The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Aug. 24, 2011 - PRLog -- "I think we understood it was going to be a landmark, but I don't think I understood to what degree other people would really be deeply impacted by what was done."

Tomorrow, August 25, will mark thirteen years since the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the highly acclaimed debut solo album by Lauryn Hill. Lauryn Hill forever stands as a phenomenon within hip hop music and story telling. Hill stated in this interview that the album was really a play on low and high culture coming together to embody rules and lessons for the masses. At the moment, you realized how she took her craft, developed an album through this dichotomy and delivered a message that still stands years after.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a combination of Hip Hop, R&B, soul and reggae; eclectic sounds that produced a masterpiece. Lauryn Hill states that The Miseducation was to tell a story while building a bridge between old and new. Throughout the album, in between songs, you heard the voice of Ras Baraka [a politician, educator and poet] speaking to a group of children about the concepts Hill brought forth in her song. These interludes were symbolic of the gap that Hill was bridging, because as the children learned from Ras Baraka, he too became educated by the youth.

[Watch the interview here: http://www.bey0ndthelyrics.com/2011/08/miseducation.html ]

Beyond the Lyrics celebrates Hill's prodigious way of delivering her message of love and spiritual guidance through the music she utilized and the spaces she entered [recording in New York and Jamaica]. Beyond the Lyrics celebrates her transformation of concepts that may have been deemed unimportant to now, life lessons.

"Hill was always an outstanding rapper, but Miseducation showed her to be a more than a competent singer...By turns socially engaged, personally revelatory, and, in the hip-hop tradition, a bit arrogant, Miseducation managed to filter hip hop through a womanist lens, resulting in an album that appealed to an improbably wide spectrum of listeners. Miseducation made Hill a superstar of epic proportions: She earned five Grammys and found herself at the focal point at Hip Hop's crossover into mainstream"
- Rolling Stone Album Guide, 2004