With a legacy that is still very much alive and well, the sound of The Miseducation can still be heard in hip-hop and neo-soul releases today. Winning five Grammys, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill made history as the first hip-hop album to ever win the coveted Album Of The Year prize, while she became the first woman to win five awards in one ceremony.
Written in a burst of creativity inspired by her pregnancy with Rohan Marley, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill is imbued in soul and thoughtful vulnerability, with occasional appearances from the likes of Mary J Blige and D’Angelo, as Hill smoothly slips in between rapping and singing with impressive ease. Lauryn Hill won the hearts of the public with Fugees’ The Score, but her debut solo album, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, affirmed that she alone was a force to be reckoned with, her vocals and rapping prowess shining bright as the star of their own record. The group split and began work on solo projects just a year after The Score’s release, but that was enough time for it to put Fugees in the hip-hop hall of fame, changing the genre’s landscape forever. Each member of the band have the opportunity to really shine on this record, but The Score has to be noted for bringing Hill to a mainstream audience, with her vocals anchoring the group’s soulful sound on singles such as “Ready Or Not” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”. Weaving together smart samples, live instruments and intelligent vignettes of ghetto life, The Score is intimate and thoughtful, at the time providing a broader appeal to masses who were skeptical about hip-hop music. If you talk that kind of talk, you sure as hell have to walk the walk and, upon release, The Score did not disappoint. “It’s almost like a hip-hop version of Tommy, like what The Who did for rock music,” said Lauryn Hill of Fugees’ second album, before it had even been released.
Equipped with Death Row Records’ most celebrated producers – including, you guessed it, Dr Dre – to match his swaggering braggadocio, All Eyez On Me may not be 2Pac’s most thoughtful album, but it’s the one on which all elements came together harmoniously and, considering its sheer scale and quick turnaround, deserves to be remembered as one of the greats. While a tone of urgency runs through it, 2Pac’s work on this album is anything but sloppy, eschewing the more self-reflective themes explored on Me Against The World for an unashamed celebration of Thug Life. The rapper died in a drive-by shooting less than a year later, but not before the release of All Eyez On Me, an album that was hastily recorded in two weeks.
In today’s world, no label in their right mind would have bailed him out for his crime, but that’s what Death Row Records did in 1995, forking out $1.4 million on the condition he would make three albums for them once released. At 27 songs long, 2Pac’s fourth and final album to be released during his lifetime is a tour de force of hip-hop, the first of its kind to ever be released for mass consumption and a ferocious return to music after spending eleven months in jail for sexual assault.
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