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Lauryn Hill
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Lauryn Hill was born in 1975 in East Orange, New Jersey, into a family full of music. Her mother played piano, her father sang in nightclubs, and at home Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye were played. At school she founded a gospel choir. As a teenager she appeared in a soap opera and in the film Sister Act 2 (1993). She became known as a singer and rapper with the Fugees, with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel. Their album The Score (1996), with Killing Me Softly and Ready or Not, won a Grammy for best rap album. Hill was the first woman to win that prize.
Music and breakthrough
Her solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill appeared in 1998. It mixes hip hop with soul, reggae and doo-wop, and Hill alternates between rapping and singing as if they were one language. The first single, Doo Wop (That Thing), went straight to number 1 in the United States. Ex-Factor and Everything Is Everything also became hits. At the 1999 Grammy ceremony she won five awards in one evening, the first woman ever to do so, and the first rapper to win the prize for album of the year.
Influence
After that one studio album Hill largely withdrew. She still appeared on the live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 (2002) and wrote and produced for others, such as Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. Even so she is regarded as one of the most important figures of neo-soul and as a pioneer of melodic rapping, who showed that rap and singing need not be separate.
Listening
Doo Wop (That Thing) · Lauryn Hill, 1998Apple Music ↗
Discography
Studio albums
- 1998The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
- 2015Nina Revisited: A Tribute to Nina Simone (soundtrack)
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 10: Women in Pop MusicNL Reader