I’m sure someone can explain this one to me

“Miseducation” was so awesome, how come Lauryn Hill has done essentially nothing since then?

5 thoughts on “I’m sure someone can explain this one to me

  1. my wife tells me lauryn hill got pregnant after that and devoted much of her time to being a mother. she came out with a second album some time ago, but it didn't do so well.

  2. It's pretty speculative about what happened to Hill after "Miseducation." If you follow the tabloids, you hear a variety of things. Usually, though, you hear that she had a nervous breakdown, or some kind of serious break, after "Miseducation." Originally I heard that she had one when she learned that the father of her children and husband (who was one of Bob Marley's sons) was not technically her husband because he was still legally married to someone else.

    Then I heard that she had become very involved with a religious cult. When her bandmates from the Fugees describe her new religious trajectory, anyway, they get awfully close to calling it a cult. But, it sounds more generally like a small, Christian sectarian church. I was hearing that a lot around the time she rebuked the Catholic Church while playing at the Vatican (during the pedophile scandals).

    More recently I've heard that she's been recording all these years, but that those recordings are considered sub-par by her studio and so the material hasn't been released. She's expressed disillusionment with the entertainment industry, in general, in at least one interview she did a few years ago, so maybe there's some truth to that. There were some lawsuits filed against her by some of the producers and musicians on "Miseducation" because they didn't get proper accreditation for the work they did on the album (or maybe compensation – I can't remember now). I heard a theory several years ago that she did "Miseducation" to get back at Wyclef Jean, her former bandmate and rumored lover from the Fugees. Wyclef is widely considered to be the cause of the Fugees breakup (Pras more or less said that in an interview), because he was sleeping with Hill and other women at the same time. She apparently cared about Wyclef, and when things finally ended between them, it was a bad break, and I heard that she wanted to make "Miseducation" to prove to herself and anyone else that she didn't need Wyclef Jean to make music. But what I'd read, too ,was that she tended to downplay other people's contributions to the album, which is what ultimately resulted in those lawsuits (that were, I think, settled out of court).

    If you listen to some of the things she's done since "Miseducation," they're pretty horrible if you ask me. Like that MTV Unplugged album that came out almost immediately afterwards. It's practically incoherent. Her work starts to veer towards a lot of introspection and stream of consciousness – you can tell that whatever was going on, that she seemed to be in a painful place, was more committed to her Christian faith than before (though "Miseducation" is fairly explicitly religious in many ways), and was less interested in being a celebrity musician.

  3. Actually, I think the MTV unplugged album is one of the most thoughtful, passionate, real performances I've ever heard. It just isn't pop music—it demands more of the listener. The only disappointing aspect of that album is that the performance happened on a night when her voice was hoarse. That doesn't bother me too much, but then one of my favorite musicians is Louis Armstrong, so maybe I'm inured to hoarse voices.

  4. Umm, it's because she went crazy.
    Google lauryn hill crazy. She thought she could go it alones, alienated all the producers that helped write and make Miseducation a great album, and then sort of flopped on her own.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5940100/th

    Notes on production: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/22713461/i

    http://www.tmz.com/2008/03/04/pras-on-lauren-hill

    http://www.hollyscoop.com/music–movies/wyclef-je

    Anyhow, hope that helps. Fox news sources say she's broke and living with her mom as of this year. Miseducation was 10 years ago. Take that and no real touring effort and you have little left in the piggy bank.

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