by Joan Morgan
The late ’90s [were] an exciting time in hip-hop, one that was coming off of a very violent period. It was a very musical time. D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Common, and of course, Lauryn were on one end of the spectrum and blunts and Hennessy straight out the bottle were another. It was a powerful turn for the culture because we had all of these different energies coming out of hip hop and converging. Prior to that, hip hop was thought of as primarily East Coast and West Coast, but in the ’90s that changed. You had Missy [Elliot] and Timbaland coming out of Virginia, Organized Noize, OutKast, that Dallas Austin production coming out of the South, and Lil Wayne and Juvenile coming out of New Orleans. All of these different worlds were coming together and demanding space. But the violence was real. As much as I want to remember the ’90s fondly when I listen to some of the lyrics, now it’s like “Damn. We were all kinds of bitches and hoes.”
I think it’s important to remember the climate Missy, Erykah, and Lauryn entered in. They came in counter to this violence and extreme misogyny. The ways Missy used and represented her body in her videos defied definition. She challenged you at every turn. Erykah was something we’d never seen before—that combination of 5 percenter, Queen Afua earth mother. And then you had Lauryn. She was amazing. She could rhyme. She could sing. She was beautiful to look at. And she took herself seriously at that time when we, as women in hip hop, needed that. We needed to see this deeply chocolate woman with such a command of her body, who could sing and rhyme as well as any of these boys . . . She also made herself really vulnerable in the music. We needed that too.
—Karen Good Marable
3 / ’90s Kind of Love
It was the summer of ’98 and New York City streets were not only hot, they were buzzing. L-Boogie’s highly anticipated, first Fugee-free joint had finally arrived. Its mission was made clear from the merciless syncopation of its opening bars: “It’s Funny how money change a situation/Miscommunication leads to complication.” Not only had Lauryn Hill not come to play, she’d launched a sonic missile from her new address on Hope Road—one that landed with blinding precision at the feet of wherever Wyclef was that summer when he first heard “Lost Ones.” It scorched the earth around him like a bomb.
But Wyclef wasn’t the only intended target. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill arrived in the world embattled, fighting for its life after a critical failure to launch. The factors at play were multiple. First there was a long-standing agreement between the Fugees that they would each release solo records without disbanding the group—and that they would support one another in the endeavor. Capitalizing on the success of The Score, Wyclef released The Carnival in 1997, and true to her word, Hill has writing, vocal, and production credit. While Hill waited for Clef to return the favor, Pras released “Ghetto Superstar” in 1998, followed by John Forte’s “Poly Sci.” Still nothing.
There’s no question that the deterioration of Hill and Wyclef’s romantic and professional relationships were a contributing factor. Those details won’t be parsed here. Suffice it to say that love triangles are messy and the twenties are a decade punctuated with messes to which twentysomethings are entitled. Lauryn and Wyclef were not the first couple to fuel the intensity of the creative process with a volatile cocktail of passion, talent, drama, ambition, love, and sex, and they certainly won’t be the last. There is something to be said for the differences in the manner each of them chose to lick those wounds. Lauryn gave the public no details and documented her journey through her art, in an album that twenty years later qualifies as a classic and has now given two generations a vehicle for healing. Wyclef chose The Wendy Williams Show and a tell-all memoir, Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, choices that will forever condemn his version of their story as sensationalist gossip.
Eventually, Hill was no longer willing to wait. She coaxed Jackson to leave his position as head of marketing at Bad Boy Records and become her full-time manager. It was a calculated risk for both of them. “Nineteen ninety-six and ’97 were the hottest years that pop would ever see,” explains Jackson, who was at a label responsible for the successes of hit-makers including the late Craig “Flava in Ya Ear” Mack, Carl Thomas, Sean Combs, Faith Evans, and The Notorious B.I.G. Lauryn was also at a crossroads. There was the safety of success and the Fugees were at the height of it. In addition to record-breaking sales, they were touring extensively and making good money while doing it. But Lauryn was also pregnant, beefing with Clef, and miserable. Looking back, Jackson thinks that she started writing songs partially as a coping mechanism. “Lauryn would call a lot from the road. One of the first songs that she played for me was ‘Zion.’ She’d written about half of it, called me and sang it to me over the phone.” As soon as Jackson heard it, he knew it was time for both of them to make money moves—not only for their respective careers but also for the sake of Hill’s emotional and creative health. “There’s a saying that goes ‘the next best thing to having sex with a woman is making money with her.’ That was the relationship and the energy that existed between [me and] Lauryn. It wasn’t about it being sexual. She was as thirsty to smash the whole game as I was to be an agent in helping her smash it.” When Hill asked him what he thought of the song, Jackson’s answer was blunt. “I was like, ‘Oh my God! Leave the group. Bail. You need to be making great music.’ ” Jackson soon followed suit, threw security to the wind, and left his marketing position at the label.
It was no easy endeavor, for Hill or for Jackson. First, there were the months of creative labor—a process made even more strenuous by the emotional toll of the whirlwind of a bitter breakup, a new relationship with Rohan Marley, and a subsequent pregnancy all happening in a relatively brief window of time. To add to that stress, Hill, determined to protect both her privacy and her unborn child, took great lengths to keep both the relationship and her pregnancy out of the public eye and away from much of her intimate circle. Even Jackson didn’t know. Radio personality Wendy Williams, who’d built a controversial career throughout the ’90s spilling celebrity tea (the more salacious the better), was the first to break the news during an interview Jackson classifies as an ambush. “At that point, no one knew. As close as we were, even I didn’t know. I don’t even know if Lauryn’s parents knew, quite honestly. People were still trying to get confirmation on Clef and Lauryn’s relationship. Hell, there were people who thought Lauryn and I were dating.” Hill was shocked but remained gracious and composed. She confirmed that she was pregnant, but the father’s identity was something she chose to keep to herself. News quickly spread, and the reaction, by both the public and those close to her, was less than supportive. Hill was twenty-two and at what people then thought was the height of her career. Very few thought the move could be anything more than burdensome: Look at your career, they said/Lauryn baby, use your head/But instead I chose to use my heart.
Instead, it became “To Zion,” an anthem for motherhood, choice, and one of her most popular songs—eventually. Initially, not everyone was moved, including her label.
Hill took “To Zion” and a few other songs from the album-to-be to a meeting with Columbia’s brass. Tommy Mottola, then-head of Sony Music and Entertainment, pronounced it dead on arrival. Mottola was anxious to replicate the Fugees’ success and thought this new mélange of soul, reggae, and relatively little hip hop from one of rap’s best emcees was too much of a departure from a proven formula. “They weren’t feeling it at all,” says Jackson. “Basically, they wanted a Fugees record without the guys. Tommy told her that it was a smoky little ditty, but it wasn’t her. Go back and try again. She came out of that meeting crying. The record was so personal to her. His reaction crushed her.”
Hill was hurt but she wasn’t defeated. No one on her management team thought that the album as she’d conceived it was dead, but they agreed that the label’s reaction definitely had it lingering in the intensive care unit. “I mean, looking back I can see Tommy’s point,” Jackson concedes with the benefit of hindsight. “The Fugees were the biggest-selling ra
p group at the time, and it makes sense that they would want to do it again, but at the time that’s not how I saw it. Back then I was like, ‘Fuck him. We don’t need them. This is what we gonna do.’ ”
Jackson and the team’s inside playa, Suzette Williams, who was both an executive at the label and part of Hill’s management team, devised a resuscitation plan. Taking Mottola’s advice, they decided to try something else, but the strategy was hardly what he could have wanted. In an act of sheer hip-hop hustle and ingenuity, they took the hardest and the most signature L-Boogie rap track on the album and hand-delivered “Lost Ones” to Ruffhouse Records cofounder Chris Schwartz. Schwartz did his bit for history and agreed to press a limited number on twelve-inch vinyl so they could distribute to mix shows and club deejays.
It was a brilliant move. In a genre where the battle record is a revered staple, this one brought the fire. Beautiful and bellicose, “Lost Ones” not only showcased the best of Lauryn’s skills as an emcee, it was so purely hip hop that it appealed directly to her original fan base, letting them know she hadn’t abdicated the temple of their familiar. It was also froggy as fuck. Peppered with rude gyal-isms and a reggae assist from Sister Nancy’s classic “Bam Bam,” Hill, ironically, had achieved Clef’s original mission, the one he’d wanted to accomplish with the Fugees “Killing Me Softly.” “Lost Ones” killed the sound bwoy dead.
Be it on the radio or in the club, there wasn’t a deejay worth her salt who didn’t include “Lost Ones” somewhere in her set. DJ Belinda Becker remembers that summer well. “As a deejay you just knew that at the height of the night, when the hip hop was pumping, ‘Lost Ones’ was the one to slam on. The minute that first beat dropped, the crowd would just go crazy. Everybody knew the lyrics. It’s just a dance floor mover,” says Becker. “Always, always, always. I think Lauryn knew that in addition to the singing she also had to be able to go hard,” she continues. “Especially at that time, because as a female emcee you weren’t just up against female emcees. You were also up against people like Mobb Deep.”
It also addressed long-standing curiosities regarding the real status of Clef and Lauryn’s relationship. “Essentially,” says Jackson. “It was everything [the] streets wanted to hear.”
Even today, “it’s still in the top 100 of greatest songs for a deejay to play when you’re losing the crowd. It’s one of those songs that the crowd knows within the first three seconds, even if they aren’t music heads. That initial boom bap bah boom bap? That’s it. Then she had the nerve to pause and hit it again. Boom bap bah boom bap. Then she layers on that bass? From the very first line, you just know it’s going down.”
It was the ’90s equivalent of a viral sensation. “Lost Ones” was not only the fiyah that spread everywhere, it created the demand for more. Officially the phoenix rising from the ashes, “Lost Ones” had won the war by forcing Columbia’s hand. Miseducation was released shortly after in July 1998 to record-breaking success, which exceeded even the Fugees.
“In terms of hip hop? Line for line, verse for verse ‘Lost Ones’ is a top-25 classic and will be forever,” says Schott Free, in part because it provided the perfect vehicle for catharsis, and in exquisite hip-hop fashion. It was the kind of track you listened to when your baser nature wanted to fuck someone up but your saner self would rather not risk jail. “Music, particularly hip hop, for me is a way for me not to indulge in that response,” explains Free. “Rather than punch you in your face, I can go sit down, listen to a record and get just as much of a release. ‘Lost Ones,’ ” he concludes, “is a mood record. You listen to it when you’re mad that someone’s not keeping it 100. It’s a character check.”
Battle records are common in hip hop, but what was also unique about “Lost Ones” was the quality of Hill’s rage. Its source of inspiration might have been a broken heart, but it was wholly unlike the gendered expressions traditionally assigned to female artists, especially in soul and R&B. It was completely sans tears or pleading. On the contrary, it was an exercise in precision. Hill’s delivery was calm, measured, and focused on her target. With each hypercontrolled lyric, she took her power back. Free agrees. “She’s not happy in ‘Lost Ones,’ but she’s also not crying. She’s not moaning and she’s not whining. You’re basically getting her anger.” And with it a rare opportunity for the cathartic release hip hop is known for, but one usually associated with testosterone. For female hip-hop fans, especially those with more bellicose tendencies, it was a win made even more delicious by the fact that it sampled another female artist. Lynnée Denise is still awed: “I mean, you go into the crates, pull out Sister Nancy, rearrange it to get a very specifically sped-up version and produce that?! This was not a game. This was a call to action. This was Lauryn’s machete rhyme. She’s telling you that she will cut you.” The fact that it was easy to dance to was also unique because it allowed the catharsis to be not just mental but physical. It’s a moment we’ve yet to be seen replicated by a female rapper, even twenty years later, although the moment has its pop culture equivalents. “It’s that moment in Waiting to Exhale when Angela Bassett sets her husband’s clothes on fire and walks away from her burning home,” Lynnée Denise says, laughing. Or that moment in “Hold Up” when Beyoncé is smashing windshields with a baseball bat, smiling just as pretty as she pleases. All kudos to “Ether,” Remy Ma’s lyrical massacre of Nicki Minaj, for being one of the best lyrical battle moments of the twenty-first century, however the track wasn’t meant to be danceable. “Lost Ones” offered the whole package. Or as crunk feminist scholar Dr. Brittney Cooper would say, it was a black girl’s most eloquent rage.
* * *
That reactions to Hill’s pregnancy were mixed is not surprising. Navigating the fraught relationship between motherhood and career is an ongoing staple of both feminism and contemporary womanhood. In the 1960s, a good three decades before Hill’s pregnancy, seminal Black Arts Movement writers Sonia Sanchez and Alice Walker both dealt with unsolicited speculations about their ability to be mothers and successfully continue doing “the work.” It was presumed “the work” would stop, Lynnée Denise explains. “Evidently they were surrounded by folks who equated motherhood with a kind of sloth.” And when they didn’t stop working, “they were demonized for not being maternal enough.” These attitudes are particularly true of industries that are male-dominated. “I did a comparative look at Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill,” Lynnée Denise said. “When Nina got pregnant in 1961 with her daughter, Lisa, the record company told her they would have to hide the pregnancy. They were like, ‘No. Women don’t have children this early in their careers.’ That Lauryn came back almost forty years later and said, ‘The record company told me not to do this,’ is really important because it speaks to the toxic Harvey Weinstein environment that the music industry functions in and its attitudes around gender.”
Valid point, but the negative reactions to Hill’s pregnancy can’t all simply be relegated to good ol’ boy sexism. Twenty years later those attitudes haven’t disappeared, and many of them are held by women. Despite rapper Cardi B’s gorgeous and relatively well-received baby bump reveal during her April 2018 Saturday Night Live performance, there was plenty of online criticism from women who questioned the wisdom of having a child at a high point in her early career. The twenty-five-year-old rapper shared her disappointment in an April 11 episode of radio station Hot 97’s morning show The Breakfast Club. “It really bothers me and disgusts me,” she said. “I see a lot of women online like, ‘Oh, I feel sorry for you. Oh, your career is over.’ And it’s like, why can’t I have both? As a woman, why can’t I have both? Why do I gotta choose a career or a baby? I want both.” She positioned her choice as not only a personal one, “I just didn’t want to deal with the whole abortion thing,” but a responsible one that she was more than equipped to handle. “You know what, I’m a grown woman. I’m twenty-five years old. I’m gonna say this in the most humblest way: I’m a shmillionaire. And I’m prepared for this.”
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p; Most of the women I asked to share their initial reactions to Hill’s pregnancy remembered being less than enthused. Some of those responses were certainly classed and shaped by a good dose of respectability politics. For many fans, Lauryn was seen as the desirable antidote to Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown’s hypersexuality. A smart, hyperarticulate Ivy Leaguer who came from a two-parent home, Hill was the kind of “good” black girl who didn’t have a baby out of wedlock. Even self-professed feminists remembered feeling concerned that the demands of motherhood would throw Hill way off her game, at a time when the world was just starting to open up for her. By the time she was pregnant with her second baby, Selah, there was a lot of “Girl, what are you doing?” going on.
Akiba Solomon definitely remembers having questions. “To be honest, I had very serious trouble relating to the idea that if you get pregnant at a time that isn’t convenient that you just won’t get an abortion,” she shared. “The first baby, I had mixed feelings about. A woman should be able [to do] what she needs to do with her body but I did feel like ‘To Zion’ and the whole feeling around the song negated the idea that abortions were available and that black women can and do have them. What I didn’t realize at that time but what came into sharper relief was that Lauryn was also chasing a culture that was not an African American culture,” Solomon continued. “When she was with the Fugees it was like, ‘Okay, I’m chasing Haitian culture.’ Then it was a fascination with Jamaican culture and Rastafarianism. By the second pregnancy I started feeling like ‘Is she just doing this to keep this Marley boy that nobody’s ever heard of?’ ”