She Begat This

by Joan Morgan

  “Of course we’re all friends now, but back then Jayson was giving us a really hard time. ‘What is this? She can’t do this. No.’ ” Basically he was trying not to have his client, a newly launched and very sought-after superstar, do the cover of a start-up, and the inaugural issue at that. Jayson wasn’t having it, but they had already told their backers that Lauryn was a go. The situation was do or die, so in another hip-hop moment of ingenuity and black girl resourcefulness, Joicelyn did what she had to do. “One morning I said forget it. I’m calling her mama. I can’t.” So, very politely, she asked Mrs. Hill to put her child on the phone. “Please forgive me, but I need to speak to Lauryn. I’ll be really short.” Joicelyn made her case and Hill was sympathetic. She was also shooting seven covers that week and had decided this week of shooting would be her last. “Joicelyn,” she confided. “I’m pregnant. Is that okay?” Joicelyn got goose bumps. She knew this was big, Joicelyn confirmed. “Are you sure?” Lauryn asked. “Lauryn, it’s even better.”

  “But that’s how we got her. We had to override the dudes. We had to override Jayson.” Pregnant with her second child, she arrived at eleven on a Friday night and they got to work. With Oshun as their guide, Joicelyn executed the concept. “We had a honeycomb set, which was really like a piece of old yellow fabric with another perforated fabric under it. It gave the effect of honeycombs. We bought several jars of honey and just [put them] up and put light through [them]. And it was Friday, which is Oshun’s day, so I knew we were going to be blessed. She was great, even though it was so late, and she was so tired. We didn’t leave there until two or three o’clock that morning. I just appreciated her so much. She could have said no, but she knew how important it was to me. And I’d like to think that in some universal sense, she could sense how important this was for black girls.”

  To say representation matters is de rigueur today, but it’s not just a PC matter of equal visibility. Representation matters because it allows you to grant yourself permission to become the thing you know in your heart you are but may have never seen. Says Blay, “When I started my digital campaign, PrettyPeriod I posted mad images of Lauryn. She’s a symbol and an icon for many of us. I was grown, but I imagine that if I was a little dark-skinned girl at the time and seeing her on TV and people falling on the ground for her, that leaves some room open for the potential that someone could see the beauty in me as well. People say representation only matters so much, but hear me when I say that you have to see yourself reflected in a particular way to actually believe that the potential exists for you to be beautiful. Otherwise, people are gonna tell you that you’re beautiful and you’re not gonna believe them because you yourself don’t even have a model for it. Of course, Lauryn is beautiful, of course, I’m beautiful, but if all you’re seeing is light-skinned women or women who have ‘mixed-girl hair’ being the ‘It Girls,’ the video girls, the models in the magazine[s], the celebrities in the movies then you wonder where you fit in. And then you have your own people reminding you that you don’t. So, Lauryn was aesthetically absolutely crucial and important to us.”

  * * *

  Perhaps no one knows representation matters more than Michaela Angela Davis. Davis is an image activist, creative director, and cultural commentator. In the ’90s she was the first fashion director at VIBE and the executive fashion, beauty, and culture editor at Essence, and she was the last editor in chief at Honey magazine.

  Michaela Angela Davis:

  My daughter Elenni said to me recently that Solange’s A Seat at the Table was her generation’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

  JM:

  Do you agree?

  MAD:

  There are some similarities. Like Solange, Lauryn represented what it looked like for a young, black woman to stand in all of her realness. She had a look that was political, super-stylish, and artistic. It pulled on the past and made it feel futuristic. That it still sets the bar for twentysomethings, twenty years later illustrates how that significant album was a culturally defining moment.

  JM:

  Why do you think that is?

  MAD:

  Lauryn broke through to gain “mainstream acceptance” in a way that never discounted or altered her blackness. The mainstream came to her. There was some vindication in that. It was a moment where one of our princesses got through and we were able to stand back and say, “See. This is how fresh we’ve always been.” Now what’s different between Solange’s moment and Lauryn’s moment has a lot to do with hair texture and skin tone—

  JM:

  You’re talking about US colorism, right? The fact that Lauryn Hill is a dark-skinned black woman and Solange is a much lighter-complexioned one?

  MAD:

  Yes. Look, we know that complexion matters. No shade, but in the late ’90s the significance of someone who looked like Lauryn getting the cover of Harper’s Bazaar—as opposed to someone who looked like Solange or Beyoncé, or Rihanna, for that matter—was major.

  JM:

  Major. I remember being in happy shock when she landed that cover. I mean, I loved Liz Tilberis, but Harper’s Bazaar was lily-white in those days.

  MAD:

  The difference between Solange and Lauryn is also in sensibility. When you compare those two album covers, for example, their approaches are radically different.

  JM:

  Miseducation’s cover references Bob Marley’s Burnin’ album for sure.

  MAD:

  Yes, while A Seat at the Table references the Mona Lisa. It’s beautifully done but completely inspired by Eurocentric portraiture style. The length and texture of Solange’s hair and her complexion, the way she’s lit and positioned, is all very Eurocentric but with this dope Solange black girl-ness pulsating throughout. Lauryn was black from the gate. I never felt like she was referencing European culture in any way. All of her fashion and beauty references were firmly rooted in blackness.

  JM:

  Can you remember the first time Lauryn landed on your style radar?

  MAD:

  It was the “Killing Me Softly” video with the Fugees, where she’s sitting in that movie theater with cornrows, an afro, and a leather jacket, looking so fly. I wish I’d done a fashion editorial based on all her songs when I was a fashion editor. She was a walking editorial based on black culture, black futurism, and black radical thought. All of her style was in her songs. It was like, “here’s some retro chic, here’s a military thing, here’s a Black Power look.” Then, “here’s something super glamorous and R&B.” She had really good taste too, so there’s that. Erykah Badu was doing this in her own way also, but Erykah was almost too much—she had ankhs, mile-high head wraps, and incense. It was almost too much juju. But Lauryn was able to smooth it all out and make it look like the dopeness we knew all black girls were.

  JM:

  You were a fashion editor and a stylist. Walk us through ’90s black girl aesthetics. I mean Brooklyn was a mecca—Fort Greene especially. Where did Lauryn fit in? What were her style references?

  MAD:

  Brooklyn during the ’90s was Black Bohemia central. You had mud cloth, ethnic fabrics, mixed with rock and roll. There were flowy skirts and radical tees. There was sneaker culture and natural hair and it was all smelling like frankincense and myrrh oils. Moshood on Fulton was the store. Then you’d cross the bridge into SoHo. This is when SoHo was still very, very chic. Everybody was wearing black and Japanese designers. Very Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons. Very “Oh, you’re just so cool.” Then you’d go up to Midtown where the Sony building was, and you’d have all the R&B queens. You’d have tight dresses, really beautiful designer shoes and super-duper makeup. Weaves were just starting to have their first big moment. The rappers Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown were [of that] moment but with a hypersexualized, in-your-face kind of sexy.

  JM:

  Hip hop’s ghetto fabulous, bling moment. Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga, Louboutin, Louis Vuitton . . .

  MAD:

  Yes. B
ut with here’s my ass and I’m squatting in your face.

  JM:

  When it came to music and fashion, Lauryn was a diasporic chameleon in terms of style and aesthetics. Where did you root her?

  MAD:

  To me, Lauryn registered as East Coast black American and West Indian—Jamaican specifically. Lauryn was a Jersey black girl who definitely repped where she came from, but she was clearly influenced by a Jamaican, Ethiopian, and African moment that was happening in the late ’90s. She had Afrocentric sensibilities, but they were pushed through a Jamaican lens. She brought Bob Marley to the cookout. But it’s interesting, I think Lauryn was much more influenced by Bob Marley and men’s fashion than she was [by] Rita Marley or the I-Threes. She wasn’t wearing long skirts or sundresses. She was wearing those beautiful, fitted military jackets and jeans. She looked to Marley as a muse. But Lauryn also fucked with you in that way. Back then, to have locs made you a roots girl. If you wore them with a long skirt you were a Rasta. And modest. Lauryn was not modest.

  In some ways, Lauryn defined a new category for us because her body was the intersection of so many different black girl aesthetics. What made her fascinating was the way she signaled these multiple spaces of blackness in her style. She could signal her hip hop, signal her glamour, and signal her sexy—sometimes all at the same time. She pulled them all together and made it work.

  JM:

  How? Because not everyone can do that.

  MAD:

  Part of the reason it worked was that her actual body—the canvas on which these clothes were placed—was also a site of intersecting identities. She brought all these black girls together in her body. Anything you put on her was going to be activated differently than if it was on a Beyoncé, who’s dope in her own right, but her body just doesn’t do that. There were definitely dope black female artists with signature styles in the ’90s—Aaliyah, Sade—but they were all giving you one look. One note. One mood. Lauryn exemplified our complexity and how those complexities could complement each other. Black women are dynamic. We can be sexy. And tomboy. And radical. And church girl. And visionary. With wizardry. Lauryn knew that. All of these different elements intersected on her actual black body and she made them all cooler. What she did was very hard to do, and she made it look effortless. That’s the reason she became such a style influence, and the reason she’s so hard to replicate.

  JM:

  Let’s talk about Lauryn as a beauty girl. I’ve been looking at a lot of old images of her and I’m struck by how on trend her look is right now. Dewy skin, highly pigmented and glitter eyeshadows, shiny lip glosses. I mean, Lauryn was rocking a black lip back in the ’90s.

  MAD:

  You know, Joan, it’s only been in the last five years that we’ve been talking about radiant, glowing skin. Throughout the late ’80s to mid early 2000s it was all about ‘Matte that shit down.’ Foundation was used to perform surgery. You would go to a video shoot and they would have a spray gun. That was the airbrush era. Real talk. Every makeup artist had an airbrush gun and the directive was to make the skin the same color. Lauryn was one of the few people where you could see her actual skin—

  JM:

  As opposed to a mask of make-up.

  MAD:

  Lauryn was a bit of a fashion historian. She had a retro chic that made you think she was probably studying black beauty aesthetics of the ’70s and ’80s. This is when you could turn on Soul Train on the TV or look at Ebony and Essence magazines to see beautiful, glowing, radiant black skin in different shades. All you needed was some lip gloss and mascara. Lauryn was giving that very early. Sometimes she just wore a great lip, skin, and eyelashes. Remember twenty years ago, you had to go get your momma’s or your auntie’s “Raisin” by Fashion Fair to get that dark lip because not even MAC was poppin’ like that. I feel like Lauryn was pulling out her “Raisin” and giving it a darker lip line to make it modern. When you look at the “Doo Wop” video, she looks like she stepped right out of 1978, and yet it wasn’t corny. Why? Because she knew how to do that thing.

  JM:

  What was the significance of her videos, visually speaking?

  MAD:

  Her videos were so important because they were style in motion. Every time you saw her on a moped she looked fly, sexy, and free. But she looked like a free radical. Lauryn’s music was political—she talked about racism, gender dynamics, capitalism, and she gave those politics a look. What made her look political was that she dared to be intersectional. She dared to be sexy and military and radical and retro and chic all at the same time. That was revolutionary for the time. And I miss that because this fucking pink hat . . .

  JM:

  Her autonomy is interesting when you consider that the ’90s marks the rise of the celebrity stylist. We started to see a lot less individuality and personal style from artists—from hip hop to Hollywood. We still see fashion, of course, but the stylist becomes the interpreter. And everybody used one.

  MAD:

  Yes. In music, that happened partially because of the rise of video culture and introduction of the Internet. The stylist of the day in hip hop was June Ambrose. June was the queen. She was dressing everybody back then and she was making them look hot. She still is. But here’s the thing, nobody dressed Lauryn. This I know for a fact. When it came to putting together her looks, you worked for her. You shopped for her. She would say, “I want you to help me find a fitted military jacket.” Or she would tell you this was a leather moment. She didn’t come to magazines or stylists and say, “Okay, now do me.” She came and said “I’m here. Let’s see what you have that works for me.” You were her staff. Or her consultant. But she was her own muse.

  Let me clarify that. Overall, I think Lauryn’s muse was blackness: black people, the black community, black history, black politics, black thought. When you are pulling on blackness in such a full way, you don’t need anybody to tell you what to wear. You just need them to help you get the visual proof of it.

  JM:

  Let’s talk hair. In 2018, it’s common to see black women rocking natural hair. Black models are wearing natural hair in everything from commercials to high fashion advertisements. Saint Laurent has black girls rocking cornrows. Gucci has black girls with short natural fros. The models Philomena Kwao and Adwoa Aboah are out here killing it. Not to mention a natural-hair industry that is estimated conservatively to be worth 2.56 billion dollars in 2016. This is not where we were in 1998. It was a struggle to even get good products. There were no YouTube tutorials to guide you through. You relied on shared knowledge between the few women who’d also “gone natural” or you went to the barber and got a caesar so low that maintenance didn’t matter. Lauryn got to the party early.

  MAD:

  The party wasn’t even close to starting. Lauryn entered with natural hair. Even before she had locs, she wore cornrows and afros, twists and coils. She showed us the versatility, resilience, and shape-shifting of black hair. That first Honey magazine cover? Oh my God.

  JM:

  It’s iconic.

  MAD:

  In the same way that VIBE magazine cover with Treach is iconic. It was like fuck. That’s it. That’s how hot we are. I wanted to take that Honey cover with Lauryn and just run around the street and show it to everybody saying “See! See! See!” She had locs and she was beautiful, glamorous, and sexy all at the same time. It was radical. But then by the same token you could also see her with a straight wig and yet none of her beauty references fell outside of blackness.

  That was really a power shift because the fashion world was so exclusive and elite back then. Remember, there was no Instagram, Tumblr, or Pinterest. There were no independent spaces where you could show the full breadth of black women’s aesthetics. Lauryn Hill was our Pinterest. She was our Instagram. She made people contend with black beauty in a way that no one else had.

  JM:

  I’m glad you said that. Lauryn Hill, for me, is the visual precursor to #BlackGirlMagic.
This generation owes her their inheritance.

  MAD:

  Absolutely. She gave this generation permission. Permission to have a caesar one day and a long, silky weave on another. Or a radical beret on one day and sparkly short shorts on the next. To be a fucking warrior one day and magical and whimsical on another. She taught us that all you had to do to pull it off was to bring all your black girl-ness to all of it. That was her gift to us. She was the one who broke through and she got a bit broken in the journey.

  JM:

  It’s important to honor that because so much focus is put on the fact that there was never a successful album from her after Miseducation when Lauryn’s contribution is so much bigger than just one album.

  MAD:

  There’s still a constant push for black women and girls to be contained. Like you can occupy one lane but don’t fuck with this other stuff—

  JM:

  But we can occupy your lane whenever we want and never acknowledge the origins or the creators.

  MAD:

  Right. Lauryn showed the world what black girls can do and that others simply can’t. Kylie Jenner can’t fucking ever look like Lauryn Hill. That’s triggering to some people.

  JM:

  That’s because there’s a difference between creating culture and appropriating culture. Shade intended.

  MAD:

  And Lauryn created culture and she studied it. She went deep into Jamaican culture. She went deep into ’70s black aesthetics. She went deep into R&B and soul. She helped redefine hip-hop culture. She was so culturally and philosophically sound that you couldn’t fuck with her. And you couldn’t duplicate her because her foundation was so strong. She wasn’t just throwing trends at you. You could never identify her as trendy. Ever. She defined shit. She was the remixer. Like . . . she was hip hop. Or she was the best of what hip hop could be. Male, female, black, white, whatever. Take all the races and all the genders. She rocked the party and gave you shit to think about. She was political. She was sexy. Lauryn Hill was the fucking love song.