I wanted to include a woman during this week on rap artists, so I did what every modern-day computer literate person does when seeking knowledge — I Googled it.
A search for “best female rapper” returns a lot of candidates, most of whom I’ve never heard of. Among those I do know, I found repeated references to Missy Elliot, Eve, Lil Kim and Queen Latifah. But the most mentioned and most lavishly praised of them all proved to be Lauryn Hill.
Every once in awhile, my wife (an English teacher) will seek my help in compiling a lesson plan. It’s usually a fun exercise for a couple of reasons: one, I don’t have to actually teach the lesson or grade any of the resulting work; and two, her requests usually revolve around music.
Like most people, high school students really respond to music. It’s easier to get their attention out of the gate with a song than with a poem. Ideally, music can serve as the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Lauryn Hill’s ‘Every Ghetto Every City’ is a song I suggested to Alex once when she was looking for a good introduction to autobiographical poetry. As an example of lyrics dropping you into a specific time and place it’s hard to beat this song.
I started this week talking about Carly Simon, who put out a burst of great music early in her career and then a lot of mediocre music for the thirty years that followed. Today I’m looking at Lauryn Hill, who is another sort of mystery altogether.
After some interesting work with The Fugees (including a lovely cover of Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing Him Softly’), Hill dropped a bomb on the music world with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. A powerful and seductive blend of hip-hop, soul and R&B, it became an instant classic, topping the charts and winning a bunch of Grammys.
That was 10 years ago. And since then… nothing.
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