TO ZION/EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING/KILLING ME SOFTLY: The last was a feature of the psuedo-karaoke that was the last four hours of the drive back from Kansas City, with that great Roberta Flack hook in the chorus, and myself adding Wyclef's "one time!" "two times!" in the background. Then there's this:
Many of these posts begin with "it's easy to forget..." but it is easy to forget that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was the album of 1998, and one of those that made people believe in the transcendent possibilities of hip-hop. Tragic, then, that the promise was lost, and hip-hop is now a collection of novelties that has largely given up on substance. Generally, there are two streams within hip-hop, the one that emphasizes the hook, and the other that emphasizes the lyrics; usually the two are quite separate (think "Rapper's Delight" versus "The Jungle") though when they come together (see about half of ...It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back) it's powerful. And in 1998, I was as close to steeped as I ever got in evangelical youth culture, always holding out the place non-Christian music held for me, so it was nice that Lauryn wore her faith on her sleeve and worked it into everything (as I recall, she accepted one of her Grammys by reading a Psalm). She never quite got it together again, which is a shame, but all these songs sound just as good after 10 years as they did when they were new--and that's something.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
1 comment:
You're absolutely right about the lost promise of Lauryn Hill, but I'm not sure that means that hip hop as a whole has lost its promise. Sure, a lot has changed since acts that combined great hooks with great lyrics were among the most commercially viable--Public Enemy and the Fugees (as you rightly note), but also Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, De La Soul, and many others. But let's not forget that there has always been plenty of silliness and superficiality in hip hop--the same 90s that gave us the groups above was also the heyday of "gangsta" and East Coast/West Coast, not to mention the ever-present stuff that was unabashedly about exploitative sex (case in point: 2 Live Crew). There was certainly an awful lot of bad stuff after The Miseducation came out--the nadir probably being the "bling bling" crap that dominated the late 90s and early 00s, and is somewhat still with us in the form of "club" songs. But I have to defend some contemporary hip hop artists--Talib Kweli comes to mind, and even though he's become more or less insufferable, Kanye's first two albums are really outstanding. And even though his lyrics rarely have any depth, Jay-Z in my view exhibits that the form admits of real virtuosity. I guess all I'm saying is that the form as a whole is not as bad as you seem to want to say it is, and the fact that Lauryn Hill squandered her talent doesn't mean that hip hop is entirely corrupt.
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