s go to Jamaica, you don’t worry about anything.” She needed to get away. She needed to get to the rock.
Nobles: We stayed way up in the hills and Rohan would take us to the studio. He would fly in that BMW around curves, he was messing with us. I remember being scared for my life. “Forgive Them Father” and “Lost Ones” were made at the Bob Marley Museum on 56 Hope Road. That’s why on “Lost Ones” she says, “I was hopeless, now I’m on Hope Road.”
Commissioner Gordon: That first day in the studio was a lot of pressure because we were late since all the equipment was held up in customs for two days. The lead engineer Errol Brown used to be Bob Marley’s engineer and the family — Stephen, Damian, Julian, Ziggy — were in and out. Vada set up his drum machine and got the beat rocking. He’d always do his little dance while he’s making his beats.
Nobles: Lauryn was in the studio room redoing vocals. Stephen and Damian Marley would play football at the museum and hang out. I had a MPC 3000 and an SP 1200 connected together, showing them the sounds and I said, “Wait a minute, this is hot, let me record that!”
Commissioner Gordon: Right as Lauryn walks in, she starts freestyling. A lot of Bob’s grandchildren were there, all these little kids jumping around. As she kept doing that rhyme pattern, Situation! Complication! Tion! Tion!, she would point to the kids and they all chimed in “Tion! Tion!” She put down the verses on a handheld mike ’cause she always had a different vibe when she would hold a mike.
Marley: The musicians, my brothers, the whole studio was filled with people, this place was moving. And she’s just walking around and dropped a verse on that, she gave everybody chills. Those lyrics, they cut through you.
“Nothing Even Matters”
Nobles: Lauryn was in the kitchen at the house up the hill in Jersey where she’d moved with her parents when we first played “Nothing Even Matters” for her. I was so excited but Lauryn didn’t get it musically. Sony started putting a lot of pressure on her to hurry and wrap the record up. She started scrambling, going back through the ideas and then the lyrics came together.
Che Vicious: I was messing around with these finger snap sounds for the D’Angelo song [“Nothing Even Matters”] and she started coming with the song out of her head. We built the record around this weird snap pattern. That’s how it was with her — the creative process wasn’t this strict environment.
Randolph: “Nothing Even Matters” I hold dear to my heart because I got to meet Mr. D’Angelo, himself.
D’Angelo: Collaborating with Lauryn was very cool. She was warm and sweet. Originally, we were going to swap tunes for each other’s projects because I was working on Voodoo at the same time and my keyboardist James Poyser was also working with her. I went to her house in New Jersey, she played a lot of songs for me and gave me a rough copy to listen to. When Lauryn and I went into in the studio together, I laid down my vocals in the course of an hour.
“Everything Is Everything”
Nobles: A friend of mine had a little studio in East Orange [New Jersey] where “Everything Is Everything” came about. Lauryn didn’t need to use fancy studios — she was down. The title concept came from Donny Hathaway. Then John Legend came by and played. He was trying to get his career off the ground.
John Legend: I was in the spring of my junior year at University of Pennsylvania. A friend invited me to give her a ride to Lauryn’s house in Jersey. Lauryn was working “Everything Is Everything.” I sang and played a couple songs for her. She asked me to play piano on the track. She guided me a little bit but it was pretty simple because I was playing along with a string part that was already there. I became known around campus as the dude who played on “Everything Is Everything.” It was my little claim to fame at Penn for my whole senior year.
Wrapping Up
Commissioner Gordon: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” was never meant to be a commercial single. It was originally recorded for [the soundtrack for the movie] Conspiracy Theory and ended up on the radio, became popular, and that’s how it ended became a bonus track. She called me and said she was behind and had to get it done. She didn’t know how the arrangement of the song went, so we went and got a copy from Coconuts or Sam Goody. I had a little one-room 16-track studio in my apartment in Jersey. Lauryn was eight months pregnant, laying on her back on the floor, half asleep, holding a handheld mike. She did all of those vocals off the top of her head pretty much in one take, with the beat box and all of that. That blew me away.
Candice Anderson (backup singer): I came in during the last two songs. I had just auditioned at her house and they were like, come to Chung King. I had no clue what was going on but she told us what to sing. “Tell Him” took a while because she’s very particular about how she wants it to sound. We’ll keep going until it gets to exactly what she hears in her head and she won’t stop until she gets exactly what she wants.
Jackson: For the album title, she wanted something like The Education of Sonny Carson and we were like, why don’t you make it more self-deprecating, like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill? People heard it as her opus and what she was, but in hindsight I think it was more about what she aspired to be. And what else is art but the best side of who you are and who you wanna be?
Ras Baraka (poet, politician and teacher who served as Miseducation‘s narrator): I was running for councilman in Newark and was also an eighth grade teacher. I was just about to take two of my students home and Lauryn called and asked if I could come up to her house in South Orange. There were chairs set up in the living room and a bunch of kids were there. She told me she wanted to discuss the concept of love. There was a blackboard and I wrote the letters “LOVE” and we just went into the whole discussion.
Release and Reception
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released on August 25th, 1998 and sold 422,600 copies its first week in stores — a SoundScan record for best-selling debut week for a female artist. In January 1999, Hill received 10 Grammy nominations. The following month she took home five trophies including the awards for Album of the Year, Best New Artist and Best R&B Song. She read from Psalm 40 during one of her acceptance speeches.
Jackson: Lauryn became an international superstar. She couldn’t go to the grocery store without makeup and I think that had an adverse effect on her. We had a huge year at the Grammys and then Carlos Santana had the big year next year and she presented for Carlos. It wasn’t so much the amount of records we sold but how we sold them — we didn’t put out six singles, seven videos, do every TV talk show and just milk it. We marketed and presented her as a classy, genuine person and that resonated and that’s why we’re still talking about it ’til this day.
Poyser: The lyrics of that record really struck a chord with everybody, it really touched a lot of souls. The best songs are testimonies of life that everybody can relate to. Everybody can’t relate to balling and drinking Cristal and running around with a million chicks and driving a Bentley. Everybody can relate to heartache and love.
D’Angelo: Churches were substituting God in the lyrics [for “Nothing Even Matters”]. Whenever they make a gospel version from a secular song, that’s significant.
Commissioner Gordon: Knowing Lauryn was definitely a blessing and whatever time we spent together was all very significant and that is evident in the thing that we created. She was just gifted.
The Lawsuit
Jackson: After all that beauty, she hurt a lot of people that loved her because she got hurt.
Che Vicious: She gave me co-production [on “To Zion”], but I did the track on my own. There was label pressure to do the Prince thing — written and produced by. I still love you like a sister, but you didn’t do it on your own.
Commissioner Gordon: Sometimes when you have a really big blessing, you have a really big weight that comes along with that and some people can get weak along the way. The highs were super, super high and the lows were super, super low. She was like, “I’m releasing myself of the burdens of this worldly business and I’m going into my sabbatical.”
Nobles: Everything changed. It went from we to I. Everything started out genuine but somewhere down the line, something switched. Once it became clear that I wouldn’t be credited or compensated according to what’s fair, I had to voice how I felt. I had a wife and family. She barely credited me. She gave Che my credits. As God as my witness, that was in spite. I tried my best to resolve it without lawyers but it became impossible. The suit dragged on for about three years. They tried to discredit us that we were musicians trying to take advantage of her.
Jackson: Our mistake was Lauryn never wanted to do paperwork or formalize the relationship with them. She was like, “I don’t want them to feel like they work for me” and that came back to bite us. She looked at Vada as a drum programmer, like I want you to make a beat — take that out, do this. Kilo claimed to be an MC but early on it became clear that he wasn’t no MC. She was trying to decide between a line about Polos or Girbauds. I was like, Polo is more classic. So I could’ve claimed I wrote a fucking verse for her! Ain’t nobody write no Lauryn Hill song, them shits was way too personal. They sued Lauryn, Sony, Ruffhouse Records, me, Suzette — everybody. The case was dragging on and it just got really ugly.
Marley: A team of them ganged up against her. Of course she sits there like, Ro, give me a word that rhymes with rat. I say cat just to trigger something, Nobody writes anything for her. Because she’s a woman of the Almighty, she doesn’t wanna fight. It’s like someone telling a lie on me and I’m standing there defending a lie.
Che Vicious: I’m glad I was a part of it, the only thing that taints it for me is I wish it was properly credited. Maybe in retrospect I should have sued her. But it doesn’t taint the body of work because at the end of the day people loved the record. I felt like we could have made more than just one. I’m sad about that.
Nobles: Eventually Lauryn decided she didn’t wanna go on with it no more. The lawyers were mad that she wanted to quit. Kilo and I went to her house and made peace right after the depositions. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.
James Poyser (songwriter/producer): The business end of it got extremely, extremely messy. You chalk it up to experience. When you throw your heart out there, you gotta be prepared for it to not land somewhere soft.
The Aftermath: Hill’s Retreat
Jackson: It started to get strange, Bible study went from one day a week to three days a week to five days a week to I want you to come. I went to a couple of them but I was like, I completely understand if it’s your calling, but it’s not mine and I can’t force it. As that picked up we drifted further and further apart.
Nobles: The type of pressure, selling 18 million records worldwide, winning all these Grammys and people love you and then you wanna be outside the box, change up your hairstyle, express yourself, and people say, “No, that’s not you.” She ain’t the type of woman that you gonna box in. She’s Ms. Hill, that’s who she is. And there’s nothing wrong with that. She wants to be called Ms. Hill, fine. Maybe she feels that society has disrespected her, maybe she feels like you’re not entitled to call me Lauryn, you don’t know me and don’t pretend like you know me.
Pras: It’s not that Lauryn is crazy — if it’s not the orthodox way then people tend to say you’re crazy. People said Einstein was crazy. Lauryn had whatever she was dealing with personally, and sometimes people don’t know how to give you a break because she had such an impact.
Marley: They’ve been hating for too long, hatin’ on her for no reason. You got a guy like Wyclef talking about her on the radio. What the fuck, brethren?! Relax! That’s foolishness! Big man, what you doing? Let’s move on. We got children too, ya know?
Hill: I think, in our own sweet time, we’re gonna get into a room and talk to each other about all of our issues and make some music. But that can’t happen too prematurely or I think it would damage things. We all sincerely loved each other. And we still do. But in any relationship there’s ups and downs. People grow up, they grow apart. I have a huge amount of love for them, but I needed to learn some things about myself. I’ve found my sound, the sound which is distinctly me. I needed to become the woman that I’m becoming, and it was necessary for me to make this record. But I think, at the same time, this record may have revealed some insecurities in other people. And I think it made it a little difficult. I don’t think that everybody was necessarily that happy that I decided to do a solo project. I think that they thought the worst as opposed to the best.
But I know that (a) time reveals truth. And (b) time heals wounds. So I’m not in any rush to rip any Band-Aids off. Actually, maybe I am. Maybe I do wanna rip the Band-Aid. I think this album definitely ripped the Band-Aid off, because it helped the wound to breathe as opposed to fester. But I’d rather let the healing process take its own natural time than rush into a situation. I definitely do [miss the Fugees]. We were a crazy bunch. We used to do some wild things. Not bad wild things — we had a lot of fun. But the funny thing about liberation is that once you get it, anything other feels awkward.
Commissioner Gordon: ‘Clef got a bad rap because being the ex-boyfriend, that must be who caused all the problems. But when he spoke about her saying she’s disturbed, it was more from a place of helping her than trying to hurt her because it was a long time after.
Jackson: One of the last things she said to me in a real conversation was, “How do I keep it so hot and good, Jayson?” And I was like, “I don’t know if you can. The only thing you can do is as you grow, just make records.” And if she wants to take the rest of her days and raise her family or write poetry or whatever she chooses, God bless her. And thank you for doing it when you did.
Commissioner Gordon: Lauryn was everybody’s favorite singer and you can hear it in so many singers now. She gave the world something. And if that’s all there is, maybe it was enough.
Legend: Lauryn had that blend of toughness and soulfulness, melody and swagger. She did it better than anybody still has done it. People are still trying to capture that moment. Jazmine Sullivan’s song that’s out now [“Need U Bad”] sounds eerily similar to Lauryn.
Nobles: [J Records A&R rep] Peter Edge called asking me to work on Jazmine Sullivan’s record. She’s a talented girl but I made a choice that I wasn’t gonna do it. I don’t wanna spend my life trying to reincarnate Lauryn through somebody else. Lauryn ain’t dead, Lauryn is very much alive. That woman’s alive.
Randolph: I sang with her until 2006. One of my last conversations with Ms. Hill was about her feeling like there’s no room for her music and people biting and stealing the formula and making it into something dishonest. And my words for her were, “You changed my life in a day. Whoever you feel out there is mimicking you, the Lauryn I know would show these ho’s how it’s done.”
Hill: I just can’t do anything if I’m not inspired. I always sorta wait for the inspiration to come, and if the spirit doesn’t drive me to do it, then I won’t do it. ‘Cause I definitely know that what I’m doin’ is sorta bigger than me. It’s somethin’ that I’ve been assigned.
Cast of Characters
Candice Anderson: Backup singer, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album and tour
Ras Baraka: New Jersey poet, politician and teacher who served as Miseducation’s narrator; Baraka speaks to a group of children about love during interludes throughout the album
Che Vicous (formerly Che Guevera): Producer who worked on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
D’Angelo: Featured on Miseducation duet “Nothing Even Matters”
Lauryn Hill: Singer/rapper/songwriter/producer
Jayson Jackson: Music industry exec who met Hill when she was a high school student and served as her manager until February 2001
John Legend: Played piano on “Everything Is Everything”
Rohan Marley: The son of Bob Marley and father of Hill’s five children
Pras Michel: Hill’s Fugees bandmate
Vada Nobles: Producer and programmer who sued Hill for not being properly credited on Miseducation
James Poyser: Songwriter, producer and keyboardist credited as a musician on Miseducation
Lenesha Randolph: Backup singer, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album and tour
Commissioner Gordon Williams: Engineer and project supervisor, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
All new interviews were conducted for this story with the exception of Lauryn Hill, whose quotes are from her 1999 Rolling Stone cover story by Touré.
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