Announcer: Listener-supported WNYC Studios.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm so glad you're here. On today's show, we'll speak with the director of a new documentary about jazz great Wayne Shorter. We'll speak with author Edan Lepucki about her new novel Time's Mouth ahead of her appearance tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. We'll have another small-stakes, big-opinions conversation coming your way on today's docket, is a hotdog a sandwich?

Discuss amongst yourselves and weigh in on our Instagram poll, and get ready to call in next hour.

First, tomorrow marks 25 years since the release of one of the most significant albums ever. The first hip-hop album to win a Grammy for album of the year. For another installment of Silver Liner Notes, this is Ms. Lauryn Hill.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Everything Is Everything]

Kousha Navidar: On August 25th, 1998, Lauryn Hill released The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. She was only 23 at the time, but already had an award-winning vocalist and rapper as a member of the Fugees. The last Fugees album, The Score, had come out in 1996. Hill's bandmate Wyclef Sean had been the first Fugee to release a solo debut in the summer of 1997. Both albums had met widespread acclaim. The pressure was on for Lauryn Hill to show the world that she could stand on her own, too.

After writing and recording sessions between South Orange, New Jersey, New York City, and Kingston, Jamaica, Lauryn Hill dropped an album that drew from hip hop, R&B, soul, her relationship with the Fugee's bandmates, her relationship with God, and her baby boy Zion. The album debuted at number one on Billboard. She was the first solo female rapper to reach that spot. The following year, she earned 10 Grammy nominations and walked away with five wins. We're talking album of the Year, artist of the Year, best R&B album, and two song awards for the album's big hit Doo Wop, That Thing.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Doo Wop, That Thing]

Kousha Navidar: Miseducation remains the only solo studio album Lauryn Hill ever released. Just this week, though, Lauryn Hill announced an anniversary tour for the album. It'll start this fall co-headlined by the Fugees. Joining me now to discuss the legacy of the album is poet, essayist, and author Hanif Abdurraqib. Hanif, welcome back to all of it.

Hanif Abdurraqib: Yes, thank you for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Listeners, we want to know where were you when The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out. When do you remember first hearing it? What are the moments you returned to it? What does the album represent to you? What's your favorite song? Let us know. You can call 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Hanif, we'd love to hear from you. Do you remember the first time you heard Miseducation?

Hanif Abdurraqib: Yes, I do. Largely because it was a late summer album. The summer of 1998 was a really great summer for rap records. Miseducation coming out so late in the summer was unique, especially because this was prime back-to-school time for most folks. We'd already kind of gotten a really great John Forté record, who was aligned with the Fugees. There was a great Noriega record, first Cam'ron record. Just kind of the M.O.P. record that I remember loving a lot.

Lauryn Hill's album also came out the same day and was the second Xzibit album. I say all this because this was an era where if you were going to the record store, at least in my neighborhood, and buying a physical copy of something, you generally had to choose between one thing. You had to pick one thing because you didn't have money for both. Lauryn Hill's album sold out everywhere. Almost everyone I knew had the Xzibit record because that was the one you get your hands on, except for one person who'd gotten it on our block and played it in his car for everybody.

[laughter]

It was this really wonderful late summer experience of gathering around a car, because it was such an anticipated album. The way albums are released now are different in a lot of ways, but one big way is that there's no slow anticipation. By the time Miseducation came out, there'd only been the one single Doo Wop (That Thing), and that single came out late. The single was an August single. We hadn't heard anything else. We didn't even hear it for the first time before it took the world by storm. It was really great.

Kousha Navidar: Do you remember the first time you listened to it or maybe the first couple times the sound that stood out to you the most where you're like, "This is something special, this is different."?

Hanif Abdurraqib: I don't know. To be clear, I was like-- how old would I have had to be? 14, 13. I think my critical ear might not have been well developed. I remember being delighted by a series of sounds or the fact that there wasn't one sound, but a multitude of sounds, but particularly, I was happy that it seemed to be-- I love The Score. Score is one of my favorite albums of all time, but the task with Miseducation was to detach herself from the Sonic template, and the constraints of working within a group, and Wycliffe had achieved that with the Carnival.

I was mostly delighted by how different everything sounded. I was delighted to get to that Four Seasons cover at the very end. Even as a kid, I knew the Four Seasons. I loved the Four Season songs, and to hear her spin on Can't Take My Eyes Off You, he was really special. There's just a wide breadth and wide range of sounds happening on the album that at the time felt really refreshing.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, multitude of sounds and also soundscapes. The places in which those sounds exist. The album starts out with a skit that's less than a minute long, featuring the former B poet and current mayor of Newark, actually, Ras Baraka. He plays a teacher reading out a classroom roll call, and when he gets to Lauryn Hill's name, there's no response. He'd also later become a school principal, which I think is interesting. Let's hear that clip.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Intro]

Kousha Navidar: Hanif, that classroom theme reappears in song outros throughout the album. As a listener, what do that intro and the skits do for you?

Hanif Abdurraqib: Skits. I'm a big proponent of the skit on the rap album as a way to unify theme as a writer. When a writer says working on a book, there are ways that we insert things or insert repetition or returns to remind people that they're traveling along a consistent thread thematically. In skits, be it with [unintelligible 00:08:50] , a few years after this, Kanye West would do this with the College Dropout using the same educational theme.

Everything remains in a tight container, no matter what is happening in the songs, you are to understand that there's an overarching theme that music [unintelligible 00:09:08] existing within the album that gets to manifest itself through these returns and these skits and these moments. Yes, I've always been huge on skits, on interludes, on these revisits because it almost then allows the album itself, the body of the album to have more freedom. Not just sonically, but the themes in the song, you can tie them to anything you want as long as people understand that they're navigating through a tight container or a space that sticks to the album on a whole.

Kousha Navidar: You are suggesting that the fact that it starts off in the school and there's that frame around it, lets Lauryn Hill experiment further or do other things you otherwise wouldn't be able to?

Hanif Abdurraqib: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Can you tell me more? Tell us more about that.

Hanif Abdurraqib: I think you get to expand on what the definition of education and miseducation means, too. You have convinced people just by the presence of that skit that what's happening in the album is an examination of someone who has perhaps turned away from whatever schooling has meant to them, and they have undertaken their own schooling. For example, the lead single, Doo-Wop (That Thing), is almost like a warning, where it is a song approached from someone who's lived a certain way, now telling the word of what they've lived. There are a lot of moments like that on this record that feel like Ms. Hill herself is teaching, but not preaching. Teaching, but not being too preachy. I Used To Love Him feels-- Even the things that are coming from a place seemingly of pain are presented in this way that is almost from a standpoint of someone who's lived, and learned, and now articulating what they've learned.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to Hanif Abdurraqib about Lauryn Hill's 25th anniversary album, that came out 25 years ago, to be clear, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. We're welcoming calls and texts from listeners. If you have an experience listening to this album, you have an opinion about the album, please call us or text us. The number, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can hit us up on social, too. Our tag, our handle, @AllOfItWNYC. Let's move on into the album. Hanif, coming out of the Intro, the first actual song on the album is Lost Ones, which in an album that spans rap and soul, falls way more on the rap side of thing. In an interview with Font Magazine, you were asked about the top five MCs of all time. You said, "It changes by the day. Today, in no order, I'd say Rakim, Ghostface, Slick Rick, MC Lyte, and Lauryn Hill." Why does Lauryn Hill belong in that top five?

Hanif Abdurraqib: When I go back to, say, The Score I think, within a group setting, it's actually a group that is more than two people, I don't know if there's ever been a better individual performance on a group record than Lauryn Hill performance in The Score. That spans any genre. I think what makes her good and great for me, and as someone who's worthy of-- Of course top five MCs is fluid and for me it does really shift daily, but what puts her in that conversation always is her lyrical dexterity, the ferocity with which she attacks beat to beat and the [unintelligible 00:12:54] on top of it.

She is clever and playful, even though I do think that she is vocally assertive. I think the way she stacks syllables and rhymes. In the Fu-Gee-La remix there is,

catch me in my Mitsubishi, eatin' sushi, bumpin' Fugees

It's everything is so compact and rhymes collapse on top of each other. I think Lost Ones is one of her great performances because it does walk that line between being firm and assertive, but not preachy, and there is moments of [inaudible 00:13:36] brilliance, there is sharp narration. Verse two, specifically. When I think about Lauryn Hill, I think of her as an MC first. I know that if we were to maybe pull apart her entire catalog, she might be rapping less than singing. Including the Unplugged record, and the work on the two Fugees records, and Miseducation. It'd be close to even, I think, but every time she raps, she really makes the most of those performances.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to some of those characteristics that you're describing in action. Here is Lost Ones. Let's hear a clip.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Lost Ones]

.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking about Lauryn Hill's album, The Miseducation of Laury Hill, and we're inviting listeners to chat with us. Let's go to a caller. Lyren from Long Island City. How are you?

Lyren: Fine. Thank you so much for taking my call. Long time listener, second time caller.

Kousha Navidar: [chuckles] Wonderful. What's your experience with this album?

Lyren: A lot of my, I would have to say, 30-years-old plus experiences surround my daughter, and she was not yet a year old when the album came out. Getting ready to be a year in a couple of months. This was an album that I played all the time as she was coming up. Probably right around 1 1/2 because she was an early talker, she was singing the lyrics. When she would sing the words to Doo Wop, she'd throw her hand up in the air at certain parts of the song like, "Watch out." [laughs] To me it was almost like this playbook of self-love, of empowerment for what I was hoping for my daughter to have as a woman. The whole album was just amazing. Personal Note, Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You just blew away the originals. Like, "What?"

Kousha Navidar: Lyren, thank you so much for calling and sharing that. That relationship you're talking about with your daughter, I'm sure it made such a big difference of living through that album. It's interesting because we think about those relationships which come up so much in the album. It makes me think of one song that you, Hanif, chose for us to talk about, Nothing Even Matters, which is a fairly uncomplicated love song. It's about the whole world disappearing when you have someone to love. What makes this work so well and feel unique as a love song.

Hanif Abdurraqib: I think it's such a beautiful singular ballad. Also, her and D'angelo voices pair extremely well together. D'angelo is a-- For all of his talents, I think the one talent that sometimes gets overlooked is that he is a wonderful collaborator. He's an incredible duet partner in any kind of realm where he's on the hook of a rap song, I think that he's so good at blending in, but not overtaking when he certainly could overtake with his abilities.

This is a great example of how D'Angelo was allowing Lauren Hill to guide him, and then the end of this song particularly, so wonderful because of the anaphora, the repetition as the song fades out where it almost feels like they're locked in a room in conversation trying to overcome something surreal. I like a love song that maybe places a listener in the position of a witness and it feels like you're really witnessing two people in the midst of just the surreal feeling that you then want for yourself. The song manifests that well.

Kousha Navidar: What a wonderful description. Let's hear a clip from that.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Nothing Even Matters]

Kousha Navidar: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Hanif Abdurraqib for more of our Silver Liner Notes conversation of the 25th anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Plus, we'll be joined by Karen Good Marable, who interviewed Lauryn Hill for the 1998 Vibe cover story. We'll be right back.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, filling in for Alison Stewart. As part of our series Silver Liner Notes, we're talking about The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which came out 25 years ago tomorrow. My guest is poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib. Joining us now is journalist, Karen Good Marable, who interviewed Hill in 1998, when the album came out, for a Vibe Magazine cover story. Karen, welcome to All Of It.

Karen Good Marable: Hey, how are you?

Kousha Navidar: I'm great. Thanks so much for joining us. In my hand right now, I am lucky to be holding that Vibe cover story that you wrote right here. I looked through it, it's wonderful. I'd love to ask you something. I think everyone would love to hear from you. What stands out to you now about the conversation you and Lauryn had when you wrote this piece?

Karen Good Marable: When I think about it now, I think about she was really young. You forget that she was only 23, I think, at the time, maybe 24. The other thing that was beautiful about it that you don't see much anymore is the intimacy of the interview. It was in South Orange, New Jersey at her mama's house. We were sitting on the steps. Her kid was there, Zion, and I think she was pregnant as well but hadn't disclosed it yet. I remember that intimacy. That's the kind of, in magazine terms, we used to call that color, that you can't get anymore in interviews. It was a beautiful moment.

Kousha Navidar: We're getting a bunch of texts coming in right now, and I'd love to read some out to you. Let me give a quick call out to all of our listeners. If you'd like to join the conversation, we're taking your calls and your texts about The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, came out 25 years ago. You can call us or text 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Karen, Hanif, here are some of the texts that we've got coming in. I'll read a few off. First one, "I was a new teacher in the Lower East Side, and I would teach songs from the record to my high schoolers in a poetry unit and play the album ALL THE TIME. Caps lock there."

Max from Brooklyn texted us, said, "We saw Lauryn Hill in a little town in New Zealand, in a little town at a reggae festival. It was transformative. She came to PLAY," caps again. A lot of caps here, people are really into it. Another text, "My name is Denise from New Jersey, and I LOVED LAURYN HILL," all in caps, "from the time she was with the Fugees. Her voice was strong and she was little, but had a badass look. I was small and assertive, so I felt represented. I loved hearing a strong woman rapping and singing." Karen, I'd love to know, does anything from those texts stand out to you?

Karen Good Marable: Yes, I get it. I think that then and even now, Lauryn is special but it was crazy. She was a supernova. The album was also super empowering in a way, I think, that was deliberate, but I think that Lauryn was standing in her power and at the height-- I don't want to say the height of her powers, because again, she was really, really young, but she was up there. She was like, "Okay, here we are." I guess I would say the height of her powers at that moment, like she would had risen to that. It was stunning to see and just in how she presented herself on stage.

She was a fashion girl, but she was also giving me Rita Marley from the I-Threes. You know what I'm saying? She was giving me vintage, but she was giving me label. She's this brown skin dreadlocked girl or young woman who wasn't afraid of color. She just represented a certain type of woman at that time that we didn't see that much. It wasn't promoted that much. Yes, I get it. It was star power. I remember her on the cover of Time, I remember her on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, I remember her on the cover of Rolling Stone. It was crazy and it was beautiful and it was right. It made sense.

Kousha Navidar: We asked you to tell us if there was a specific song that you felt especially connected to and you highlighted the song When It Hurts So Bad. I'd love to play a clip maybe in like 10 seconds. What do you think you would want to say about the song before we play it?

Karen Good Marable: What I thought or what I think about that song is it was her being extremely vulnerable. I would like to say, too, that she's talking about unrequited love but she took all of that into the song. She never sold out folks even in the interview that she and I had. She didn't sell anybody out. She didn't name names, but she took it to the song. That's the beauty of that. That's why I like this song.

Kousha Navidar: Let's hear it.

[music - Lauryn Hill: When It Hurts So Bad]

Kousha Navidar: That was wonderful. Karen, thank you so much. Yes, no, sorry, go ahead.

Karen Good Marable: Did you hear that Donny Hathaway moment? I'm sorry, I forgot about that part. Like that, I loved real real hard ones, like that's a Donny Hathaway run. That's a Donny Hathaway moment. You could tell that girl was deep in her bag. She was studying the music. I forgot about that part. I had to throw that in there.

Kousha Navidar: No, I'm so happy that you did. It's the vulnerability that you're talking about really does go through, and I think that's fantastic. Karen, thank you so much for hopping on and talking to us.

Hanif Abdurraqib: By the way. Hi, Karen. It's good to hear you.

Karen Good Marable: Hey, Hanif, how are you doing?

Hanif Abdurraqib: Good.

Kousha Navidar: Hanif, we're getting a lot of callers in. I'd love to get to another one. Let's hear from Mara in New Jersey. Hi, Mara.

Mara: Hi.

Kousha Navidar: Tell us, what's your relationship with the album?

Mara: Oh my goodness. I was sharing with the screener, from the outset this powerful, tiny but powerful Black woman who came on. This album was such a testament to Black Love. I believe there's a song I tried to recall with the screener, Sweetest Thing I've Ever Known. It was just this, and then she became someone who got with Jamaican royalty. At the time it was just such a testament to just being who you are, as powerful as you are, and loving what you have and what's open to you. It was just amazing to me.

Kousha Navidar: Do you remember the place where you were where you first heard that album, Mara?

Mara: Oh, I was just out of high school in Jamaica. Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Mara, thank you so much. Hanif, I want to touch on something that Mara was talking about. It sounds like this spans so many generations. Can you talk a little bit about the sense you would get regarding where this album stands with young listeners and later generations?

Hanif Abdurraqib: I think when this album came out, it was generationally expansive and in part because of what Karen was talking about where Lauryn Hill is really schooled in the performance of-- she's in a lineage of old soul singers and not just soul singers. That cover, not just the [unintelligible 00:28:02] cover, the Killing Me Softly cover, but the Four Seasons cover Can't Take My Eyes Off You on Miseducation.

All these things were transformed in the way that only she could, but they were done in a spirit that I think really honored the original forms of the songs, which got people in the door who might otherwise not have a high interest in Lauryn Hill. I think people, especially I think Black listeners really appreciate singers, and singers who sing with a real level of soul and attention to detail and care for the language of singing.

This album, I remember when it came out. I remember being in school and older teachers listening to it as well as young folks listening to it on the bus. Now, I think people have different approaches to it. Me and my friends loved Lost Ones and Doo-Wop, while some of the older folks maybe love Nothing Even Matters or anything like that, but it was still this album that managed to have something for a wide range of people. Ms. Hill as a performer, I think, and as a writer, is someone who is unique because she seems so aware of what her influences are musically and not wanting to stray from them too far, but also injecting some of her own unique brilliance into those influences.

Kousha Navidar: Now, when you think of those personal connections, there's one caller that I think has her own personal connection. Let's talk to Alicia in Queens, New York. Hi, Alicia.

Alicia: Hi there, good to be with you.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you. What's your relationship with the album?

Alicia: I grew up in South Orange, New Jersey and I was just one generation after Ms. Hill in the community and so I was 10 in 1998. My friends and I grew up with this album, and I grew up to be a poet. Lovely to hear Hanif speak about this work because it's bringing together two of my most important things. I grew up to be a poet, and I think that listening to Ms. Hill's real attention to detail on her specificity, I'm thinking of like Every Ghetto, Every City where she's name-dropping South Orange Avenue and name-dropping particular locations from our hometown. That naming and attention to detail lets her work be both really specific and also really universal because every hometown has their name drop locations.

I appreciate hearing about how Ms. Hill's performances really display her influences, but I think it's also cool to think about who she has influenced. I grew up in church youth group with a woman named Solana Rowe, who now goes by SZA. SZA was just same age as me, growing up in this same artistic community. I definitely think of her as an heir to Ms. Lauryn Hill's work.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Two musicians and a poet from the same community. That's a vibrant community you're a part of, Alicia. That's wonderful. Hanif, how does that resonate with you as you hear Alicia talk about how it's so connected and that this community brings out this beautiful artistry?

Hanif Abdurraqib: I think that is equal parts unique. It's also in a way, depending on the community, we think about pockets of artistic communities in New York. Kind of uncommon, which is great. I do want to touch on a thing. I am also interested to look at and think about Ms. Hill's tree of influence, the folks that she has influenced. I don't know if, part of me thinks that there are a great handful of those artists now, and I think the great thing about the endurance of her work, and in a way I don't like to use the word mythology because it treats it as though she's like no longer existing, but the larger-than-life aspect of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill specifically.

Not just in terms of its accolades, but its actual enduring quality. I think we'll be seeing people influenced by this record for years and years. Like folks who are maybe just getting started now in music or folks who haven't even gotten started yet. This is one of those albums that I think, one, it's mind-blowing that it's 25 years old to think about. I think this is one of those records that the folks of us who grew up with it, some of us are parents now, some of us are elder community members to people now.

This is one of those records you hand down. I remember getting handed down records when I was a kid, records that my parents loved. Because this endures and still today sounds as good as it did when it came out, I think this is one of those records that will live and live and live. That means that the tree of influence that Ms. Hill has created will keep growing.

Alison Stewart: One of those songs that has endured, at least for me, and I'm sure many people listening as well, is, Can't Take My Eyes off of You. This is another song that you suggested, Hanif. I'd love to go out on it. We've been talking to Hanif Abdurraqib. Thanks, Hanif, so much for joining us and talking.

Hanif Abdurraqib: Thank you for having me. It was a real pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen.

[music - Lauryn Hill: Can't Take My Eyes off of You]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.