Few bought the album, but many talked about how she could be heard on the record breaking down in tears and saying, “I’m crazy and deranged. In 2001, she recorded her MTV Unplugged 2.0. In 2000, Hill became close with Brother Anthony, a shadowy spiritual adviser, then abruptly fired her management team and the people around her. All of that stuff is thought about, and Lauryn put a lot of pressure on herself after all that success. It don’t happen by accident that the jeans fall the right way, the hat is cocked to the side just so.

Artists are a lot more calculating than the public sometimes knows. Because Lauryn is such a perfectionist, she always sought to give the fans what they wanted, so a simple run to the grocery store had to have the right heels and jeans. “Not that she despised herself as a human being, but she despised the manufactured international-superstar magazine cover girl who wasn’t able to go out of the house looking a little tattered on a given day. “I think Lauryn grew to despise who Lauryn Hill was,” a friend says. Someone who once worked with Hill says with regret, “She woulda been bigger than J. The doors were open for Hill to create a multimedia entertainment empire of the sort that J. But she did begin developing a biography of Bob Marley in which she was to play his wife, Rita started producing a romantic-comedy film set in the world of soul food called Sauce, in which she was to star and accepted a prize part in the adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved but had to drop out because she got pregnant. “Lauryn wasn’t trying to do anything,” says Pras Michel of the Fugees, almost lamenting. Hill met with Matt Damon about being in The Bourne Identity, with Brad Pitt about a part in The Mexican and with the Wachowski brothers about a role in the last two films in the Matrix trilogy. Sources say she was offered a role in Charlie’s Angels, but she turned the part down, and Lucy Liu took the job. In ’98, Hill became an international superstar.įlashback: Tina Turner Covers Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson on Debut Solo Albumĥ00 Greatest Albums of All Time: Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill When Hill was thirteen years old, she already knew she would grow up to become an entertainer. In 1998 and ’99, sources say, Hill grossed $40 million from royalties, advances, touring, merchandising and other revenues, and pocketed about $25 million of that. She was critically acclaimed and extremely rich. Twelve million people bought The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Hill was established as one of the great female MCs, a quadruple threat: a rapper as well as a world-class singer, songwriter and producer. “It was based on not being Wyclef’s side girl.” “Her solo career wasn’t based on ‘I wanna do an album,'” says Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson. Hill began plotting an album of her own that would change that. After The Score, many perceived Wyclef Jean as the group’s musical genius. Her 1996 album with the Fugees, The Score, had sold more than 17 million copies and made her rich and famous, but something was missing. “She was aiming for big hits so she could outshine the Fugees and outshine Wyclef,” says someone familiar with the sessions.

In 1998, when Lauryn Hill was recording her debut solo album, she was on a mission.

Fugees the score genius