The closest their debut album Blunted on Reality came to a crossover hit, Nappy Heads is almost unrecognisable as the work of Fugees, who went on to sell millions of records. But it’s an of-its-era joy nonetheless, with a boom-bap rhythm and horns sampled from jazzy 70s funk.
More people should know Social Drugs – driven by acoustic guitar, it’s what a studio album along the lines of Hill’s MTV Unplugged performance might have sounded like. The fact that they don’t is because she only released it on her website: for $15, fans could play the track three times only.
To say Hill’s attitude to releasing new material has been scattershot since the early 00s is an understatement: Black Rage, which reworks The Sound of Music classic My Favourite Things into an anguished response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, originally slipped out on the internet during a tour with Nas in 2012 before being released online in 2014. Now only available on YouTube, it’s spare and fantastic.
Often overlooked among The Score’s plethora of hit singles, Zealots works on every level: its use of a sample from the Flamingos’ doo-wop version of I Only Have Eyes For You is inspired, every verse is on point, and the moment Hill announces her arrival with a bold burst of singing is a thing of swaggering magnificence.
The first sign that The Score was a quantum leap from Fugees’ debut, Fu-Gee-La’s beat was intended for Fat Joe beforeWyclef Jeanbegan rapping over it during studio downtime. The track’s hard yet humid sound – making full use of what Rolling Stone called the “sweet heat” of Hill’s vocals – went on to define the album.
Nostalgic light relief amid The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’s sagas of heartbreak and betrayal: the delightful Every Ghetto, Every City sets Hill’s retelling of her childhood in New Jersey to a breezy clavinet-driven backing that sounds as if it could have fallen off one of Stevie Wonder’s early 70s albums, but never feels like retro pastiche.
A slow seller on release, lost among a glut of conscious rap, the album Blunted on Reality remains overlooked. If you want evidence that Fugees had something really special in Hill, check out Some Seek Stardom: it’s more hyperactive than her familiar style, but her performance here is still wildly impressive.
The original, on Blunted on Reality, is fine stuff, but the heavier beat of the remix foregrounds Hill’s contributions to startling effect. Her opening verse, delivered in a flow audibly influenced by Jamaican reggae DJs, is a masterpiece of dextrous conscious rapping.
Hill’s MTV Unplugged album met with a mixed response on release, but its reputation has grown with time, particularly the nine-minute confessional I Gotta Find Peace of Mind: it’s been sampled by A$AP Rocky, claimed as a pivotal influence by Doechii and Jorja Smith and even analysed by theologians.
Ostensibly by the loose collective of which Fugees were a part, there’s no doubt who the star of the show is: moreover, The Sweetest Thing’s lovely melody and acoustic guitar-led arrangement signposted the direction of Hill’s solo debut. If you want something less laid-back, Salaam Remi’s funk-sample-driven remix is great too.
Fugees’ final hit – from the soundtrack of the 1996 Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings – feels forgotten nearly 30 years on, which is a shame. The backing extracts some brooding menace from Abba’s The Name of the Game, while Hill’s contributions leave you in no doubt about which member’s solo career was going to soar.
The jewel of Hill’s MTV Unplugged performance, a ferocious spoken word/rap hybrid dealing with systemic racism that gained further attention when Kanye West attempted to sample the brief sung chorus on his massive-selling All Falls Down: Hill refused permission, so West had it re-recorded – to striking effect – by Syleena Johnson.
Featuring a young and then-unknown John Legend on piano, Everything is Everything’s irresistible string sample makes its lyrics about social injustice feel weirdly optimistic. The chorus is a killer, but don’t overlook her rapping, which is smart and multilayered, the sound of Ms Hill going in hard.
A guest appearance that has a genuinely transformative effect: between Hill’s vocal, a snappy rap and a remix that strips the original – from 1977’s Exodus – of all its instrumentation and shifts the rhythm towards hip-hop, it feels infinitely more like her work than that ofBob Marley. It’s also gorgeous.
Their straight cover of the old Roberta Flack track was the huge hit, but this remix – actually their first pass at the song – is the one to hear. Only the hook remains (with altered lyrics), with the rest given over to spectacular rap verses: less commercial, far more powerful.
Lost Ones’ all-out verbal assault on Hill’s former bandmate and lover Wyclef Jean is all the more stinging because, for all its biblical imprecations, it never feels angry, just coldly contemptuous. It’s the sound of a woman who’s understandably aware that the music she’s now making is so great, it’s going to ensure she comes out on top.
Yes, the interpolation from the Delfonics’ soft-soul classic is a killer hook – and it’s doubtless what made it a UK No 1 – but the real meat of Ready or Not is in the rhymes, most particularly Hill’s braggadocious verse: “While you imitating Al Capone / I’ll be Nina Simone / and defecating on your microphone.”
To Zion features a vocal so powerful and captivating that it completely overshadows guest Carlos Santana’s elaborate guitar playing. It’s the story of Hill’s first pregnancy told in impassioned, authentically moving style: she dismissed advice to have an abortion from those worried about the impact it would have on her career.
Subsequently sampled by Cardi B and Drake, and covered by Beyoncé, Ex-Factor uses lush and classy soul in the service of Miseducation’s emotional nadir: a potent, heart-rending depiction of a toxic relationship that keeps flaring into life despite her best intentions. Its guitar solo-strafed climax is particularly magnificent.
Over the last 20 years, Lauryn Hill’s fans have endured a lot:tours cancelledwithout refunds, gigs that start hours late. That they keep the faith regardless is down to the fact she can still bring it – and to the sheer quality of her debut solo album. Its crowning glory, the party-starting but lyrically wary Doo-Wop (That Thing), is the sound of a woman who could apparently do it all – rap, sing, produce and write songs deeply rooted in Black music history that still sounded fresh and new, that made you dance and made you think at the same time. And, who knows? She may yet do it all again.