Lauryn Hill

• 1. Introduction

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  Lauryn Hill stood at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards and said, "This is crazy. This is hip-hop!" She had just become the first woman to win five Grammys in a single night. Her wins spanned album, song, vocal performance and best new artist, a sweep that treated a rapper as a complete pop artist. Three questions run through the story that follows. How did a girl raised in South Orange, New Jersey, arrive at that podium? What did success ask of her in return? And why did one of the most celebrated artists of her time so often seem to vanish from view?

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• 2. Rooms Full of Records

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  Lauryn Noelle Hill was born on the 26th of May 1975 in East Orange, New Jersey. Her mother, Valerie, was an English teacher. Her father, Mal, worked as a computer and management consultant. She had one older brother, Malaney, born in 1972, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and became a computer engineer. The Baptist family spent a short time in New York before settling in South Orange.

  "There were so many records, so much music constantly being played," Hill said of her childhood home. "My mother played the piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded by music." Her father sang in local nightclubs and at weddings. She listened to Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight. Years later she recalled playing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On over and over until she fell asleep to it.

  A middle school basketball game gave her first audience. Hill sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" before tip-off, and it was so popular that later games played a recording of her version. In 1988 she appeared as an Amateur Night contestant on It's Showtime at the Apollo, singing Smokey Robinson's "Who's Lovin' You." She stumbled at the start while reaching for her notes, and the crowd reacted with mixed feelings. She kept going, and the performance ended in applause.

  Columbia High School gave her room for every ambition at once. She ran on the track team, joined the cheerleading squad, took violin lessons, went to dance class and founded the school's gospel choir. She also took advanced placement classes and earned mostly A grades. The actor Zach Braff was a classmate, and school officials regarded her as a leader among the students. Looking back, she said, "I was always driven to do a lot in whatever field or whatever area I was focusing on at the moment."

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• 3. Stage and Screen

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  In 1991 Hill appeared beside Wyclef Jean in Club XII, MC Lyte's Off-Broadway hip-hop version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The play was not a success. An agent noticed her anyway, and the acting lessons she had taken in Manhattan began to pay off.

  As the World Turns brought her a recurring role that same year, as Kira Johnson, a troubled teenager. In 1993 she co-starred with Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit as Rita Louise Watson. Rita was an inner-city Catholic school student with a surly, rebellious attitude. Hill sang "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" as a duet with Tanya Blount and also performed "Joyful, Joyful."

  Director Bill Duke credited her with improvising a rap in one scene. "None of that was scripted. That was all Lauryn. She was amazing," he said. Roger Ebert called her "the girl with the big joyful voice," though he thought her talent was wasted. Rolling Stone said she "performed marvelously against type" in an otherwise perfunctory film. Janelle Monáe later said that Hill's performance inspired her to pursue acting.

  Steven Soderbergh's 1993 film King of the Hill gave Hill a minor but pivotal part as a gum-popping elevator operator in the 1930s. Soderbergh's biographer, Jason Wood, said she supplied one of the warmest scenes in the picture. She also graduated from Columbia High School in 1993. Smaller screen work followed, including a cameo in the 1997 film Hav Plenty. In 1998 she played the protagonist's pregnant former girlfriend in Restaurant, and Entertainment Weekly praised the vigor she brought to the film.

  The paychecks mattered for another reason. Hill used the money from her teenage acting jobs to help finance the early days of a music group that had not yet signed a record deal.

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• 4. The Fugees

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  The first name was Translator Crew, chosen because the members wanted to rhyme in different languages. Prakazrel "Pras" Michel had approached Hill, then a high school freshman, through mutual friends about the group he was building. A second female vocalist was soon replaced by Michel's cousin Wyclef Jean, a multi-instrumentalist. The trio played local showcases and high school talent shows.

  Ice Cube, rather than Salt-N-Pepa or MC Lyte, shaped the way Hill rapped. She had started out only as a singer and then learned to rap. She preferred male rappers as models and developed her flow by listening to them. "I remember doing my homework in the bathroom stalls of hip-hop clubs," she said.

  The name Fugees came from the word refugee, which was used as a derogatory term for Haitian Americans. Hill began a romantic relationship with Jean. In 1993 the group signed with Columbia/Ruffhouse Records. Its debut, Blunted on Reality, appeared in 1994 and reached No. 62 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It sold poorly and drew bad reviews, because management insisted the group adopt gangsta rap attitudes. Even so, Hill's rapping on "Some Seek Stardom" was seen as a highlight. Inside the group she went by the nickname "L. Boogie."

  The Score arrived in 1996 and reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It stayed in the top ten for over half a year. It sold about seven million copies in the United States and more than 20 million worldwide. It won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, which made Hill the first woman to receive that honor. Critics in the 1996 Pazz & Jop poll ranked it second among albums and placed three of its tracks in the top 20 singles. Rolling Stone later included it among the 500 greatest albums of all time.

  The record offered an alternative to gangsta rap. "We're trying to do something positive with the music because it seems like only the negative is rising to the top these days," Hill said. "It only takes a drop of purity to clean a cesspool." The singles included "Fu-Gee-La," "Ready or Not" and a cover of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry." Her version of "Killing Me Softly" became the group's breakout hit and won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Newsweek called her "the most powerful new voice in rap."

  At 21, Hill was still living with her parents. She had enrolled at Columbia University and thought about majoring in history. She left after about a year, once sales of The Score reached the millions. That year she also answered a false rumor on The Howard Stern Show that she had made a racist comment on MTV. "How can I possibly be a racist? My music is universal," she said.

  In 1996 she founded the Refugee Project, a non-profit that aimed to change the attitudes and behavior of at-risk urban youth. It ran Camp Hill, which hosted young people in the Catskill Mountains, and an annual Halloween haunted house in East Orange. Hill also raised money for Haitian refugees, backed clean water well projects in Kenya and Uganda, and staged a Harlem rap concert to promote voter registration. A 1997 benefit introduced a board of trustees that included Sean Combs, Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes and Spike Lee. The organization also offered scholarships, mentoring, after-school programs and a reading club.

  The Fugees split in 1997 so that each member could pursue solo projects. Jean later blamed the breakup on his tumultuous relationship with Hill. He also cited the fact that he married Claudinette while still involved with Hill.

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• 5. The Miseducation

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  From late 1997 until June 1998, Hill recorded her solo debut at Tuff Gong Studios in Jamaica. The title drew on Carter G. Woodson's 1933 book The Mis-Education of the Negro and on The Education of Sonny Carson, a film and autobiographical novel. Hill used the idea of miseducation to talk about learning real self-love and identity outside what school or society teaches. D'Angelo, Carlos Santana, Mary J. Blige and a then-unknown John Legend contributed.

  A whole orchestra of harps, timpani, organs and clarinets was brought into the studio. Hill wanted the record to feel human, not overly perfect or programmed. She said she wanted to "write songs that lyrically move me and have the integrity of reggae and the knock of hip-hop and the instrumentation of classic soul." Wyclef Jean first did not support a solo album. He eventually offered production help, and she turned him down. She worked instead with a group of musicians called New Ark: Vada Nobles, Rasheem Pugh, Tejumold Newton and Johari Newton.

  Personal life ran through the songs. In the summer of 1996 Hill had met Rohan Marley, a son of Bob Marley and a former University of Miami football player. Their first child, Zion David, was born on the 3rd of August 1997. "To Zion" addressed her decision to have the baby, even though some people at the time urged an abortion so it would not interfere with her career. Her pregnancy revived her from a period of writer's block. "I Used to Love Him" dealt with the collapse of her relationship with Jean.

  She also felt pressure. Her label wanted her to emulate Prince, with every track credited as written and produced by the artist with little outside help. She wanted to be appreciated as an auteur as much as Jean had been within the Fugees. She saw a feminist cause too. "This is a very sexist industry," she said. "They'll never throw the 'genius' title to a sister."

  The album came out on the 25th of August 1998 to rave reviews and was the most acclaimed album of 1998. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly called it "an album of often-astonishing power, strength, and feeling." Robert Christgau praised the production as "subtle and terrific." It sold nearly 423,000 copies in its first week, helped by advance radio play of two non-label-sanctioned singles, "Lost Ones" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." It held the top of the Billboard 200 for four weeks and the R&B albums chart for six. It sold about 10 million copies in the United States and 20 million worldwide, and Hill earned $25 million from sales and touring across 1998 and 1999.

  The lead single, "Doo Wop (That Thing)," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Other charting singles were "Ex-Factor," "Everything Is Everything" and "To Zion." Hill joined Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Meshell Ndegeocello and Erykah Badu in the neo soul genre. NPR later rated the album the second best ever made by a woman. In November 1998 her second child, Selah Louise, was born.

  Going into the 1999 Grammys, Hill became the first woman nominated in ten categories in one year. The nominations included her version of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" for the film Conspiracy Theory and her writing and production of "A Rose Is Still a Rose," a late-career hit for Aretha Franklin. She also became the first rapper to win Album of the Year. In February 1999 she received four awards at the 30th Annual NAACP Image Awards. In May she became the youngest woman ever named to Ebony's list of 100+ Most Influential Black Americans. Her appearances on covers included Time, where she was the first rapper to appear.

  In early 2000 she shared another Album of the Year Grammy, for Santana's Supernatural. On it she wrote, produced and rapped on "Do You Like the Way," which also featured CeeLo Green. She wrote and produced "All That I Can Say" for Mary J. Blige, and it earned a Best R&B Song nomination.

  In November 1998, New Ark filed a fifty-page lawsuit against Hill, her management and her label. The musicians said she used their songs and production skills without properly crediting them. They claimed to be the primary songwriters on two tracks and major contributors on several others. Gordon Williams, a recording engineer and mixer on the album, called it a "powerfully personal effort by Hill" and said, "It was definitely her vision." Hill said New Ark had been properly credited and was trying to take advantage of her success. When asked about contracts for the musicians, she had replied, "We all love each other. This ain't about documents. This is blessed."

  Depositions took place late in 2000. The case showed how blurry the line is between songwriting and the arranging, sampling and recording that surround it. It settled out of court in February 2001, with Hill reportedly paying New Ark $5 million. A friend of Hill's later said, "That was the beginning of a chain effect that would turn everything a little crazy."

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• 6. Stepping Away

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  In 2000 Hill dropped out of the public eye. She disliked being unable to run a simple errand without worrying about her appearance. She fired her management team and began attending Bible study classes five days a week. She stopped giving interviews, watching television and listening to music. She also began associating with a spiritual advisor named Brother Anthony. Some people familiar with Hill thought he resembled a cult leader and probably inspired much of her more controversial behavior.

  Telling Essence about this time, she said, "I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised." She described "two or three years" away from all social interaction. It was, she said, a time to confront her fears about "inferiority" and "insecurity" and "the fear of being black, young and gifted in this western culture."

  Projects fell away. She had begun writing a screenplay about Bob Marley, in which she planned to play his wife Rita. She also started producing a romantic comedy about soul food, working title Sauce, and accepted a starring role in the film of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. She dropped out of all three because of pregnancy. She reportedly turned down parts in the A Star Is Born remake, Dreamgirls, Charlie's Angels, The Bourne Identity, The Mexican, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

  In July 2001, while pregnant with her third child, Hill unveiled new material to a small crowd for an MTV Unplugged taping. The live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 came out in May 2002, with only her voice and an acoustic guitar. Critics split sharply. AllMusic gave it 4 out of 5 stars and called it "fascinating." Rolling Stone called it "a public breakdown," and NME found "enough genius shading these rough sketches" to hope for more. With little radio play it debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and was later certified Platinum. Kanye West's "All Falls Down" interpolated its "Mystery of Iniquity," and Hill was credited as a songwriter on the single.

  Her personal life had grown complicated. Her third child, Joshua Omaru, now known as YG Marley, was born around 2001, and a fourth child followed a year later. Hill sometimes called Marley her husband, but the two never married. A 2003 Rolling Stone report said he had never secured a divorce from an earlier marriage. Marley disputed that and made public a 1996 divorce document from Haiti. Around 2003 she moved into her own place in Miami. Columbia Records had by then spent more than $2.5 million on a follow-up album, including a recording studio in her Miami apartment.

  By 2002 she had shut down the Refugee Project. "Smiling with big checks, obligatory things, not having things come from a place of passion. That's slavery," she said.

  In December 2003 Hill performed at a Christmas benefit concert at the Vatican, in a 7,500-seat hall normally used for the Pope's weekly audiences. She used the stage to address sexual abuse of children by priests. "I realize some of you may be offended by what I'm saying, but what do you say to the families who were betrayed by the people in whom they believed?" she asked. Pope John Paul II was not present, though Cardinal Camillo Ruini attended. Her comments were edited out of the broadcast planned for Canale 5. The Catholic League called her "pathologically miserable," and critics have since applauded her.

  The years after were uneven. Hill contributed "The Passion" to a 2004 album and began selling a $15 pay-per-view video of "Social Drugs" on her website, viewable only three times. In September 2004 the Fugees reunited at Dave Chappelle's Block Party in Brooklyn, and Hill's nearly a cappella "Killing Me Softly" was filmed by Michel Gondry. A European tour in late 2005 revived the old tensions, and the reunion ended before an album. Jean and Michel both blamed her, citing among other things her demand to be called "Ms. Hill."

  Her fifth child, Sara, was born in early 2008. In June 2009 she collapsed on stage during the second show of a European festival tour, left, and refused refunds. The Stockholm Jazz Festival was told she could not perform for "health reasons," and the rest of the tour was canceled.

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• 7. Court and Comeback

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  In August 2010 the Rock the Bells festival series gave Hill a chance to perform The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in its entirety for the first time. She quickened the tempo, though she sometimes had trouble communicating with her band. A leaked song, "Repercussions," gave her a Billboard chart entry as a lead artist for the first time since 1999. In July 2011 she gave birth to her sixth child, Micah, her first not with Rohan Marley. In late 2012 she toured with Nas in a leg named after her song "Black Rage."

  In June 2012 Hill was charged with three counts related to taxes on $1.8 million of income earned between 2005 and 2007. She pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark and said she had withdrawn from society to protect herself and her family. By April 2013 she had paid back only $50,000 of the $554,000 owed. Judge Madeline Cox Arleo told her, "Actions speak louder than words, and there has been no effort here to pay these taxes."

  On the 4th of May 2013 Hill released "Neurotic Society (Compulsory Mix)," her first official single in over a decade. She said she had been required to release it by a legal deadline. On the 6th of May 2013 she was sentenced to three months in prison and three months of house arrest, followed by a year of supervised probation. She had faced up to 36 months. By then she had repaid $970,000 in taxes and penalties. In court she said, "I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me."

  She reported to the minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury on the 8th of July 2013 and was released on the 4th of October 2013, a few days early for good behavior. She finished the single "Consumerism" from there by verbal and e-mailed instructions.

  Later work was selective. In 2014 she narrated Concerning Violence, a Swedish documentary on African liberation struggles. For the 2015 documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? she was meant to record two songs and recorded six, and she co-produced the compilation with Robert Glasper. NPR said the six tracks made it her most comprehensive set of studio recordings since 1998. In 2019 she recorded "Guarding the Gates" for Queen & Slim, released on the 27th of November 2019.

  A reputation for lateness trailed her. In 2005 she kept Wyclef Jean waiting 45-50 minutes. In 2007 she was 90 minutes late at the Nice Jazz Festival and sang too softly to be heard. She was two and a half hours late for a Brooklyn show in August 2007 and again in Boston in December 2010. In Atlanta in May 2016 a venue curfew of 11 pm cut her set to about 40 minutes, and she said she had been "aligning my energy with the time." After a Los Angeles show in November 2023 she told fans they should consider themselves "lucky" that she appears on stage "every night."

  On the 14th of April 2024 she surprised the Coachella crowd while her son YG Marley was performing, then reunited with Wyclef Jean for Fugees hits. A Fugees reunion tour was set for August 2024, but the U.S. dates were canceled three days before the first show. She blamed "clickbait headlines" and low ticket sales. Pras released a diss track, "Bar Mitzfa," and in October 2024 sued her for breach of contract and fraud. She called his suit "full of false claims and unwarranted attacks."

  At the 68th Annual Grammy Awards in 2026 she led the In Memoriam tribute to Roberta Flack and D'Angelo, who both died in 2025. It was her first Grammys performance since 1999. She performed "Nothing Even Matters," then joined Wyclef Jean and a stage full of artists for "Killing Me Softly With His Song." In April 2026 she surprised a Kanye West audience at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

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• 8. Echoes and Causes

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  In 1998 Time declared Hill the "Queen of Hip Hop," a title that Billboard and The Boston Globe have also given her. In 2015 Billboard ranked her seventh on its list of the 10 best rappers, and she was the only woman on it. The New York Times once called her "the most popular woman in hip-hop." Kool Moe Dee gave her the highest score of any rapper on his "Report Cards" list. Danyel Smith credited her with reviving hip-hop after the murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.

  Hill is often credited with popularizing the blend of rap and melodic singing in one song. Nicki Minaj raps on "Can Anybody Hear Me" that Def Jam would not sign her because she wanted to combine rapping and singing, and the label said she "wasn't Lauryn Hill." Lizzo, who began as a rapper, said, "I was always afraid of being a singer, but then when I heard Lauryn Hill, I was like, maybe I can do both." In 1999 Billboard dubbed the brief rise of women in rap "The Lauryn Hill Effect."

  Samples keep her voice in circulation. In 2018 her "Ex-Factor" was sampled on Cardi B's "Be Careful" and Drake's "Nice for What," and A$AP Rocky and Frank Ocean sampled "I Gotta Find Peace of Mind" on "Purity." Kanye West sampled "Doo Wop (That Thing)" in "Believe What I Say." Billboard wrote that she "is to hip-hop as a gardener is to soil."

  John Legend credits her with his first major opportunity, as a pianist on "Everything Is Everything." Lin-Manuel Miranda named her one of his favorite rappers, and his Broadway musical Hamilton was heavily influenced by her. The list of artists who name her as an inspiration includes Beyoncé, Adele, Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Stormzy and RM of BTS. Kehlani has a tattoo of Hill on her arm.

  Her hair became part of the story. Locs, braids, bantu knots and afros made her a symbol of the natural hair revival. Joan Morgan observed that a young person in the 1990s who liked the natural look but did not want to identify as Rasta had no example until Lauryn Hill. SZA told Vogue that Hill was the only girl she could look to for natural hair inspiration growing up. In 1999 Hill partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. on outfits for her Miseducation tour, and Armani also designed looks for her and helped sponsor it.

  Her causes extended beyond the Refugee Project. A 1999 anti-drug ad she made with the federal government proved the most popular among polled youth, with nearly 95 percent saying it affected them. She took part in a UNCF telethon that raised $13.5 million and performed at the 2005 Live 8 benefit. In 2014 she posted "Black Rage" in protest of the killing of Michael Brown. She reportedly declined an offer to join Maroon 5 at the Super Bowl LIII halftime show, in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick.

  Her honors include eight Grammy Awards, the most for any female rapper, along with inductions into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry. In 2026 she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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