The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill has everything that a listener could desire in an album. Musical complexity, talented feature artists, angelic vocals, rhythmic rapping, enticingly catchy choruses, emotionally honest lyrics, and social commentary. It would be hard-pressed for someone to not be able to find something, at least, head-boppingly enjoyable. But the remarkable quality about Hill’s creation is that it goes beyond the pleasantness of sound, and transforms into a “critical intervention” of the paradigms which bound Hip Hop. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is remarkably influential album which changed Hip Hop into what we know today, by fusing together singing and rapping, exposing personal emotions and experience, and successfully entering and transforming a male dominated space as a Black woman.
In a striking marriage of styles which were previously thought of as divided; Hill joins together melodious singing with full-bodied rapping. Both styles strengths and intricacies shine, as her entrancing vocals and organic rhymes, are layered over natural instrumentals and pulsing beats. Part of the reason why her music sounds so nuanced is the many backgrounds she derives her sound from. Elements of Reggae, Gospel, Soul, R&B, and Hip Hop churn together into a musical masterpiece, while paying homage and keeping in communication with the backbones of her background and inspirations. For example, in “Lost Ones” Hill references Sister Nancy’s classic Reggae hit “Bam Bam”, and the offbeat rhythms and slow tempos of Reggae are scattered throughout the album. The biblical references, call and response lines, and vocal intensity reflect the components of Soul, Blues, and Gospel Music. The album was created in Jamaica at Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong studios, alluded to with, “I was hopeless, now I’m on hope road,” (Hill) and it features the artists Carlos Santana, D’Angelo, Mary J. Blige, Raekwon, and RZA. These musical choices build the rich body of Hill’s album, which she uses as a base for her distinctive singing and rapping blend. This unique approach paved the way for the success of artists like Drake, Beyonce, and Kid Cudi, forming a different style of Hip Hop for which others could emulate.
On top of her distinct musical style of painstaking vocals and robust rapping, Hill adds another layer of sophistication with her use of lyricism. She reveals intimate details of her life in a very raw and vulnerable way; creating a powerful storyline of human experience which is relatable on many levels. Doing so, she creates a relationship of connection between audience and artist, who can share the cathartic feelings of resentment, jealously, sorrow, joy, and empowerment common to mankind. Hill achieves this feat by delving into themes of love throughout the interludes, describing the pain of breakups and complication of romantic relationships in “Lost One’s” and “Ex-Factor”, and sharing the touchingly intimate expanse of unconditional love for her son in “For Zion”. These painstakingly beautiful verses, “made a space for hip-hop to be tender and transcendent,” (Jackson). This emotional form of Hip Hop had not been used before Lauryn Hill, and it drastically changed the way we view Hip Hop today, with its multi-faceted dimensions. Many of the artists who incorporate the stylistic choices of Hill’s music, also utilize her expressive use of lyrics. This has become an incredibly popular music style with Kanye West, J. Cole, and Drake as some of the popular examples, who would not have reached the same fame without Hill.
But for all of her emotional vulnerability, Hill’s album is not without fault. As Jackson notes, “Lauryn was still oblique about her troubles. She filtered so much of herself through an unattainable, unassailable goddess persona, with stifling, middle-class, ghetto-shaming politics,” (Jackson). Part of the problem with this is it perpetuates stereotypes of black woman in music. Dating back to the 1940s, Tucker explains the downfall of The Prairie Co-eds unrecordability, pointing to the limiting categorizations on black women in Jazz as primitive, excessively emotional, and “eccentrically outsider” (Tucker, 32). It is a difficult balance to maintain, and shows how seemingly impossible it is for black women to be accepted in America without criticism in some way. Jackson’s hope for black women is be able to “fuck with the grays” in Joan Morgan’s words, and “exist between a spectrum of identities and experiences… accept goodness and pleasure, and learn to endure the discomfort of naming our pain,” (Jackson).
One way that Hill does not achieve the ability to “be comfortable un-settled” (Powers, 41) is through her use of respectability politics in “Doo Wop (That Thing)”. Respectability politics, “describes a range of strategies, largely regarding notions of honor, self-respect, piety, and propriety, deployed by progressive black women to promote racial uplift and women’s rights and to secure broader access to the public sphere,” which can, “limit the attempts to formulate an unapologetic pro-sex stance among black and Latina women,” (Durham, 724). Although lyrics like, “Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem. Baby girl, respect is just a minimum” (Hill) might sound like female empowerment, it is more so a form of judgement and criticism. This comes across when she says, “Plus, when you give it up so easy you ain’t even foolin’ him. If you did it then, then you’d probably fuck again,” (Hill). Hill’s intention may not be repressive as “It can be very hard to discern the difference between self- celebration and self-abuse,” (Powers, 43). It is easy to cross the line between empowering and judgmental when dealing with the sexuality of women, but it would have been an even larger feminist success if Hill had rephrased some of her lyrics in a more pro-sex stance. In comparison to the merits of Hill’s album, her use of respectability politics do not tarnish the fact that she bypassed a primarily male-dominated space as a woman of color with great success, making Hip Hop accessible for many other women like Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe, and Cardi B.
The release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, found great success, immediately gaining a number one spot on the Billboard 200, “Doo Wop (That Thing)” became the first number one single by a female artist in history, and it was the first rap album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year (Jackson). Apart from this commercial success, the album changed the ideas of what Hip Hop is and who could create it, opening up opportunities for many of the voices we hear today. Hill’s album is a stunning revelation into the experience of a woman of color, trying to find her way through the tumultuous experience of life, and it will always remain a cult-favorite and culturally transformative piece of art.
References:
Hill, Lauryn. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Jackson, Danielle A. “Joan Morgan,
Hip-Hop Feminism, and The Miseducation of Lauryn
Hill.” The
Paris Review, 20 Aug. 2018, www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/08/joan-morgan-hip-hop-feminism-and-the-twenty-year-legacy-of-the-miseducation-of-lauryn-hill/.
Powers, Ann. “A Spy in the House of
Love.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and
Culture,
vol. 12, no. 1, 2008, pp. 40–43., doi:10.1353/wam.0.0013.
Tucker, Sherrie, “Uplift and
Downbeats: What If Jazz History Included the Prairie View Co-eds?”
Jazz Research Proceedings, International Association of Jazz Educators (2001): 26-31. (PDF)
2 Popular Music articles:
An article interviewing the creator
of one of my favorite podcasts Dissect https://www.thefader.com/2018/06/19/frank-ocean-dissect-podcast-spotify-cole-cuchna-interview
And a link to listen to Dissect https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/dissect-cole-cuchna-spotify-ykaJSmZP5pR/
For anyone who is curious what
Lauryn Hill has been up to since the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill: https://medium.com/@OmarBagel/the-case-of-ms-lauryn-hill-9403b4cb1a6c
jay.lyons.class 