Lauryn

Lauryn Hill Bio

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I have never felt as conflicted about an emcee’s legacy as I have for one Lauryn Hill.

There’s no way that I can dispute her place in hip-hop history. At a time when it was immensely difficult for female rappers to become household names, Ms. Hill defied the odds and ascended into stardom. Setting records one after the other—records, mind you, that would not be broken for decades—Hill paved the way for femcees of future generations to thoroughly invade the male-dominated industry.

While I’m absolutely certain that there wouldn’t be a Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, or Megan Thee Stallion without Lauryn Hill, I can’t turn a blind eye to the knocks on her legacy either. There are questions about the volume of work that she’s put out as a recording artist, as well as her commitment to fans on her live tours.

No rapper is perfect, of course, so we’ll have to take the good with the bad when it comes to Hill. At the end of the day, her palpable flaws are overshadowed by her significance to hip hop’s evolution. Owing to her influence on rap legends (male and female), pop icons, and even a certain Broadway idol, Lauryn Hill can easily stake her claim to cultural immortality.

Quick Facts

Lauryn Hill Information

Birth Date May 26, 1975
Birth Place East Orange, New Jersey
Nick Name L. Boogie, Ms. Hill
Nationality American
Zodiac Sign Gemini
Siblings Malaney Hill
Children Zion Marley

 

Selah Marley

Joshua Marley

John Marley

Sara Marley

Micah Hill

Most Successful Songs “Doo Wop (That Thing)”

 

“Ex-Factor”

“Everything is Everything”

“Killing Me Softly” (with The Fugees)

Net Worth Estimated value of $9 million (as of 2022)
Social Media twitter.com/mslaurynhill

 

instagram.com/mslaurynhill

facebook.com/mslaurynhill

Major Awards 8x Grammy Award winner

 

Guinness World Record holder as First Female Rapper to Reach RIAA Diamond Status

Last updated September 18, 2022

Early Years

Early Years

Ms. Lauryn Noelle Hill was born on May 26, 1975, in East Orange, New Jersey. After a brief stop in New York, Hill’s family settled in South Orange, New Jersey, where Hill would spend her formative years.

The roots of Hill’s passion for music can be traced to her parents Mal (who sang at nightclubs and weddings) and Valerie (who played the piano). Throw in the fact that Valerie was an English teacher, and one would hardly be surprised by Hill’s future deftness with bending words and phrases.

Thanks to Mal and Valerie, Hill’s childhood was filled with timeless tunes from the likes of Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. In a 2000 interview with the Academy of Achievement, she recounted playing Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album What’s Going Onin particular, the first side—over and over again till she fell asleep. Hill might not have known it at the time, but in due time, she’d be following the footsteps of Gaye and company as a renowned musician.

Lauryn Begins to Perform

At a young age, Hill began to showcase her musical skills in live performances. During one such instance in her middle school years, Hill was tapped to sing the national anthem at a basketball game. Her performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” was so well-received by the audience that the recording of her rendition was played in more games afterward. (I find it funny that her guidance counselor deemed Hill’s singing more memorable than the basketball team’s win-loss record. Guess they must have been bad that year!)

More opportunities to perform awaited Hill when she enrolled in Columbia High School. She was the catalyst for the formation of the school choir, and she went on to join the cheerleading squad as well. Around this time, Hill even graced the stage of the renowned Apollo Theater in Harlem (as an Amateur Night contestant for the variety show It’s Showtime at the Apollo). Talk about a complete package: her skill set would be bolstered by additional lessons in dance, violin, and acting.

While some emcees get thrust into the limelight when they reach their college years or adulthood, Hill was marking the beginnings of her career in two fields while she was still in high school. On the one hand, she started her acting career in 1991 with a role in Club XII, an Off-Broadway hip hop rendition of the Shakesperean play Twelfth Night. That same year, she was cast as teenager Kira Johnson in the CBS soap opera As the World Turns.

A couple of years later, Hill was making her presence felt on the big screen. She rubbed shoulders with Whoopi Goldberg in the musical comedy Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, and she had a bit part in the Steven Soderbergh-directed King of the Hill. (How apropos!)

And then, of course, there was Hill’s music career.

During her freshman year, Hill met a musically inclined lad by the name of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, who was of Haitian descent. Michel invited Hill to join his group called the Tranzlator Crew (so named because their plan was to perform in different languages). Not long after Hill said yes, the Crew welcomed a new member in the person of Wyclef Jean, who happened to be Michel’s cousin. The Crew came to distinguish themselves as a group that brought together elements of hip hop, soul, and R&B.

As the Crew staged performances in high school events and local gigs, Hill came to sharpen both her singing and rapping skills. Since all of this was going down in the early ’90s, I’m not surprised that Hill looked to West Coast legend Ice Cube for inspiration. I can easily connect the dots between the defiant spirit infused in Hill’s discography and the fearless attitude of the N.W.A. co-founder.

As a matter of fact, Hill’s hip-hop greatness was previewed in her appearance in 1993’s King of the Hill. Like a real G, she freestyled a rap performance during a scene in the filma move that impressed director Bill Duke. As Duke and the rest of the world were about to find out, there was certainly more where that came from.

The Birth of the Fugees

The Birth of the Fugees

In 1993 (what a big year for Hill, huh?), the trio of Pras, Jean, and Hill signed a record deal with Ruffhouse (which was distributed through Columbia Records). They took on the name The Fugees, a callback to the derogatory term for Haitian Americans who were deemed “refugees.”

Interestingly, The Fugees weren’t just bound by platonic ties and a common passion for music. By the time that the group signed their record deal, Hill and Jean had entered a romantic relationship. While I do not doubt that love was in the air during The Fugees’ maiden year, they would sadly end up being a shining example of the perils of dating one’s co-worker. (Spoiler: it can turn out to be a very, very bad decision.)

As recording artists, The Fugees had quite a rough start. Had it not been for some scuffles with Ruffhouse, their debut album Blunted on Reality could have been released earlier than its February 1, 1994 launch date. As it turned out, the album was hardly worth the extra weeks: Blunted on Reality failed to make the Billboard 200, and its most successful single (“Nappy Heads”) couldn’t even crack the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100.

So what went wrong with The Fugees’ debut record? The members of the group have admitted that they may have given their producers too much free rein in terms of what the album would say and how it would sound like. If The Fugees were trying to make a political statement or two in this albumindeed, there are traces of their commentary here and there—the final version of Blunted on Reality appears to fall short of what they truly wanted to say.

Finally Breaking Through…

Finally Breaking Through...

The Fugees only ever released two albums during their tenure. How different were these projects from each other, you ask? In a word, they were night and day.

Though Blunted on Reality fell flat on its face, Ruffhouse head Chris Schwartz refused to give up on the group. Giving The Fugees a cash advance and creative control for their next album, Schwartz essentially reaffirmed his trust in their ability to knock it out of the park.

With a second chance at making a dent in the industry, The Fugees toiled away from mid-to-late 1995. Working in a calmer environment that was conducive to artistic stimulation, the group added new dimensions to their music (such as reggae and vintage R&B). As co-executive producers of this project, the three members made sure that their sharp political content wouldn’t be compromised this time. With the backing of other formidable producers like Diamond D and Salaam Remi, The Fugees put together a more cohesive project that Hill described as “an audio film.”

On February 13, 1996, they finally unveiled their blockbuster. The Score immediately won over the hearts of the mainstream audience with its diverse sound, audacious lyricism, and (of course) Hill’s powerful vocals. Transcending the boundaries of hip hop, The Score is as versatile in conveying a myriad of emotions as it is in adapting one colorful genre after another.

Should I say, for instance, that The Fugees did justice to the all-time hits “Killing Me Softly” and “No Woman, No Cry?” Or can I point out the obvious by stating that the trio reinvented these songs and essentially made these classics their own? Lest there be any questions hurled at The Fugees’ originality, I’d like to point out that “Fu-Gee-La” (the group’s signature song, if I ever heard one) is on this tracklist.

The Score might as well have been called The Peak, as it marked the highest of highs in terms of the group’s industry achievements. The Fugees’ magnum opus peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and eventually went 7x platinum. As a mark of its staying power, The Score has gone on to be one of the most streamed hip hop albums of all time on Spotify.

At the 1997 Grammy Awards, the project won Best Rap Album, beating out the likes of All Eyez on Me (by this guy named Tupac) and Gangsta’s Paradise (by Coolio…I’m sure you’ve heard of him). The Score, by the way, also came out in the same calendar year as Jay-Z‘s Reasonable Doubt, Nas’ It Was Written, and Outkast’s ATLiens. Pretty heady company, don’t you think?

Here’s the icing on the cake: The Fugees also took home the 1997 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for their remake of “Killing Me Softly.” Of course, we all know whose vocals were the driving force behind that single. Where would The Fugees have ended up without Lauryn Hill?

…And Finally Breaking Up

Here’s another good question. Where would The Fugees have ended up if they hadn’t broken up so soon?

Yes, it’s time to get to the juicy stuff.

“Complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe the relationship between Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. Though there’s no doubt that the discord between them led to The Fugees’ break-up, I suppose the trio’s fans can take sides when it comes to the question of which member (or lover) takes the biggest chunk of the blame. So read on and judge for yourself.

During the early years of Hill and Jean’s relationship, Jean began going out with fashion model Marie Claudinette. In 1994wait for it—Jean and Claudinette got married. This, however, did not mark the end of Hill and Jean’s things, even after Marie Claudinette became Claudinette Jean.

In 1996, Hill started dating Rohan Marley, son of Bob Marley. This relationship led to pregnancy for Hill, who then tried to convince Jean that the child was his. When Jean came to find out that he wasn’t, in fact, the father of Hill’s child, he felt betrayed. In his 2012 autobiography Purpose, Jean had this to say about the moment of revelation: “Something died between us. I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that.”

There’s really no going back from that. In 1997, the members of The Fugees started working on separate ventures as producers, songwriters, and solo artists. After reaching the summit of the music industry with their Grammy wins earlier that year, the collective unit known as The Fugees came undone. Except for a few reunion performances here and there—none of those, mind you, appeared to rekindle any serious flame among the members—what was once a chart-topping group is now a distant memory and a litany of really sad what-ifs.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Some artists fade into obscurity after the break-up of their groups. Hill, however, had another summit to climb. This time, she would be embarking on a solo quest in the music industry. For someone whose recording career began in the context of a group, would she be able to reach glorious heights on her own?

In late 1997, Hill began working on her solo debut. Doing much of the recording in Kingston, Jamaica (specifically, in a studio built by Bob Marley himself), Hill drew from deeply personal themes such as her experiences as a mother, the conflicts that brewed among The Fugees, and her spirituality. Hill later recounted that Ruffhouse head Chris Schwartz assured her of creative freedom for her debut album—the same guarantee that he had conveyed to The Fugees for their smash hit The Score.

On August 25, 1998, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill hit the shelves. Here’s the first thing I’ll say about it: I deeply, deeply regret that it remains the only solo album released by Hill in her career thus far. Who can blame me for going all “tsk tsk” about this? If Miseducation is the result of Hill’s creative juices going on overdrive, the world absolutely needs more of what she can offer. Because Miseducation is, in a word, that damn good.

On Miseducation, Hill finds the perfect musical expression for her intense dealings with love, suffering, and faith. While the album has been categorized as neo-soul and R&B, Hill seamlessly worked in elements of hip hop, reggae, gospel, and even rock. This unique blend (which she consciously sought to distinguish from The Fugees’ brand of music) works effectively across the tracklist—from soulful tunes like “Ex-Factor” and “Everything is Everything” to upbeat tracks like “Doo Wop” (That Thing).

There is no hyperbole to the claim that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill has achieved legendary status. From a commercial standpoint, Miseducation is a rare beast, as evidenced by its diamond certification (something that hasn’t been accomplished by any Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, or Ye album). As if the adulation of hip-hop critics weren’t enough, the album has also been enshrined by Harvard University, The Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress.

And, at the 1999 Grammy Awards, Miseducation led to ten Grammy nominations and five wins (including Album of the Year). Up to that point, no female artist—not Aretha Franklin, not Dolly Parton, not Alison Krauss—had ever received as many nominations or wins on a single night. (And it would take 11 years for another woman to step up to the plate and beat Hill’s five-win record. That woman was Beyoncé, who bagged six Grammys in 2010.)

I wish I could say that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill lived happily ever after, but the truth is, the album was entangled in a fair bit of controversy. In 1998, a group of musicians collectively known as New Ark sued Hill for failing “to properly credit them for the work” they did on the album. The artists claimed to be primary contributors to songwriting and production on several tracks, as opposed to the one-woman effort depicted by the album’s credits. (With the exception of two tracks, Hill is credited as the sole writer and producer of all the songs on Miseducation.)

For their part, Hill and her team claimed that New Ark was simply taking advantage of the glory reaped by Miseducation. A settlement was reached in 2001, but in my opinion, the accusations levied by New Ark have left quite a bit of tarnish on Hill’s masterpiece. Who can say for certain whether Hill or New Ark was telling the truth? Perhaps the best thing to do would be to just enjoy the music and put the whole “who credits whom” issue on the backburner.

In and Out of the Public Eye

In 1999, Lauryn was (pardon the pun) Queen of the Hill as she basked in the glory of her Miseducation. With her future looking as bright as ever, she went into seclusion in 2000.

Someone make sense of that, please.

In the eyes of the public, Hill’s decision to basically go into exile was a shocker. In Hill’s mind, though, there was no other recourse. One obvious factor was the pressure of public scrutiny. In a 2009 interview with Essence magazine, Hill had this to say: “I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised.”

Hill’s family also expanded rapidly. Just months after Miseducation came out, Hill gave birth to her second child. In the next ten years, she reared three more children, bringing the total to five kids with Rohan Marley. As a parent myself, I do not blame Hill one bit for devoting more focus to her children during this time frame.

This isn’t to say, however, that Hill abandoned her music career in the 2000s. In 2002, she released MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, a live recording of an acoustic concert that she staged on MTV. In 2004, Hill contributed a track called “The Passion” to an award-winning album of songs inspired by the motion picture The Passion of the Christ.

Having taken all this into consideration, I’d still say that Hill’s run in this decade might be more memorable because of the controversies she got embroiled in rather than the music she put out. During a performance at the Vatican in 2003, she spoke out against the sexual abuse perpetrated by priests in the U.S—a move that drew the ire of the Catholic Church. When Hill toured in the mid-and late 2000s (first with The Fugees in a brief reunion, then as a solo act), fans and Fugees alike bemoaned her tardiness.

But perhaps the biggest groan emanated from her long-time fans in 2012 when she was sued by the IRS for back taxes. Pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, Hill would eventually agree to pay a reported amount of $1.5 million (consisting of both back taxes and penalties). Aside from this, she served a prison sentence that lasted from July 8, 2013, to October 4, 2013.

In the ensuing years, Hill embarked on a number of other tours, but the phenomena of tardiness and cancellations just wouldn’t go away. In 2022, a Fugees tour commemorating the 25th anniversary of The Score was canceled supposedly because of safety concerns brought about by the COVID pandemic. (There are reports, though, that the real reason for the tour’s cancellation was Pras’ legal woes due to his alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme.)

Legacy

So, after all is said and done, what is the legacy of Lauryn Hill in the hip-hop industry? On the one hand, she is a pioneer who bent genres and achieved success beyond her wildest dreams. On the other hand, she is a controversial figure who lacked the longevity and consistency of other competitors in the rap game. What, then, do I make of her?

At the end of the day, I cannot possibly understate the impact of the music that she made with her group and on her own. Lauryn Hill’s art vividly portrays the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and for that, she deserves to go down in history as one of the greatest to ever bless the mic.

Why is Lauryn Hill Influential?

Lauryn Hill

Hill has been credited as an influence on rappers like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Nas, Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj, and Rapsody. She has also gotten love from the likes of Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, as well as Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. Why is this so? I’d say that it’s a combination of her technical brilliance—she is the pioneer of melodic rap, after all—and her penchant for crossing borders and breaking barriers. Now that’ll inspire just about anyone!

FAQs

Question: How many children does Lauryn Hill have?

Answer: Hill has a total of six children. She shares five kids with Rohan Marley: Zion, Selah, Joshua, John, and Sara. Her youngest child Micah (whose father is unknown to the public) was born in 2011.

Question: Besides music and acting, what other ventures did Lauryn Hill pursue?

Answer: For a time, Hill ran a nonprofit called Refugee Project, which focused on facilitating the development of urban youth.

Question: Is it true that Lauryn Hill turned down major movie roles?

Answer: According to Rolling Stone, Hill was offered roles in films like The Bourne Identity, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions. However, she turned these down as these offers came at a time when she was living out her self-imposed exile.

Bottom Line

Would I love to see another Lauryn Hill studio album? Absolutely. Do I think it’s going to happen? Perhaps not, but it’s not like a sophomore outing is absolutely essential to her legacy. For a glorious time in the late 20th century, the music of L. Boogie dominated airwaves across the globe. Though mishaps have unfolded—and will continue to unfold—in Ms. Hill’s life, nobody can ever take away her time as Queen of the hip hop domain.

Sources

  • https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/
  • https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/#interview
  • https://www.biography.com/musician/lauryn-hill
  • https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lauryn-hill-mn0000113753/biography
  • https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lauryn-hill-rare-interview-miseducation-500-greatest-albums-1109491/
  • http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,990180,00.html
  • https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wyclef-jean-lauryn-hill-paternity-lie-fugees-breakup_n_1894364
  • https://www.xxlmag.com/lauryn-hills-miseducation-collaborators-remember-the-album-15-years-later/
  • https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-19-ca-55439-story.html
  • https://people.com/archive/whatever-happened-to-lauryn-hill-vol-70-no-7/
  • https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/07/08/lauryn-hill-starts-prison-sentence/2499315/
  • https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-mystery-of-lauryn-hill-249020/
  • https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/singers/lauryn-hill-net-worth/

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