It’s hard to believe, but this week marks 10 years since the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the first (and only so far) solo album by New Jersey’s favorite rapper, musician, songwriter, producer, and film actress, Ms. Lauryn Hill. It was a worldwide smash, selling 8 million copies and winning almost as many awards. It proved she could thrive without her group the Fugees and secured Lauryn’s position in the pantheon of American music gods and goddesses.

I consider this album a masterpiece and a milestone record - not in Lauryn’s career (although it obviously is) but in my own life. Its release coincided with a period of intense happiness and open-heartedness for me. It was the soundtrack to Fall 98 in New York City and anyone who was there knows what I’m talking about. I usually resent people who try to possess music by tying it to a specific time and place. Truly great music speaks to experiences and emotions that transcend any single city or season (cliché I know but still true), and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill demonstrates that as well as any album ever made. But still, for me, at that time in that place, Miseducation was a much an album as a manifesto - a call to passion and fun and self-defense for people in a city that was stuggling to maintain its vitality against the stunting influences of city hall and free market. It was a struggle that, I recognize now, was more vital (and inadequate) than I realized at the time. So I’ll always feel a tinge of sadness when I hear Lauryn Hill’s music. But I’ll also always remember the love and the communication. And I’ll remember all the people from that time, friends and non-friends, who shared Lauryn Hill’s vision and answered her call to live life heart first.

Rolling Stone has a fantastic feature up now, on oral history of Miseducation made from the testimony of most of its creators. Check it here.

Here’s a sample, the telling of the song “To Zion”:

Jayson Jackson (former manager, Lauryn Hill): She called me and sang a verse of “Zion” and I was literally in tears. I went through that with her as a friend, Wendy Williams blowing her spot about her pregnancy on the radio. No one knew! It was definitely a Where’s Waldo moment ’cause no one knew who Lauryn was dating.

Rohan Marley (Bob Marley’s son/father of Hill’s five children): She ended up having a child from myself and ones telling her she need to abort the child. Those songs, it’s all her experience.

Che Vicious (formerly Che Guevera; producer): I’d gotten into a bunch of Spanish records. I lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn and there was this little studio apartment on the top floor that didn’t have air conditioning. I could only go in there for 20 minutes at a time to make tracks because it was too hot. And one of those 20 minutes is when I made “Zion.” I came in with the track and Lauryn teared up and said, “I have this idea to do a song about my baby and I didn’t know what the music should sound like until I heard that track.”

Nobles (producer/programmer): Out of all the records, “Zion” was her baby because it was about her child. Can’t nobody interfere with that right there. That drum roll inspired Kanye’s “Jesus Walks,” I know it did!

Commissioner Gordon: I remember the first time she sang “To Zion” to me I almost started crying on the spot. Che put together a drum loop and she came over right next to me at the board and started singing “Zion” in my ear. These circumstances she’s singing about I know first hand. I’m at the label hearing everybody say, “How’s this girl gonna get pregnant now?!” Then Carlos played his guitar in Miami at Circle House Studios. It was a swap. She wanted Carlos to play “Zion” and she did a song for Supernatural.

Here’s the song:

Lauryn Hill - To Zion

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But I don’t really believe in hanging too fiercely to the music of the past, even it is charged with as many auxiliary pleasures as this one. Lauryn sort of retreated from music and celebrity after Miseducation, and it’s not clear if she’ll ever fully come back. Towards the end of the Rolling Stone piece, a couple of very unnecessary shots are taken at Jazmine Sullivan, a 21-year-old singer out of Philadelphia whose style is clearly influenced by Lauryn’s but who I think shows a lot of potential and deserves support. So here is the song that a couple of Lauryn’s collaborators refer to as eerily Hillesqe. I agree that it’s no “To Zion”, but I think if there’s any message to take from Miseducation it’s that we have to take pleasure from where we can, according to our own needs and definitions. And the beat bangs so…..

Jazmine Sullivan - Need u bad

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Update: A new Lauryn song is out and circulating. As they say in Japan, LET’S ENJOY!

Lauryn Hill - The world is a hustle

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