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Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill made one solo album and it is routinely named among the best records of the twentieth century in any genre. The four decades of complicated career around it have never dislodged that.

Early life and the Fugees

She grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, and formed the Fugees with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel while still at school. The Score in 1996, carried by their reworking of "Killing Me Softly", became one of the best-selling rap albums ever made and established her as the group's most compelling voice.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Released in 1998, it won five Grammys including Album of the Year — the first hip-hop album to take that award — and Best Rap Album, making her the first woman to win the category. It moved between rap, soul and reggae without treating any of them as a guest appearance, and it is written from a position of specific, unglamorous adult experience that rap at the time had very little of.

What came after

She never released a second studio album. MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 arrived in 2002, performed alone on acoustic guitar, and was divisive on release and better regarded since. Her subsequent career has involved sporadic touring, frequent lateness, legal trouble over unpaid taxes and long periods of withdrawal.

What she is known for musically

Singing and rapping at an equally high standard, which was rare then and is still not common. Her writing is dense, moral and openly religious, and her delivery carries an authority that a great many artists have tried to reproduce.

Influence

The template for the rapper-singer, and for confessional rap writing by women, runs directly through her. Every subsequent woman to win Best Rap Album — Cardi B in 2019, Doechii in 2025 — has been measured against that 1999 win.

The Score

The Fugees' 1996 album sold in numbers rap had rarely seen, driven by their cover of "Killing Me Softly with His Song", and made all three members household names. It was also where the internal tensions started: her relationship with Wyclef Jean, and its end, sits underneath much of what she wrote next.

Writing and production

She wrote and produced the bulk of Miseducation herself, which was part of what made the record remarkable and part of what made its aftermath messy — a group of musicians sued over production credits and the case was settled. The dispute has followed the album's reputation ever since without seriously denting it.

Why there was no second album

She has given various accounts across decades: exhaustion, distrust of the industry, the pressure of the first record's reception, and a deliberate withdrawal from a machine she found corrosive. The Unplugged record in 2002, performed alone with an acoustic guitar and a damaged voice, reads as the clearest statement of it.

Later years

She served a prison sentence in 2013 for failing to file tax returns, has toured intermittently — often with substantial delays that draw criticism — and performed with a reunited Fugees for the album's twenty-fifth anniversary. The catalogue has never stopped selling.

Frequently asked

Where is Lauryn Hill from?

She grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, and formed the Fugees with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel while still at school. The Score in 1996, carried by their reworking of "Killing Me Softly", became one of the best-selling rap albums ever made and established her as the group's most compelling voice.

What albums has Lauryn Hill released?

She has given various accounts across decades: exhaustion, distrust of the industry, the pressure of the first record's reception, and a deliberate withdrawal from a machine she found corrosive. The Unplugged record in 2002, performed alone with an acoustic guitar and a damaged voice, reads as the clearest statement of it.