"Ms." Lauryn Hill and the illusion of "greatness"

I admit that when I saw on the billboard of the Paramount Theater in Seattle yesterday that “Ms.” Lauryn Hill would perform there, I felt my usual cynicism at the feminist conceit. Hill’s single claim to “fame” is her one studio album as a solo artist, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, released eons ago (or so it seems). Her one significant hit—either with the Fugees or solo—was “Doo-Wop (That Thing),” whose “old school” doo-wop harmonies and horns masked the mendacious, self-conceited lyrics likely to alienate male listeners if they actually listened to them. I was prepared to hate the album, and the songs where the hip-hop/rap element are particularly “relevant” I naturally disliked, and the "Intro" where her name is repeatedly intoned promised to set a "tone" of self-obsession.

Nevertheless, I admit that musically the album contained plenty of the production elements that I like, and the cover of Frankie Valle’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”—a “bonus” track on the current CD version—is no worse than her cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” with the Fugees. Songs (really) like “Ex-Factor,” “To Zion”—with Santana—“When it Hurts so Bad,” “Nothing Even Matters” and (musically) the title track are fairly remarkable in the fact that it was recorded during a time when “traditional” song writing and musical (and even “melodic”) production was becoming “passé” in the music business, and inner city rappers with plenty of “attitude” but little or no musical ability or sensibility were taking over the “mainstream” airwaves.  

Rolling Stone named the album one the top ten of the 1990s, which frankly isn’t that much of an achievement considering the fact that (at least to my ears) the musical quality of contemporary music has been in slow decline since the mid-1980s, becoming more rapid in the last decade. And at least Hill actually “sang”—when she wasn’t rapping—rather than relying on Auto Tune.

But it takes more than just one “great” album to justify proclaiming yourself being something “special,” whether out of feminist conceit or not. There are plenty of recording artists who made one “great” album and then disappeared forever. The only reason that Hill is still newsworthy after a forgettable “unplugged” live album more than a decade ago is because of various lawsuits and legal problems she has had. Upon its release, Miseducation was declared a one-woman opus, writing all of the songs, playing most of the instruments, and even producing the record, ala Prince. Yet no less than 36 musicians participated in the making of the album (only two of them women), and Hill is not credited with playing a single instrument. Although she is credited with a solo writing credit on all but two of the songs (not including the Valle cover), the lawsuit for proper crediting claimed that most of those songs were “collaborative” efforts, although the music label insisted that the songs were at least “inspired” by Hill, and her defenders insist that the songs were too “personal” for anyone else to even have assisted in writing. 

There was also the insistence that Hill was more “executive producer” than actual producer on most of the songs she is credited for. One of the "co-producers" claimed that the recordings were a mess and required extensive post-production clean-up. Eventually, Hill and the record label was forced to settle the claims for $5 million. In another case, Hill was sued by a guitarist on her 2007 concert tour for withholding wages. The guitarist claimed that Hill created a “hostile” work environment, and that she would “engage in a person-by-person critique and berating after shows.” In recent years, Hill spent a few months in a women’s minimum security prison for failing to pay income taxes on $1 million. She apparently blamed her tax problems on “Consumerism.” 

Even her one “great” moment has been called into question by some critics. In a “top ten” overrated albums of the 90s list, Salon opined that 

“Lauryn Hill brought class, a sense of history, and resolute high-mindedness to ’90s hip-hop and R&B. Thus, critics loved her. And, thus also, her signature record is really kind of boring. Her rapping is uneven (“Wisdom is better than silver and gold/I was hopeless now I’m on Hope Road” is maybe the low point), and the R&B tracks follow their unexceptional grooves nowhere in particular. Mariah Carey, TLC, Changing Faces and finally Destiny’s Child did much more engaging things with the slow jam and, for that matter, with the ever-closer fusion of hip-hop and R&B, but those folks were all tainted with commerce and didn’t reverently reference the doo wop era. Unlike some of the albums on here, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” isn’t awful, just blah — but the critical hagiography is so extreme that the album manages to make No. 7 anyway.”

I don’t necessarily agree with this assessment, since the “engaging things” are those godawful and unnatural vocal gymnastics that have no sense of rhyme or rhythm, and what is called “boring” and “unexceptional” comes from the writer’s apparent belief that machinegun-like noise is actually “artistic.” But the pompous Hill is overrated as an “artist.” The fact that she has made only one album as a solo artist—and that more than 15 years ago—means that she either ran out of ideas, or never really had them at all—just an “attitude.” The fact that her one album was clearly a massively collaborative effort and insinuations afterward about her lax view about properly crediting people indicates that this is likely one of those “one-hit wonders” that can’t ever be duplicated, so why spoil the illusion of “greatness”?