Critically Acclaimed Rapper and Vocalist Ms. Lauryn Hill Has Left Fans Waiting For a Full Length Release Since 1998. Could 2020 Be The Year?
Lauryn Hill is one of the greatest musicians of all time, but her inconsistent solo output has held her back from a more mainstream appeal. Finding her voice and maturing as a member of The Fugees, Lauryn Hill took her artistry and vocal talents to the next level during her solo career.
Released in late 1998, her only studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, is a masterpiece. Critical acclaim and impressive commercial appeal followed, with the project topping the Billboard Hot 200 and staying there for two weeks, breaking the record for first-week sales for a female artist and moving 422k units at the record store. The LA times called it “the most acclaimed album of 1998.” Flash forward to 2020, and Miseducation racked up close to 520 million streams on Spotify. But the standard album release cycle came and went. Lauryn Hill offered no updates and gave no press releases, and years passed with no commercial releases.
Lauryn Hill’s next release came in 2002 in the form of a follow-up to her first MTV Unplugged record, a poorly received 2001 release which is no longer commercially available. And while it was worth a listen, it’s not an album. Almost 20 years later, and we still haven’t gotten that album. But some more recent output has begun to get fans’ hopes up.
A sporadic release of singles throughout 2013 and 2015 was met with little excitement. The entirety of her discography since her second Unplugged has only been streamed about 30 million times, which is not enough to go gold as a single.
Last year, Lauren Hill released music twice, both times to substantial appeal. Her verse on Pusha T’s Coming Home racked up more than 10 million streams so far, and she contributed a track to the Queen & Slim soundtrack, a record that’s done surprisingly well for a movie soundtrack. Going gold off Spotify streams alone, of those 96 million streams, Lauryn Hill contributed close to 4 million of them, in addition to releasing the song as a single.
What does all of this mean? Not much on the surface. I suspect that Lauryn Hill will continue on her path of sporadic single releases. But Missy Elliot’s 2019 and 2020 releases have proved that people are still here to listen to the iconic voices of the 2000s, and Lauryn Hill’s gradual building of her discography may suggest a new release.
Whatever the future may hold, I remain hopeful for a full length release from Lauryn Hill sometime in the next five years.
MOOSE PRINTS 