Lauryn Hill talks ahead of Birmingham gig
Lauryn Hill has released one studio album in the past 20 years. But The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was such an important record that it remains relevant to this day.
And the five-time Grammy Award-winning artist will celebrate the 20th anniversary of her anthemic debut solo album when she plays Arena Birmingham on Tuesday.
The Miseducation sold more than 400,000 copies in its first week and topped the US Billboard 200 for four weeks and the US Top R’n’B/hip-hop albums for six weeks. It went on to sell about eight million copies in the USA and 12 million copies worldwide.
And though former Fugeee Lauryn dropped out of the public eye during the 2000s, while pregnant with her third child, a recording of an MTV Unplugged was also enormously successful and earned her a platinum disc.
Not that she cares much for awards or the trappings of success. The musician, actor, singer and activist says: “Awards are like whipped cream, man. It’s incredible, but it doesn’t change the essence of who I am. I’m still not convinced that I’m a success. I’m still like one day something might happen, and I’ll have to get another career. I kinda fell into this business, because I loved it, did it, but always stayed in school, always had other jobs, made sure that the bills were paid and the grades were good, just in case it didn’t work out.”
The title of her iconic album was inspired by a Carter G Woodson’s book that had been around her home when she was growing up.
“The title of the album was meant to discuss those life lessons, those things that you don’t get in any text book, things that we go through that force us to mature. Hopefully we learn. Some people get stuck. They say that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and these are some really powerful lessons that changed the course and direction of my life.
“I know that I was blessed to grow up the way that I grew up. We didn’t have everything, but we had a whole lotta love and a whole lotta family, and I was exposed to different things. I knew that there was opportunity and different careers and different directions that I could live my life. Some people grow up with very few options, or at least knowing about very few options. So, to me, it’s always about letting people know what their options and possibilities are.”
Lauryn was raised in East Orange, New Jersey, to an English teacher mother and computer and management consultant father. Music was constantly being played in her home and her mother played piano while her father sang in local nightclubs and at weddings. Lauryn immersed herself in the music of Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight.
She began singing at school before featuring as an amateur night contestant on It’s Showtime at the Apollo, where she sang her own version of the Smokey Robinson track Who’s Lovin’ You.
She took violin lessons and became an A grade student and enjoyed being a high achiever. “I had a love for – I don’t know if it was necessarily for academics, more than it just was for achieving, period. If it was academics, if it was sports, if it was music, if it was dance, whatever it was, I was always driven to do a lot in whatever field or whatever area I was focusing on at the moment.”
She became involved in music and learned to rap, taking inspiration from Ice Cube among others. She also took acting lessons in Manhattan and went on to co-star alongside Whoopi Goldberg in the 1993 release Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
Soon after, she teamed up with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel in the Fugees. Their debut album, Blunted on Reality, stalled at number 62, but their next record, The Score, was one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time, selling more than six million copies. The Fugees won two 1997 Grammy Awards with The Score (Best Rap Album) and Killing Me Softly (Best R’n’B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group). Lauryn started her solo career and The Miseducation was the best of neo soul.
It was so successful that she decided to take time out not long after.
“There were a number of different reasons,” she says. “But partly, the support system that I needed was not necessarily in place. There were things about myself, personal-growth things, that I had to go through in order to feel like it was worth it.”
