album of the week: Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

[Ruffhouse : 1998]

While I’m 90 per cent sure it’s uncool to admit to a long time jones for The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill - and Lauryn Hill herself is clearly a bizarre person, the fact is three of Album Of The Week’s favourite things (specifically 90’s R&B, rap and pop music) are what this record is all about and when it came out it kinda blew our minds. My very first brush with Lauryn was as a singing high school kid in the second Sister Act movie. The movie itself was pretty average but I remember thinking “holy crap who is this girl?”, particularly in the scene where she does this gospel duet with another girl from her class while sitting at the piano and totally owning it. 
A couple years later I got into The Fugees when I became obsessed with Blunted On Reality (1994) and the follow up The Score - which everyone with functioning ears became obsessed with. During a Fugees’ hiatus when Lauryn was 23 years old she went to Jamaica and there she made an autobiographical solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It was all about her life at the time; the relationships, her spirituality and the process of having a baby (which she went through while making the record) and the content is super honest – like the track “Forgive Them Father” which is supposedly a diss track aimed at her Fugee band members Wyclef Jean and Pras, including the lyrics: Like Cain and Abel, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas / Backstabbers do this. 
 Her voice is obviously an amazing instrument (if you want to be hyperbolic like that), but the album also revealed her talent as a producer and musician, and a really innovative songwriter/composer. I think this record is still one of the most interesting crossover records in terms of mixing sounds/genres; there’s near orchestral arrangements on some of the tracks (“Everything is Everything”), hugely uplifting gospel choruses (“To Zion”), 50’s doo wop, soul and reggae. It won five Grammy’s and critics frothed over it, and it perfectly captured the weird musical zeitgeist of the late Nineties – and it WAS weird, remember? Between Ace Of Bass, Montel Jordan and Mudhoney I had no one music identity that I was prepared to commit to, and this record didn’t abide by any genre loyalty. Toward the end of that era a lot of kids respected that and could relate. 

People have been waiting a long time for the next chapter in the Lauryn Hill discography, but she’s been a pretty reclusive lady ever since releasing her debut. In the arts, to be considered a creative genius you only need to complete one really great work and with the The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, Ms Hill nailed it.




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