20 years ago about this time, literally, I was a sixteen year old high school senior working at the McDonald’s on Freedom Dr. on the westside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Looking at the clock on the wall impatiently, waiting for 9pm to arrive.
You see, at midnight, on this night 20 years ago, the incomparable Lauryn Hill was releasing her much ballyhooed solo album aptly titled: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.
For those of you who are not aware what a music midnight madness is, you missed for better and worse a time in music where artists of certain stature actually warranted the opening of record stores at midnight due to loyal consumers vying for that first shipment of product. Not all midnight madnesses are created equally either. Ms. Lauryn’s release was epic, a potential once in a lifetime masterpiece of music molded firmly in hip-hop and R&B melodies, crafted by a woman who in 1998 we found to be so gifted that many often viewed her as someone who could be a transcendental figure politically and socially.
Musically, she was simultaneously one of the most beautiful and enchanting voices in R&B, and one of the most vicious and versatile emcees to ever bless the mic. She was the rare artist that had equally captivated her male and female fans. We had never seen it before, we have never seen it since. Neither has she really, but that’s for another day.
Today 20 years ago, I was stuck at work writing my evenings itinerary on a McDonald’s napkin around those arches awkwardly placed not quite in the center of the napkin:
1) Get the hell outta here so I can walk up the block, catch the #8 Tuckaseegee uptown, hop on the 7A Beatties Ford, home by 10:20.
2) Eat these two double cheeseburgers and 6 piece nugget I put in my book bag. I forgot last time…
3) 1.3 mile walk to Willie’s CD’s from my hood is gonna take about 20-25 mins so I need to leave by 11:10, 11:15 latest to get there a quarter til. I had a feeling there was gonna be a crowd.
And a crowd there was. It was 11:41 when I made it to Willie’s and the line was already ridiculous. If memory serves, I was somewhere between the 40th to 60th person in line and it was growing by the minute. I didn’t make it physically inside the store until almost 12:20. I grabbed my copy and quickly slid out of a store and parking lot that had closer resemblance to a after hours spot than music store.
Now my 1.3 mile walk from the corner of Beatties Ford and LaSalle to my neighborhood “the hole” is not the kind of walk you make by yourself at or around midnight with a Walkman blaring thereby dulling one of your keen senses. It is pretty much a sign that says, “rob this stupid fool here” where I am from.
But it was that serious. She was a caliber of artist that the sixteen year old me would disable my street smarts just for the sake of hearing the first handful of songs she had to offer. And I would do it again. She was that brilliant and so is the album. You know you were in store for the rarest of rare coming out parties on par with MJ teaming up with Quincy Jones for Off The Wall or Stevie Wonder telling Motown I am a better musician and songwriter than anybody you have, so fuck your formula here’s Talking Book umkay?
The scene setting school room intro parlayed into the first song – “Lost Ones” that has to be the only classy diss record ever laid to wax. She was vicious and versatile as I stated earlier, but she also had a lexicon that would rival Nas or Black Thought at their pinnacle. Don’t think so?
“It’s funny how money change a situation/miscommunication lead to complication/My emancipation don’t fit your equation/I was on the humble you on every station/Some wanna play young Lauryn like she dumb/But remember not a game new under the sun/.”
And that was the end of The Fugees pretty much. If I was Wyclef, I wouldn’t want do anymore music with her after getting roasted like that either but that’s none of our business. Except all the business he put out in the street. I digress back to the digestion of this masterpiece.
Lauryn Hill the emcee is Scottie Pippen on this opus, but think 94-95’ Scottie after the other MJ retired. An MVP caliber performance most notably on “Lost Ones”, “Do-Wop”, and “Final Hour” where Lauryn calmly drops knowledge with bars like: “It’s not about what you cop, it’s about what you keep”.
Lauryn the singer is the headliner with instant classics plentiful from “Ex-Factor” to “Nothing Even Matters” to “Zion” her words riddle and wrap you up under her angelic tone and you are whisked away into a world where Lauryn explains it all. Even if she doesn’t know it all, seems like damn good advice to the listener.
The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill is quite simply one of the best pieces of music ever created. Which is what makes what should be a colossal celebration of a true classic only a blip amongst “heads” today. Her inarguable classic is littered with very verifiable disputes that pretty much say she did not carry the load of this album’s creative juice in particular on the song writing side. Some have claimed that she contributed little more than just her vocals.
The month leading up to this day, social media has spent the majority of Lauryn Hill news exploiting how she exploited people, particularly on tour and this album. Book end that with numerous questionable performances over the past five years with material that is, is over, or approaching two decades old; it appears the main person who has damaged the luster of this album is Lauryn Hill herself.
But for tonight, I will sit back listen to it for the first time in forever (I have conflicting feelings about Ms. Hill) and remember young Lauryn as she truly was, a queen ascending to the throne of the forefront of pop cultures consciousness. She never made it, but there was a time when it seemed inevitable, a formality even. This album is the reason that feeling still exists to this day with diehard loyalists of hers.
