Lauryn Hill - Fugees

Hey, it's my album. Who can tell my story better than me?

(Lauryn Hill, 1998)

Unlearning the gospel according to the Fugees, the fleeting love for Wyclef Jean, and the pressures from the record industry suggesting she abort her pregnancy — it was a long and difficult process for the fragile, at times defenseless Lauryn Hill. In 1998, the twenty-three-year-old from New Jersey was about to become the reigning star of end-of-millennium neo-soul. The ideal meeting point between Aretha Franklin and Bob Marley. Between the voice of the soul and the voice of the spirit. Five Grammys, 19 million copies sold worldwide, and an impressive run of sold-out shows define an extraordinary success for the American singer-songwriter, finally free to roam among the themes closest to her heart at that time and to blend her love for Jamaican reggae with her never-hidden passion for deep gospel. It's precisely from this fusion that the backbone of "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" is born. A hybrid that certainly offers no real innovation within the black music landscape of the era, but which in its own way defines a singular songwriting recipe, with Hill playing both the disillusioned poet and the wounded lover. An apparently docile lioness who nonetheless knows exactly how to claw, through words that blend the teachings of her husband Rohan Marley's father with those of Protestant preachers, gradually reaching a new consciousness brought on by motherhood. Hill finds herself in the role of a mother forced to choose between raising her child and personal success. "To Zion" is in fact dedicated to little Zion David, born in August 1997, and fully embodies the conflict the musician was grappling with in those years.

Now the joy of my world

Is in Zion! (Zion, Zion!)

These words alone, contained in the refrain screamed out in joy and liberation, are enough to grasp the metaphors Hill adopted not only in her life but in her first and only solo album. Her child is thus Zion, in the Rastafarian sense. The Jerusalem cited in the post-exilic passages of the Bible. The temple to be rebuilt with a happiness never experienced before. It's one of the most emblematic passages for fully understanding the autobiographical nature of an album that would remain a unicum, not only in the musician's brief career, but within the American neo-soul scene itself. Crossing the Atlantic, one could invoke as a possible "reference" and forerunner the masterpiece by Swedish artist Neneh Cherry, "Homebrew", released in 1992. But that record is stylistically more fluid than Hill's debut. The parallel would therefore remain reductive, despite the similarity in some of the themes tackled on certain tracks, such as the aforementioned motherhood.

What truly stirred Hill's spirit, granting her incredible inspiration, was in fact a very specific solitary path, undertaken after the first turbulence with her Fugees. Having written and produced "A Rose Is Still A Rose" for her beloved Franklin, as well as material for Whitney Houston and a host of R&B performers, Hill accumulated, in the months immediately preceding the creation of this record, an impressive wealth of stylistic influences, both direct and indirect.

Recorded between 1997 and 1998, both at Chung King Studios in New York and Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" is an immaculate compendium of warm soul arrangements that blend, verse after verse, with reggae riffs and African rhythms. A deeply personal album, written almost entirely by Hill herself, who essentially had the final say on everything, to the point of not deeming it essential for the group of musicians known as New Ark — made up of Vada Nobles, Rasheem Pugh, Tejumold Newton and Johari Newton — to be present during the recording sessions. This lack of recognition soon turned into a legal dispute, resolved only in 2001, with New Ark appalled by Hill's production-side totalitarianism, guilty in their eyes of not giving "unto Caesar what is Caesar's". A dispute that was, in any case, somewhat superfluous, given the heavy hand with which Hill shaped every single moment of the album, with the exception of the illustrious guests called in, such as Carlos Santana, present on "To Zion" itself with his unmistakable touch, her friend Mary J. Blige on "I Used To Love Him", and the divine D'Angelo on "Nothing Even Matters".

Some wan' play young Lauryn like she dumb

But remember not a game new under the sun

Everything you did has already been done

I know all the tricks from Bricks to Kingston

Heavyweight collaborations for a record that kicks off at full throttle with the anger-laced dub stride of "Lost Ones", whose choral incipit nods to the I Threes, while the lyrics underline the songwriter's awareness, no longer passive in the face of the absurdities of the record business and its fake pats on the back. An explosive, forceful opening, a counterweight to the sweetness of the ballad "Ex-Factor", addressed to her former Fugees bandmate (and more), Wyclef Jean. It's her unconditional love for Marvin Gaye that shapes the melodic contours of a wildly successful hit, sung with passionate verve by Hill, increasingly at ease behind the microphone, and specifically increasingly free to shout her anger at the world.

But the global hit that more than any other symbolizes the American singer's "miseducation" is undoubtedly "Doo Wop (That Thing)". One of those miracles capable of making Diana Ross and the Supremes pale in comparison, artists to whom Hill nonetheless owes a great deal. A single that reached number one on the Billboard charts and collected two Grammys, for Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. And lyrics that stand as a warning to human beings, urged not to let themselves be enslaved by "that thing", regardless of their own sexuality. Dulcis in fundo, it was the first song in Billboard history to debut straight at number one. Also memorable is the sample, around the one-minute mark, of "Together Let's Find Love" by the great The 5th Dimension.

The nod to the quintessential Doors anthem, "Light My Fire", found in the following track "Superstar", is instead a genuine tribute. She lightly reprises its melody while altering the original lyrics to lash out at MCs she deems "suckers". It is, essentially, yet another pebble in her shoe, dug out and hurled at her former bandmates. Samples of Prince and Cox Orange surface in the background of "Final Hour", complete with horns and harps that step in between one invective and the next, while the beat remains fully faithful to strictly old-school hip-hop grooves. Pain and self-pity also find room in the aching "When It Hurts So Bad".

Between nods to vintage soul laced with Jamaican seeds ("Forgive Them Father") and Stevie Wonder-esque clavinet ("Every Ghetto, Every City"), the album winds its way to the mystical duet with the fast-rising D'Angelo ("Nothing Even Matters"). An episode Hill described in these terms: "I wanted to make a Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway kind of love song, and give people a more human approach to love, without all the surrounding physicality and sexuality". It is indeed a supremely soft, at times magically saccharine ballad, in perfect synergy with the tender chemistry the ever-reliable D'Angelo typically conjures up. Closing things out is the album's fourth single, "Everything Is Everything", featuring an unknown Jon Legend on piano, its political invective on behalf of America's young communities driving the imperious mood of the refrain. Equally successful is the cover of the legendary "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You", written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio for Frankie Valli, sung here with gospel fervor and reggae attitude.

In the years to come, it would obviously be impossible to compare "The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" to any potential follow-up, given Lauryn Hill's decision to retreat from the spotlight to care for her large brood of children with Marley. It would thus remain a unicum, an isolated, eternally shining star in the firmament of end-of-millennium black music. An album comparable in overall depth, albeit for singularly different reasons, to the autobiographical "The Diary Of Alicia Keys" by Alicia Keys and the finely calibrated "Mama's Gun" by Erykah Badu. Like Hill, both queens of an R&B and soul "rebirth" that defined an era.

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05/01/2020