Ms. Lauryn Hill and What Could Have Been

Image description: An image of Lauryn Hill holding several Grammys. The right half is in sketchy black and white, the left half in full color. 

“But deep in my heart, the answer, it was in me/ And I made up my mind to define my own destiny” — Lauryn Hill, “”The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill””

Lauryn Hill: the rambunctious, raspy, rebellious R&B superstar of the 1990s. The woman who rapped about men and sang about herself, her struggles with identity, industry, and her belief in a higher power. She took over the world upon her split from the Fugees and the release of the incomparable album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1998. She became the first woman to win five or more Grammys in one night for “Miseducation”, including Album of the Year. When I think of Hill, I think of her clutching all of her Grammys, balancing them on her arms and beaming for photographers. I think of myself spinning around in my bedroom to her record. I think of how she functionally disappeared for 25 years. At the top of her game, intense public anticipation for her sophomore effort, but from Lauryn, nothing. She has not made another album, besides releasing her MTV Unplugged set in 2002. In those 25 years, public appearances have been sparse, and scandal has been frequent. When I saw Lauryn, now going by Ms. Lauryn Hill, in concert on her Miseducation tour in November 2023, I was entranced by her beauty and her contradictions. Lauryn arrived on stage two hours late, drowning in a glorious red gown and matching hat. She brought Carlos Santana on stage, reunited with Fugees counterparts Wyclef and Pras. She did all of this through tears. She sang through sobs and thanked those who had gotten her on stage that night, those who had protected her over the last two-and-a-half decades. Lauryn’s voice was altered by the tears; she sniffled, and her voice wobbled through her performance. It was stunning. It was a culmination of the intensity of Lauryn’s life and career, her continued interest in Afrofeminism, and her anger with the industry. Lauryn Hill, through her groundbreaking art and public persona, epitomized the contradictions of hip-hop feminism. She was a revolutionary who moved women from the sidelines of hip-hop to the center of knowledge-making and cultural production, all while being a victim of institutional forces and societal myths that constrict Black womanhood.

Lauryn Hill was born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1975. A 13-year-old Lauryn first tried her hand at performing at maybe the toughest stage on earth: The Apollo Theater. The Apollo Theater is a historic and innately Black Harlem institution that has long been a crucible for emerging talent within the Black community. The Apollo made the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Jimi Hendrix, and nearly broke the drive of James Brown, Tracy Morgan, and even a young Lauryn Hill. The young Lauryn, who was clearly nervous for her performance, stuttered and wavered through her rendition of “Who’s Lovin’ You”. Despite saving the performance towards the end, the crowd transitioning from boos to cheers for the young singer, Hill left the stage and immediately burst into tears. This was an early indicator to Lauryn of the scrutiny and vulnerability inherent in public performance, even within spaces designed to celebrate Black artistry. This moment speaks not only to the formative pressures she faced but also to The Apollo’s dual role as both a platform for Black cultural expression and a space that demands excellence, often through harsh judgment. For Lauryn, this experience foreshadowed her lifelong tension between public expectation and personal expression. Her later retreat from the spotlight can be seen, in part, as a response to the emotional toll of constantly having her talent, identity, and worth appraised in the public eye, even in spaces meant to protect and uplift.

Only two years later, Lauryn met a young Pras Michel in high school, who introduced her to his cousin, hotshot Haitian immigrant Wyclef Jean. Together, they formed the Fugees in 1992. Despite almost being dropped from their label over their failed debut album “Blunted on Reality” (1994), it was with the release of The Score in 1996 that the Fugees, and specifically their centerpiece Lauryn Hill, were catapulted to national fame. Lauryn was the immediate standout of the band; her mastery of hip-hop lyricism on tracks like “Fu-Gee-La” and “Zealots” and her vocal prowess on smash-hit “Killing Me Softly With His Song” demonstrated her versatility in her male-dominated industry. Up to this point, most female hip-hop stars were solo acts, artists like Mariah Carey and Lil Kim sporting more overtly feminine beauty with silk-pressed hair and flashy outfits. Sporting her natural 4C curls in locks, wearing baggy clothes and large hoop earrings, Lauryn celebrated her Afrocentric beauty while also attempting to conform to her male-dominated trio. Lauryn never wanted to go solo; she wanted to maintain the Fugees until creative and personal differences between the group became too stark. Specifically, the troubled relationship between Lauryn and Wyclef Jean, who was six years her senior at the time of their relationship. Jean claimed he taught Lauryn how to rap. Wyclef did not want to support or collaborate with Lauryn on her solo venture. When he realized she was serious about leaving the trio, he claimed he was “executive-producing” Lauryn’s solo project.  On “Zealots”, Wyclef raps, “The Magazine says the girl should have went solo/ the guys should stop rapping, vanish like Menudo”. Well, the girl did go solo

“The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” was released on August 25, 1998. The album was a seamless fusion of hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and even gospel. Through these diverse vocal styles, Lauryn performed about Black womanhood, motherhood, liberation, and most importantly, love. Love is the underlying theme of the album, with many tracks bookended or beginning with a group of school children waxing about what love means to them. Tracks like “Doo Wop (That Thing)” urged the Black community toward self-reflection and change, while “To Zion” served as a heartfelt ballad dedicated to her son. Not only was Lauryn’s vocal range expressed (especially on the title track), but so too was her emotional range, a range she was unable to fully express when tied to the Fugees. “Miseducation” was partly born of Wyclef Jean’s emotionally manipulative behavior towards Lauryn during her time with the Fugees and after. Not only was he condescending to Lauryn, claiming he taught Lauryn how to rap and was executive-producing her solo album, but he also married a different woman while seeing Lauryn. When Lauryn became romantically involved with Rohan Marley (the son of Bob Marley) and subsequently became pregnant, Wyclef made the false claim that he was the father.  Furthermore, Lauryn’s label became involved and begged her to get an abortion. The pressure Lauryn faced to conform to expectations extended far beyond her relationships. Both the men in her life and her label attempted to control her image, her art, and even her body, treating her as a vessel for their own ambitions. Despite these efforts to constrain her, Lauryn’s artistry and vision remained uncompromised, resulting in an album that redefined the music landscape and cemented her legacy. However, the burden of constantly resisting these forces left Lauryn increasingly isolated in the years that followed.

Since its release, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” has received criticism from contemporary audiences for its reflection of conservative and regressive views on gender, with a preachiness that some found hypocritical. Some lyrics on “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” reflect Lauryn’s conservative views, particularly regarding gender roles, morality, and relationships. In “Doo Wop (That Thing),” she admonishes women for being overly concerned with appearance and sexuality, urging them to value self-respect over external validation. While the song offers equal criticism of men who exploit women, its tone has been critiqued for placing a disproportionate burden of responsibility on women to uphold moral standards. 

Similarly, in “To Zion,” Lauryn praises her decision to have her son despite societal and industry pressures to terminate the pregnancy. While deeply personal and affirming of motherhood, the song has also been interpreted as reinforcing traditional ideas of a woman’s primary role being tied to reproduction and sacrifice. These themes, while reflective of Lauryn’s personal experiences and beliefs, have sparked debate about how her messages align with or diverge from progressive feminist ideals. However, many critiqued Lauryn’s religiosity due to her perceived promiscuity, her status as an unwed mother, making biblical statements. When accepting one of her Grammys, Lauryn called to the women in the audience, saying one can still be “fly” and worship God. Despite these critiques, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” made Lauryn a worldwide phenomenon. At just 23 years old, she was fragile and unprepared for global fame, yet the world embraced her, demanding more. 

In my opinion, Lauryn is the pinnacle of what scholars Aisha Durham et al. labeled “hip-hop feminism”, a movement led by black female hip-hop artists of the 1980s and 90s. These female artists critiqued industrialization, the demolition of welfare, social programs, and affirmative action, along with the increasing racial wealth gap they saw in their own communities. Lauryn’s song “Everything is Everything” is a ballad of resilience in the face of systemic oppression, calling for collective social consciousness and empowerment, particularly directed toward Black youth navigating the aftermath of Reagan’s America, an America that gutted social programs (“After winter must come spring”). “Final Hour” critiques the worship of material wealth and the racial wealth gap, channeling the frustrations of a generation left behind by neoliberal policies. “Forgive Them Father” blends the preachy, biblical allusions many criticized with a prescient message about broader systems of oppression, racial capitalism, and perpetuation of harm cycles. By using her faith in her lyrics, Lauryn critiques hypocritical institutions that claim moral authority while perpetuating inequality. The reggae influences nod to diasporic solidarity, emphasizing global dimensions of the struggles faced by the hip-hop generation. Released after the 1997 Million Women March, a grassroots protest march for Black women in America, “Miseducation” encapsulated contemporary and longstanding cultural and systemic issues faced by Black women and understood the importance of synthesizing Black music genres to communicate Lauryn’s unique messages on intersectionality, community, and Black womanhood. 

Lauryn was seen as a visionary, a prophet, and a unique hope for hip-hop. Despite this, she disappeared from the public eye. I often think of a sophomore studio effort from Lauryn, what we could have had from her. She could have further paved the way for Black issues in the public eye, and specifically the Afrocentric beauty she flaunted. Where did she go? 

For two years, Lauryn endured a self-imposed isolation. She felt immense pressure to return to the Fugees from her label. She felt that for the years of promoting for the Fugees and “Miseducation,” she had not lived. Without living, she had nothing to write about. Lauryn always prioritized art over profit, sometimes to her own detriment. Instead of drawing up formal agreements with the veteran New Ark musicians she’d invited onto “Miseducation,” Lauryn Hill treated the group like family, assuming they’d shoulder the work and share in the creative process purely for the love of making music, with no advance fees, no session rates, and no concern for who owned what royalties. But when members of New Ark realized their contributions were not protected by any contract, they responded by filing a detailed, 50‑page lawsuit against Lauryn, her management, and her label. The ensuing court battle didn’t just threaten her finances; it also bruised her reputation and siphoned the joy from her craft, making her wary of collaboration in the years that followed. 

After this blow, she took a two-year hiatus during which she became involved with a spiritual adviser known as Brother Anthony. It is believed by many close to Lauryn that Anthony was the source of Lauryn’s newfound intense spirituality. In brief public appearances, she would allude to the fact that she believed she was “used by God” to communicate a message. Anthony encouraged Lauryn to hone her religiosity and isolate herself from those near to her. To Lauryn,  who was surrounded by almost entirely male figures who wished to exploit her for her money and talent, this message seemed appealing. She grew distant from her manager, fired her team, and began Bible Study classes five times a week.

Lauryn reemerged in the public eye with her MTV Unplugged performance in 2001. A radical departure from “Miseducation,” this set is stripped down, raspy, and emotionally vulnerable. While I adore this record, Lauryn was critically panned for it. Riddled with spiritual lyrics and cathartic performance, Lauryn’s MTV set was met with intense critiques, calling it “rambling” and labeling Lauryn as emotionally unstable. Lauryn is part of a lineage of Black female artists, from Nina Simone to Billie Holiday, who mobilized “madness” as method and metaphor. Black women have always been subjected to stereotypes of hysteria and savagery. Lauryn’s obvious pain, illustrated on her MTV set, was both fetishized and misunderstood by the public. Lauryn sings with a mad pitch, speaking truth to power in both booms and sputters. Having shorn her trademark locks, makeup, and donning loose clothes, Lauryn abandoned her conventional visual presentation and emphatically threw off her former persona. For the entire set, she sits on a stool and holds a guitar, alone. The set addresses a range of themes, some new and some familiar to Lauryn, from racial injustice to industry, abuse, police brutality, and most importantly, mental health. On the first track, “Intro”, Lauryn says she is “talking to the people in [her] head”; to some, it was a breakdown, but to me and many longtime Lauryn fans, it was a breakthrough. The press had already diagnosed Lauryn as “crazy,” and, relying on this diagnosis, announced to the audience that this performance would be entirely hers– her inner monologue, her pain, her voice. “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind” is the most consequential track on the album. Lauryn breaks into tears during the performance, calling to a higher power to help her leave her “old me” behind and chanting “free your mind” like a mantra to the audience. Unable to sing or speak, Lauryn ends the song with a sob and a stammer. Lauryn seems to snap in the course of the performance, calling out to the voices in her head, reliving trauma, and becoming undone through song. As noted by scholar La Marre Jurelle Bruce, Lauryn “indicates a deliberated, concerted project of counterpublicity” in order to foster an intimate performance space. She wishes for an empathetic community to affirm her transformation and receive her valuable insights. In the final track, “Outro”, Lauryn comments on her self-avowed emotional instability by willing the audience to “admit what we’re really going through” and reveal, unmanicured, the oppressive conditions Black women face daily. 

 “Life is too valuable, man, for us to sit in these boxes all repressed, you know, afraid to admit what we’re really going through.” Through her critically panned and widely ridiculed MTV set, I see an artist in critical meditation upon her life, booming with Afrofeminist, antiracist, and populist passion. Through her perceived madness, Lauryn communicates a deep anger and frustration with her own circumstances after her massive hit album, her lack of privacy, and most importantly to the ever-creative Lauryn, a loss of connection with her audience. Madness and art have always intersected, often romanticized when discussing white male artists like Nietzsche or Van Gogh; these narratives of madness are notably charged when discussed through a Black female lens. By igniting controversy with her stripped-down, conscious-excavating performance, Lauryn joins the likes of Black artists from Thelonius Monk, to Nina Simone, to Richard Pryor who all mobilized their “madness” to subvert the savage, unsound narratives levied at Black people and instead communicate through mind, body, and voice, their suffering, catharsis, and wisdom. 

Lauryn has evoked this radical divergence from normalcy and conformity in all of her performances since her MTV set. Lauryn, now in her late 40s, in reframing and revisiting her incredibly successful early career, employs her new cultural persona as a hermit, a madwoman, to show her audience what could have been. When I saw Lauryn in 2019, I was entranced by Lauryn’s lived reality, her pain, her contradictions, and her unwavering talent. Just as Lauryn cried for almost the entirety of her performance, I did too. I was invited into Lauryn’s world, as fractured and misunderstood as it may be, to see a woman who once triumphed over the music world, only to be relegated to a memory because of the suffocating industry she witnessed around her. “Art and commerce, now commerce wants to control art. It ceases to be art anymore”, said Lauryn in an interview in the 90s. Lauryn has decided to own her art and escape from the selfish desires of fans like me who would have loved to see album after album from her.

It is hard to love Lauryn Hill. It is hard for many fans to endure her late arrivals to the stage, her erratic public behavior, and her lack of new musical output for the last two decades. But we are all culpable in her suffering, in her desire to disappear. Just as the men in her life constantly manipulated and attempted to silence Lauryn, our own narcissistic desire for an artist to create like a factory must be rectified. Her work went on to inspire other Black female artists like Erykah Badu, SZA, Beyoncé, and countless others. Lauryn was a politician in her own right, embracing a radical, unapologetic economic and social philosophy in her early 20s. She paved the way for female artists to embrace complexity over conformity, while also always maintaining a belief in love, care, and community. The disappearance and reemergence of Lauryn Hill echoes broader struggles facing Black and Brown women in hip-hop and pop culture, from the rampant sexualization of Black bodies to the false diagnosis of hysteria and madness towards nonconformity. In her MTV Unplugged set, Lauryn crafted a counterpublic space for radical self-realization, rasp and all. Lauryn’s art, though sometimes messy and unmanicured, serves as an emotional breakthrough to her listeners and herself. Lauryn leaving the Fugees confidently made headwaves for women in hip-hop. She is revolutionary yet misunderstood, celebrated yet victimized, resilient yet vulnerable. Lauryn’s work continues to inspire hip-hop feminism, serving as a reminder of the cost of genius in racist, sexist public spheres. In her madness, her nonconformity, she offers eternal lessons in art, protest, and liberation. While it is true that Lauryn is an immensely flawed person, it is also true that Black, female musicians are held to a higher standard, remembered more for their failures than their successes. For her religiosity and verve, Lauryn was labeled a madwoman. For her lack of musical output, Lauryn was deemed untrustworthy by her industry. But for me, I will forever spin her records and continue to learn from her wisdom and feel empathy for her pain, as a woman and artist, for the rest of my life.