60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Ex-Factor”—Lauryn Hill

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Rob explores the memory of a lost love in Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor.” Tracking her rise to fame first as a member of the Fugees then as a solo star, he dissects how she spoke her truth and in doing so became one of the greatest singers and rappers ever. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Daphne Brooks Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Chang is an avid student and fan of sports, music, art, film, and of course, food. With a rotating cast of guests, they have conversations that cover everything from the creative process to his guest's guiltiest pleasures. Followed the Dave Chang Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. February 1999, Grammy Night, Warren Hill, lightly dazed, but totally luminous, frozen in time, and a time-honored, oops, I won too many Grammys pose. You know this pose is classic. It's when you win too many Grammys in one night and they dump

all the Grammy statues in your arms and take pictures of you while you stand there looking dazed and hopefully luminous. Think Adele in 2012, cradling at least five of her six statues from that night like a giant clunky, gilded baby. This was

for Adele's album 21. In 2017 she won five more Grammys for her album 25 and she held all five of those statues at one time in a simple, elegant V shape, with her elbows spread as wide as possible. Veteran savvy, think Bruno Mars in 2018. Holding the six Grammys, he won for 24K Magic, and wearing sunglasses and looking extra pleased with himself. As well he should. Excellent structure to Bruno's Oops I Won Too Many Grammys pose a four Grammy Foundation at the bottom, with two more on top. Think Beyonce in 2004. Holding the five,

five statues she won that night in pretty much a straight horizontal line. Almost military formation. Physically improbable as that seems. Geometry bows to Beyonce. This is Dangerously in Love Era. Five wins for Beyonce, but none in major categories. Curious. Think Taylor Swift in 2010.

Fearless era, holding three Grammy statues and, yes, dropping a fourth. In one famous picture, it's in mid-air, elbow height, it's gone. Taylor's mouth is frozen in an O shape, as in oh shit. Taylor Swift's award show is always delightful. Two more, Alicia Keys, 2002. Lavished with industry praise for her debut album songs in A minor. Five Grammy's chaotic structure. She's sitting down.

That's cheating. One statue balanced in her lap. Three scooped up in her right arm. One held a loft in her left hand. Just chaos. And finally, my personal favorite in this. genre, Nora Jones. Grammy Night 2003. Her gentle blockbuster debut album, Come Away With Me, wins her five statues in my favorite of Nora's many remarkable oops. I won too many

Grammy's poses. She's got one statue coyly tucked under her chin. But there's also the one where she looks extra sheepish, embarrassed almost, sort of a yeesh face. Like the grimace emoji. The grimace emoji is by far my personal most used emoji. Make of that way you will. But there's another photo where Nora is, yes, dropping her fifth statue. It's also elbow height. It's also gone. Her mouth is also frozen in an O shape. But there's another photo from a split second later where the statues dropped another foot

with the golden gramophone horn pointing pretty much straight down. Disaster is imminent. And Nora's looking right at the falling statue and looking genuinely aggrieved as though she just actually dropped a baby. It's hilarious. Of all of these sheepish Grammy winners, Warren, Hill looks, I think, the most serene, the coolest and the calmest. Five statues in her arms, no real structure, just an unfussy but highly effective jumble. No way she drops one ever.

She's smiling. She's beaming, but she's not mugging for all these cameras. No need to oversell the moment. Radiant with self-possession, which is odd maybe. What fascinates me about the oops I won too many Grammys pose is the element of embarrassment, of unease, of trepidation, just this tangible vibe of, oh shit, whether they drop one or not. It's too many Grammys, too many statues, too many cameras. It's too much lavish industry. Praise. It's too much attention. It's too much. And in all of their faces, in Adels and Bruno's and Beyoncé's and Taylor's and Alicias and Noras, you see, of course, immense pride and satisfaction and wonder and politely muted delight. But you also see just the tiniest hint of, like,

recoiling. Their wave is cresting but already pulling back. They're pulling it back. What I at least imagine I can read to some extent on all of their faces is, I never want this much attention again. It's odd that in this photo anyway, I don't much get that vibe from Lauren Hill at all. Lauren had, of course, won five Grammys that night for her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, which is, I think it's fair to say, a full-blown masterpiece. I don't think I've used that word here yet, not even in the cake episode. And I'm glad I haven't used that word until now. Miseducation came out in August 1998. And half a year or so later, it became the first ever rap album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. No Black Woman has won the Grammy for

album of the year since. Curious. That night at the Grammys, Lauren had, of course, also performed. She sang the song To Zion, Carlos Santana on guitar. Zion was Lauren's firstborn son, born in August 1997. I love this song. I love pretty much all these songs. But Two Zion immediately hit me a little harder somehow. Whoa, this crazy circle of saints. I knew his life deserved a chance.

But everybody told me to be smart. To Zion is a song about the predatory music industry, advising Lauren Hill, not to have her baby. And Lauren Hill refusing this advice. An excellent song choice for the night. She historically kicked ass at the Grammys. Way before I even had kids, I found to Zion profoundly moving, this part especially. But instead, I chose to use my heart. But instead, I chose to use my heart. Simple, elegant, perfect. I hate to tell you this, it's a wonderful, precious, joyous thing. But still, I'm very sorry if I'm the person to inform you that Zion Marley,

Lauren Hill's firstborn son with Rohan Marley, the first of their five children together. Zion Marley and his publicity shy girlfriend celebrated the birth of their daughter, Zafanya in 2017, which makes Lauren Hill a grandmother. She is now a grandmother many times over and makes me, personally, 850 years old. Tough break for me. Congrats to everyone else involved. That's a killer hook, though. Always love that hook.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we're doing X Factor by Lauren Hill. There's like 10 other songs on the miseducation of Lauren Hill we could have done. But it's X Factor. I feel strongly about this. Tough call, though. For example, for the last several weeks, my favorite song in the history of recorded music

has actually been a miseducation deep cut called Nothing Even Matters. Lauren Hill duetting with DeAngelo. You got to be kidding me. Just Lauren Hill, softly singing no more, no more, no more in the background behind DeAngelo. Unbelievable. Is this a deep cut? It's not a deep cut. It's track 12, but I sense I'm super late to this one. There's so much loud and brash and relentless excellence on miseducation that usually the album somehow totally wipes me out before he even got to Nothing Even Matters. It's that kind of album that for a decade or two, I could somehow overlook two of the greatest R&B singers of their generation singing a sumptuous slow jam love song to each other.

The idea is that nothing even matters except for each other. I'm obsessed with this song right now is that I keep trying to guess how many finger snaps are coming, and somehow I always guess wrong. It's bizarre. It's a simple pattern, actually, but I suppose I keep getting distracted. Still, there's no place I'd rather be, because nothing even matters. This is DeAngelo three years after his first album, 1995's Brown Sugar, and two years before his second album, 2000's voodoo, featuring, of course, the hit single Untitled. How Does it feel, whose video, of course, turned DeAngelo into an absurdly chiseled sex god, as though he'd spent six years pumping iron in preparation to himself hold like 35 solid gold Grammy statues simultaneously.

Warren and DeAngelo, in this moment, singing to one another here in 1998, were arguably the two humans best poised to push R&B and rap conversant R&B, especially into the 21st century. and poise to define and dominate rap conversant R&B in the 21st century. A larger part, though, of why I'm obsessed with nothing even matters right now is the poignant of the fact that Lauren and DiAngelo have both spent the vast majority of the past 20 years confounding those expectations, frustrating our desires, discarding our adulation, and refusing to perform in any sense of that word.

It turns out they were totally serious about what all didn't. matter. At times both Lauren and DeAngelo have struggled personally and publicly, of course, but at other times they've just declined, bowed out, shrugged off the mantle of greatness. It could be that our adulation poisoned both of them. My former ringer colleague Lindsay Zolads wrote a great piece about the 20th anniversary of miseducation back in 2018. And she quotes the critic and author Joan Morgan, who wrote a whole book about the 20th anniversary of miseducation. And in that book, her fellow hip-hop scholar, Dream Hampton, says, I remember thinking, I wish we could deal soberly with Lauren. We should have been more sober about how we took her on.

What we did instead was crown her fucking Nina Simone. We did the same thing with DeAngelo. We told him he was Marvin Gay. And we told Lauren that she was Nina Simone. And they each had one fucking album. It wasn't fair to them because they started to believe it. DeAngelo eventually put out a third album, but the point stands. Each individual finger snap and nothing even matters represents another Grammy statue. Lauren and DeAngelo dropped before they could even win it. None of that matters. They won't sing for us if it doesn't bring them happiness.

They won't release a new album that reminds us of their beloved old albums if that feels like work to them, if that feels dishonest, if that feels confining. Warren Hill's entire career is animated by the tension between what. what the world wants from her and what she needs from the world or what she thinks we need from her. Sometimes that means she sings, but more often, it very much does not. The way forward seemed clear enough back in 1993 when Lauren Hill, then only 17, co-starred with Whoopi Goldberg and Sister Act 2, colon, back in the habit. Great pun. This is Lauren and her co-star Tanya Blount singing Their Eye is on the Sparrow.

Great scene. Overall, the original sister act was way better, but that's what you get for trying to make lightning strike twice. Lauren Hill was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1975. She knew what she wanted to be early on, and I'm guessing she knew what everyone else wanted her to be even earlier than that. Here she is in 1988, about to do amateur night at the Apollo. What song you're singing?

Who's loving you? Who's loving you? Well, come on, Lauren. We're going to love. Sing for us. Yeah. Then Lauren gets booed. This clip resurfaces periodically and triggers a bunch of blog posts, some with the headline,

young Warren Hill gets booed off stage. But as author, critic and fellow podcaster Hanif Abdu, Akeem noted a while back, young Lauren Hill for sure does not get booed off stage. She gets booed quite robustly, but she guts it out and finishes the song to equally robust applause. Fast forward three years to 1991 and 16-year-old Lauren Hill has joined the cast of CBS soap opera As the World Turns, playing the role of Kira Johnson, a troubled young runaway who falsely accuses Scottish adventurer Duncan McKekney of making sexual advances toward her at the Earl Mitchell Center. Yes, that Duncan McKekney, the fan favored As the World Turns character who faked his own death. from 1981 to 1986, that was an actual plotline on this show. What was he doing for five years?

He broke out of jail in 87 and was found not guilty of murder later in 87. And anyway, it turns out that guy wasn't even dead. Thank you to Soapcentral.com for that information, which I'm sure is entirely accurate. Here's Kira singing, You Who Brought Me Love at, I believe this is Duncan McCackney's wedding. Actually, one of Duncan's three marriages. This clip is worth seeking out just for the half dozen fraught. melodramatic soap opera gazes exchanged between various tremulous

as the world turns characters as Kira is singing this show is on the air for 54 years Roberta Flack had sung You Who Brought Me Love on her 1988 album Oasis by the way I think it's fair to say Lauren does Roberta justice

and not for the last time These words won't say enough for you Fast forward three years in Lauren Hill, aka L. Boogie, has joined an adventurous teenage hip-hop trio called Fugis, as in Refugees, also featuring Haitian singer-rapper producer Wyclef Jean and his singer-rapper producer cousin Praz. The first Fuji's record, released in 1994, called Blunted On Reality, and it stinks. Well, okay, I had a remarkably severe adverse reaction to Blunted on reality. the first time I heard it. I think because it only occasionally sounds like the Fuji's

as the larger world would come to know and love and I suppose mourn them. Or more to the point, it only occasionally seems to sound like the Fujis themselves heard themselves. Two years later, in 1996, Lauren Wyclef, and Praz are going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline, Are the Fujis the future of rock and roll? I remember being mildly scandalized by that headline when I was 18. And in that cover story, Wyclef will lament that on Blunted on reality,

their label masters and producers did not understand what the group was going for, especially when it came to Wyclef's vocal style. Wyclef says he was told, you got to be more aggressive, you got to scream, listen to Onyx. End quote, yes, the onyx that did slam. So here we have Wyclef Jeanne in 1994 on a song called Nappy Heads, trying to wrap the hook like he's in Onyx, the original version of Nappyheads, not the remix.

Alas! You know, Wutan Clans protect your neck, the classic jizzle line, who's your ANR, a mountain climber who plays the electric guitar? I quote that all the time. I can just picture that Fuji's early A&R guy fumbling through Foxy Lady

on a Fender Stratocaster atop Mount Rainier before calling up Wyclef on a chunky satellite phone and being like, you should rap with the dudes and autics. Just stupendous artist mismanagement. No wonder these people don't trust anybody else. I have come to appreciate the Blunted on Reality Record for those moments when the Fugis transcend their circumstances

and ignore everyone else in the room. The far more celebrated Nappy Heads remix, for example, produced by Salam Remy, the Mona Lisa version. Here's what Leifl sounds like when he's not goaded into grabbing the mic in a rage. And here comes Lauren Hill. Could I get a date on Friday? And if you're busy, I wouldn't buy ticket Saturday.

And here comes Lauren Hill. The chemistry and really even the volatility between Wycleft, Lauren, and Pra's greatness. I'm not here to play favorites. I'm not here to be the billionth person to insist that she was the immediate breakout star and should have gone solo immediately because that was already happening, that kind of talk after their first record. What I will say is especially by comparison,

Lauren does sound fully formed from the start. There's no warm up, no gestation period, no sitting around waiting for her to come into her own. Ignoring dopey A&R suggestions came as naturally to her as everything else did. I don't puff blood so I always got my breath. Never had to battle with a bulletproof vest. They call me cockweful, but I still kick with chest. I know what Jerry girls because I'm not from the way. Shout out sublime.

Vocab is another great song on Blunted on reality. The beats mostly just Wycliffe on acoustic guitar. It's simple. It's perfect. It knocks you over with the feather. It's the Fugees. Plus, once again, the remix is even better. Let it be known that Lauren Hill was rapping.

People think they really know me. And I pay the toll fighting for my own soul before she even got famous. Blunted on reality flopped. Didn't sell. Didn't get great reviews. Didn't succeed. Not shocking. Not a bad thing in the long run.

It succeeded really in the sense that it did just well enough that the Fugees knew not to make another record like it, but they still got to make another record, which they called the score, as in it's time to settle the score. The score came out on the day before Valentine's Day in 1996, and it hit number one in the Billboard album chart, reigned as the best-selling rap album of all time for a while there, eventually sold 22 million copies worldwide and made Wycliffe Praz and especially Lauren super famous. Suddenly, they were the future of rock and roll. Can I tell you something that inexplicably really annoyed me about this album at the time? All the cross talk at the beginning of killing me softly with his song. I can't explain this or really defend it for that matter. It just sounded so cluttered and obnoxious to cluttered and obnoxious 18-year-old me. Maybe it's an 80s.

PhD thing. I don't know. Why Clef all being like, hey, hell, you know you got the lyrics? All right. Okay. Of course she's got the lyrics. We get it. Get on with it. I got over it. You know why I got over it? Lauren Hill. Even Wyclef right there annoyed me. Why are you counting? Piped down. Be glad you didn't know me when I was 18. Probably. Killing me softly, of course, is where Lauren Hill once again does Roberta Flack justice. Roberta's album, Killing Me Softly, which leads off with Roberta's then definitive version of the title. track came out in 1973. One thing to recommend about Roberta's version is that there ain't nobody counting in the background. But this is not an Aretha Franklin stealing respect from Otis Redding situation. This is not a cheap, add generic hip-hop beat and call it a remake situation. This is two

masterful singers, about a quarter century apart, agreeing with each other that singers, that songs can be terribly painful. Songs can be deadly. And it turns out the deadliest songs are the prettiest and the softest. Lauren's version doesn't improve or defeat or replace Roberta's version. It immortalizes it. Quick recommendation. I went back to that whole Roberta Flack album,

killing me softly, and I thought you might like to know that it ends with Roberta doing an incredible, nearly 10-minute cover of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, and her version is also immortal. and immortalizing. Speaking of being killed softly. A lovely bit of symmetry, in my opinion,

in terms of masterful singers, commuting with one another across space and time, just thought I'd mention it. I don't think anybody wanted Leonard Cohen trying to hold that note. So earlier, I also mentioned Hanif Abdua Kee, we joined forces with a show called The 11th and did a wonderful podcast

about the Fuji's second album called Time Machine, the score, sides A and B. He talks about seeing the Fuji's freestyling on Yom TV raps. He talks about Haiti, about what Praz and Wycliffe represented as prominent Haitian rappers as voices for refugees worldwide. Musa Kwonga wrote a great piece for the ringer about what this album meant to refugees worldwide. The Fujis might sound like a silly name, but the group did not pick that name randomly or wear it lightly. Hanif talks about the Buga basement in New Jersey, the actual basement of Wyclef's cousin's house with a vast majority of the score was recorded, how casual and chaotic and crucial an environment that was.

The Buga basement was as important to the Fugis as the dungeon was to outcast. As important as Tuf Gong studio was to Bob Marley. Hanif calls the Buga Basement a place where you could be both brilliant and foolish. And Heneif, of course, talks about Lauren, about how growing up he'd play the score on cassette. He'd play the song Ready or Not on his Walkman over and over and make the six-minute walk from his house to the U.D. That's United Dairy Farmer's great ice cream. Try the Blue Moo cookie dough. And when Ready or Not ended, if he rewound the tape and stop the tape right when Ready or Not started again, he'd stroll right through the UDF doors at the precise moment when Lauren wrapped the following.

It's the only way to walk into a UDF. Get two scoops. Blue Mu cookie dough on top of butterscotch cookie. That, of course, is not Lauren Hill's most famous slash infamous line. on Ready or Not. So why you imitating Al Capone? I be needing Simone and defecating on your microphone. I started subscribing to Rolling Stone in 1995 when I was 16.

This may partly explain why I was so obnoxious. The cover stars of my first four issues were Eddie Van Halen, Belly, I love Belly, Tom Petty, and the cast of friends. Anyway, as a consequence, to this day, I have random individual lines from random individual Rolling Stone articles, rattling around in my head, which is why I can tell you that somebody in Rolling Stone at some point complained about this line specifically and said, there had to be a better way to put it. I don't know if there was a better way to put it, though, is it the thing?

Though I should mention that Dreamhampton once said, I don't want to hear anyone say the word defecate anywhere near Nina Simone ever. Okay, possibly there was a better way. Though, of course, while you're mulling that over, Lauren's already singing the Enya and Delphonic's flipping hook. to Ready or Not, and there was definitely not a better way to do that. Tough needle to thread here. I don't have any problem telling you that Lauren Hill is the breakout star of the score. That's not the hottest take you'll hear today.

I don't have a problem telling you that my single favorite moment of harmony, musical or otherwise, on this record is actually Lauren singing the words, aha, along to herself during Ready or Not. Ready or not, here I go. It's the way she leans into that first H and ha. But calling her the breakout star doesn't mean she abandons or defeats the rest of the band. The chemistry and volatility of the Fugis is crucial. And even more crucial if you're hell-bent on ranking them or pitting them against one another from song to song, verse to verse, moment to moment.

The best Fuji songs at least give all three of them a shot at the crown. My jam lately is zealots, also not a hot take, For the flip of Flamingos, I only have eyes for you, of course. I horn emcees like Mephistophiles, bringing swords adamically, secret service keep a close watch as if my name was Kennedy. That's why Cliff shortly before he says your raps are cacophonic, meaning both noisy and shitty. It sounds good when he says it. By this point, everything does. Same deal with Praz.

Violence ain't necessary unless you put bo-we, then get buried like the great mus-o-lini. And for you white is delics. You rap stars are relics No matter who you damage You still a force for pro See Pross sounds great Even when he's shouting out

The Great Mussolini But even here Yeah If you only remember one line From Zellets It's probably this one And even after all my logic In my theory

I add a motherfucker So you ignorant niggins hear me That line teased us up nicely For the miseducation of Lauren Hill Which is loaded up with Logic and Theory

with Naria motherfucker in sight, unless you count the guy, she's singing slash rapping to a decent percentage of the time. Here's the part, though, where I tell you that the first Fuji's extended universe record I ever truly loved was Wycliffe's first solo album, The Carnival from 1997. Excuse me, Wycliffe John presents The Carnival.

I loved this record. I still love this record. Who doesn't love Gone Till November? Wycliffe Raps, Hip-hop turns to the future of rock when I smash a pumpkin on that song. I was far less scandalized by that. I believed him by that point. I love anything can happen.

Who doesn't love anything can happen? Anything can happen. Every man got disciples. Anything that happened. I thought the end of anything can happen was the funniest thing I'd ever heard when I was 19. If you proud, shake what your mama gave you, hey, whether you fat, a slim, bubble, your ting. Fellas, if you need help, use ginseng. The anything can happen video cuts off right there or switches to a clip of his staying alive song right there blew my mind.

Hilarious. Jin Singh. In my defense, I was still technically a teenager. Probably. I was underage for sure. So yeah, I was firmly in the Wyclef camp by 1998, which meant I was rooting for, allegedly, the guy who was about to get his ass kicked up and down the street during the first six minutes of the miseducation of Lauren Hill. It's funny how money changes situation.

Okay, yikes education My emancipation don't fit your equation I was on the humble you on every station Okay, yikes, miseducation begins with a vicious little tune called Lost Ones. It occurs to me that on anything can happen, Wycliffe had also wrapped

money break groups up like the five heartbeats. The Fugis are over at this point, save for the occasional one-off reunion deal. Hmm, we're an increasingly treacherous territory from here on out. As with Alanis Morissettes, you ought to know, or Carly Simons, you're so vain for that matter. Lauren Hill, who is generally very much not available for interviews, has never confirmed or denied who she is addressing on Lost Ones or who she's addressing on X Factor, for that matter. It is widely speculated.

It is casually assumed at this point that she's talking about and to Wycliffe, with whom she had, allegedly, a clandestine romantic relationship. Okay, yikes. Our good friend and fellow ringer podcaster Danielle Smith, host of the stupendish show Black Girl Songbook, devoted an entire episode to Lost Ones with a line-by-line breakdown to bolster Danielle's arguments that Lost Ones is the single greatest disc track

in rap history. Better than Ether, better than hit them up, better than 10% diss, whatever. You got to check that episode out. Episode 6 of Black Girl Songbook, I believe. Danielle feels strongly about this. Danielle is convincing.

Me, I'm struggling to think of a line and a rap song that flows as perfectly in terms of an arrangement of syllables as my emancipation don't fit your equation. Same deal actually with I Know All the Tricks to Kingston. Yikes. Yikes. question leading up to the release of the miseducation of Lauren Hill was whether Lauren's solo album would be more of a rap album or an R&B album. Clearly she could do either. Clearly she could do both. She could do both better than anybody doing either. The answer, if you're even invested in the

rap R&B binary, is that miseducation to my mind tilts more toward R&B. But Lauren's decision to start her R&B tilted album with what could credibly be argued is the single greatest rap disc track of all time is a flex if you'll forgive the term or forgive me using the term can i tell you something that inexplicably really annoyed me about this album at the time all the cross talk at the beginning of do-wop that thing i was still a curmudgeon at this point one day in college i was in a girl's dorm room it was not an amorous or romantic situation or any way i lacked the charisma or wherewithal to turn it into a romantic situation. But she played doo-wop that thing for me. And like a very solemn and ceremonial, this is the best song you'll ever hear in your life type way. When the song ended, she started it again.

So I got to hear the cross talk again. It sounded a little better to me the second time. The doo-wop chorus, of course, already sounded 50,000 times better. That exponential better every single time you hear it, element is a huge part of the miseducation of Lauren Hill for me. Every song gets better every time. It's really something. I'll never. get over nothing even matters as long as I live. Me, not grasping the full majesty of nothing even matters the very first time I heard it, I'll never get over that as long as I live. Maybe this is going to happen to me with every single track on this record. I suspect my next favorite miseducation song is going to be I used to love him. With Mary J. Blige,

speaking of carrying rap conversant R&B into the 21st century, there's something so pleasing and tidy and symmetrical about the closed emotional loop of this chorus. Now I don't. I used to. Love him. Now I don't. You can't say it any better than that. Except Lauren already had.

Who am I kidding? X Factor will always be my favorite miseducation song. My favorite Lauren Hill song. It's in the pantheon of my favorite songs of all time. For the Wu-Tang Clan reference, for starters, the sample of Can It Be All So Simple? For the acknowledgement that it's not simple and never could have been. 25 seconds in and this song is already colossal. X Factor is the second song on Miseducation.

It is the mother of all chest-pounding, slow burn R&B breakup ballads. Well, not the mother of all. There's tons of precedent. And her breaking out with the Roberta Flack song proves that Lauren knows all about the precedents. X Factor is the generational. Apex of all chest pounding, slow burn, R&B breakup ballads. Put it this way. As Aretha Franklin owns the word respect.

As Bobby Brown owns the word prerogative. As Janet Jackson owns the word escapade. So, too, does Lauren Hill own the word reciprocity? X Factor is also widely assumed to be about Wycliffe, Jean, about the disillusion of Lauren's relationship with Wyclef, romantically and otherwise. However, people who truly love and revere the song Lost Once, right? To my mind, it's necessary that you know or think you know who lost once is about. You need to picture exactly whose ass.

Lauren Hill is kicking up and down the street. Whereas X Factor, it enhances the song greatly, of course, if you've got a specific person in mind who Lauren is addressing in a gossipy flea-flit-wood Mac Taylor Swift naming names sense. But I think X-Factor is heartbreaking and electrifying even if you keep Wycliffe. out of it. You can pretend she's singing to anybody. Whoever she's singing to, this is one of the hardest lines in modern pop music history. The hardness of that line only reveals itself, though later in the song when she tweaks the line ever so slightly. Quick production note, I'd like to shout out my subconscious. Did you see what I've been doing here? Did you figure

it out before I did? I figured it out just now. Did you know that I've been running out the clock on this conversation? Shout out to my subconscious for providing me with, as of this exact moment, 6,154 words on the topic of Lauren Hill and the Lauren Hill song, X Factor, which means that in terms of the space and time remaining, I have, let's say, less than 446 words to both finish rhapsodizing about X Factor and address the small matter of the last 20 plus years in the life and times of Lauren Hill. If I turn in 7,000 words, my editor will have me arrested. I'm planning, at least, to cap this at 6,500 to be safe. 261 words left. 258, 257. I thought I wanted to talk to you in granular and possibly even grueling detail about the post-miseducation adventures and misadventures of Lauren Hill.

Turns out I didn't, or my subconscious didn't. We're going to have to compress. because for one thing, I'm not done queuing up individual Hall of Fame lines from X Factor yet. Because no one's Army more than you than no one ever will. Is this song maybe about all the people,

the millions of people who bought and loved and canonized the miseducation of Lauren Hill and then insisted that Lauren Hill make another album just like it or just as good as it? And then another, and then another and then another, sing for us. 116 words.

It's Lauren Hill tape MTV unplugged in July 2001. The record came out in 2002. It's nearly two hours long. No songs for miseducation. Save one Bob Marley cover. It's entirely new Lauren Hill songs with her on quite plaintive and repetitive acoustic guitar, long songs. Interspers with long strings of stage banter. The longest of which is 12 minutes long.

She talks about how she's not really a performer anymore. She doesn't dress up for us anymore. She's not held hostage by one. what everyone else does anymore. Her public persona held her hostage. She had to do some dying and so on. Actually, it defeats the purpose if I paraphrase this, doesn't it? I don't know, you know, what the press is saying, because I don't really listen to the press

too much, but I know that, you know, the view is I'm like emotionally unstable, which is reality. Like, you aren't, you know. But it's like... See, I was going to get deep into the exceedingly raw 2003 Rolling Stone article, written by the enormously respected hip-hop journalist Tarray. that bore the headline, the mystery of Lauren Hill, which gets into quite harrowing detail. Speculation about Lauren's relationship with Wyclef, about her pregnancy with Zion, about the shadowy religious guru who allegedly transformed every aspect of her life and shut out many of the other people in her life.

Praz, on the record, calls Wyclef the cancer of the Fugees. An anonymous industry insider summarizes what we're told as the prevailing industry view of Lauren Hill's unplugged record, which flopped and which is to date the last record Lauren Hill released. This industry insider says, A lesser artist, it would never have been released. A lesser artist would have been shot and thrown out the window. That's rude, say the least, but it only proves Lauren's own point.

See, I know what we've got to do. You let go. and I'll let go too. I'm laughing because what I realize I've become is one of those mad scientists who does the test on themselves first, you see, to make sure that they work. And that's when you know, okay, look, I got something that works. After that, Lauren plays a song called I Find It Hard to Say, parentheses, rebel. She says it was inspired initially by the NYPD shooting of Amadu Diallo in 1999.

But see, I'm already way over. my time. No time to tell you about when I saw Lauren Hill at a supremely chaotic 2007 outdoor show in Brooklyn, where she didn't take the stage for hours. And when she did, she played almost heavy metal versions of miseducation songs that unnerved and pissed people off to the point where a bunch of teenage girls behind me started singing the chorus to do-op that thing mid-show during some other song, almost like a protest. Or the other time a couple years later, when I saw Lauren play the blue note, a tiny jazz club in the West Village, and what appeared to be the married couple I was sitting next to, two very genial and excited 30-something people out on a date

who left and discussed before Lauren even went on because Lauren was at that point already two hours late. 82 words left, 7,000, no time for that, only time left to play you the best part of X Factor. I was going to make fun of Drake. Of course, big plans I had, but subconsciously, I guess this is where I wanted to leave you. With the X-Factor moment that blew me away the very first time, I heard it and blew me away again at that outdoor Brooklyn show, surrounded by furious Lauren Hill fans, when she finally got around to playing a furious version of it.

I broke 7,000 words, of course, I'm talking to you from jail, but I got you and left you where I wanted to be and where I thought you needed to be. That's what Lauren Hale did, too. We are honored today to be joined by Daphne A. Brooks. She's a professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale. Her most recent book is called Liner Notes for the Revolution, The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. Thanks so much for being here today, Daphne. delighted to be here.

We're delighted to have you. I was wondering, first of all, what do you remember about hearing Lauren Hill's voice for the first time? Like, before you knew the legend of Lauren Hill, the rise and the fall in the rise of Lauren Hill, all the controversy and discourse, like, what did you make of her back then? Just as a new rapper and singer you didn't know much about yet. Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't encounter her the way some people did initially in Sister Actually, and Sister Actually. Act 2, in part because I was boycotting Whoopie movies after Jumping Jack Flash. Valid?

Trig valid, right? I tried to avoid Ghost, couldn't. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, you know, but she absolutely crushed it, especially with just a half a reading of his eyes on the Sparrow and Sister Act 2. But I didn't hear that. I mean, it was really, I had to think about this, and it was in the run up to the scores released, right?

So that would have been in late 95, first single, anthemic, super melodic, Fujila. But by spring of 96, killing me softly, was just saturating the airwaves, of course, and also really, really super importantly, all over MTV, right? But if you picked up the score, even before that moment, you were encountering this hip-hop album that was sweet. generous in particular because of the absolute, you know, stop you in your tracks, commanding vocality of Warren Hill. And her, you know, kind of combination of this rich contralto R&B vocality that was super virtuosic, rich with vibrato and drama and feeling. And at the same time, just a mad MC with, you know, right, with immaculate flow.

and really kind of a hypnotic, you know, and compelling delivery. And when I got the score, talk about stop you in your tracks, the hook for ready or not. That's the one for me. Yeah, right? It's so haunting. It just sort of conjures a feeling of awe and sublimity. There's almost a kind of sort of cosmic quality to it. Nothing like it.

Nothing like it. It's hard for me to picture anyone else in 1996 who could have saturated. MTV with a cover of a Roberta Flack song, right? Like, was there an old soul quality to Lauren from the beginning for you? Definitely. I mean, we also have to keep in mind, right? Proud Gen Xer that I am. That this is like the great Neo Soul cover song for the ages.

And Neo Soul, as we know, is the subgenre that flourishes in the 90s as Black Gen Xers are coming of age and really embracing the music that they, grew up with the classic soul era of Roberta and Stevie and Marvin, et cetera, et cetera, Donnie Hathaway. Hills, not only her kind of stylistic delivery, the aesthetics of her singing, but the song itself took us back to these moments of our childhood kind of intimacies. It's really like black living room music. And as kids say now, you know, music of the cookout.

So, you know, right? So there's a way that, right, there's definitely an old soul quality to her vocalizing. And it's everything else, all the bells and whistles. And I don't say that pejoratively that come along that moment. As for the Fugees as a whole, like, why did the Fugees work so well together, the three of them? Like, is tension and volatility and like hostility and eventual collapse? Like, are those necessary elements of a great hip-hop group or a rock band or whatever? Were the Fugees just Fleetwood Mac by other means?

Yeah, or do we need to get back for the score? We do. We do. Six hours. Right? Six hours. Yes. Yeah, sure.

I mean, I have to be honest, I didn't follow a lot of the drama around the Fugees. You couldn't really escape it, especially if you watched MTV as much as all of us did back then. I guess, sure. The drama and the tensions within the group and then, of course, famously, the legendary, you know, intimacies that fell apart between Wycliffe Sean and Lauren Hill are significant and become, you know, the literal grist for the miseducation of Lauren Hill. So, so sure, right, intimate group drama. Yeah. Do you listen to miseducation for pleasure now? Like, where does this record sit in your own personal canon at this point? What has been your journey with it for these 20 years? Yeah, I still listen to it. I, as someone who, you know, teaches classes on popular music studies, I teach it often. And I consider it to be one of the greatest albums of all time. I still do. I still do. I still do. What do you teach? Like, what is what do you want your students to know about this record? Yeah. Okay. Let's get lanky, academicy for a minute here, right? Let's do it. Right? Let's do it. Yeah. I often taught it early on as kind of. of our first modern pop black feminist Bill Duns-Roman.

Bill Don's Roman, meaning novel of development a la David Copperfield, right? And that the kind of the structure of the record allowed for this, you know, really dense journey, emotional interior journey that the protagonist goes on towards self-discovery. and that the culture had not held a space for that for a young black woman in popular music culture ever like that before, ever like that before. I mean, it drew on, you know, the history of popular music culture, everything from the Supremes. Think about that duop video, you know, through Roberta Flack and Aretha and of course Nina, right? But it pulled it all together into the context of hip-hop culture and allowed all of these different sides of her characters. to come forward and to wrestle with the meaning of what it meant to be, you know, African-American

and a woman in America in the late 1990s. It's just an extraordinary record. It's an extraordinary record. Do your students take convincing to be convinced that it's a masterpiece? Like, how's that? No. They're actually really astonished that a work like this exists. Yeah. And I want to give a really serious shout out to someone like the great hip-hop, Black feminist hip-hop critic Joan Morgan, who's written the definitive, you know, full-length book, she begat this on this education. But no, I think they're kind of, it's sort of like, I'm trying to think of what an analogy would be. They're just kind of floored by the fact that this existed in some space and time. Because, you know, really we have, we've had nothing like it since then.

And I say that, unfortunately. Not as an old geezer. I have a lot of reasons why I think systemically, you know, the culture couldn't hold, you know, a place for something like this again, right? There's a reason why, you know, Lauren Hill and I think maybe Natalie Cole unforgettable are the, you know, those are last two black women artists to have albums of the year. So, I mean, I think that it's like a gym. It's like a hidden gym for them. Sure. Because they know, maybe they know the singles, but they don't know like the full album, as you say, the arc.

Right. And let's just, you know, I mean, in terms of hip-hop skits, and we've been to the Nader many times with it, to take the genre of the hip-hop sketch and turn it into just black radical tradition pedagogy, right? The kids. The kids, the meaning of love and community, right? I mean, this is like, let's go cliche, but these are kind of timeless topics, but meant something very specific in the late 1990s, as they do now, with. regards to, you know, the extent to which black lives matter. It's the same way that they reacted when Prince died. And we know that they didn't have access to Prince's music on streaming. No, they were trying to make sense of the fact that all their professors and their parents were crying all the time. And then they were like, oh, my God. What the fuck?

This is pretty good. Right. Not just this is pretty good, but this person did things that we are trying to, to identify as being important in our lives right now. And I can't believe that this happened already, right? Why can't it be a consistency in our lives to have many Lauren Hills, to have many princes, you know? So when that window closes for another record like this, like what does that sound like, feel like, look like? Like what is happening in the early mid 2000s that prevents her or anyone like her from creating another record, anything like miseducation?

Wow, that's such a great question. I don't know. I mean, I think let's not leave out, she whose name we should always speak, but what Yon's did, you know, in the early odds. Lemonade's the closest. Right? Lemonades the closest, but also distinct. But I remember, like, there were some stories of, there was like a gig that Lauren did on Governor's Island. I want to say, like, the 20, early 2010s and Beyonce was there.

And I read something online about her talking about. about really just, you know, studying and being in awe, you know, and really like giving props to the, you know, to the ones who pave the way, as she often does. But that's a, that's a distinct kind of thing that she did. There's the Dream Hampton quote about how critics and fans like really screwed up artists like Warren Hill and DeAngelo by telling them they were geniuses, right? Like the theory anyway is we told Lauren Hill, she was Nina Simone and she started believing it. We told DeAngelo, he was Marvin Gay, and he started believing it. Like, do you agree with that at all? like, do we screw up our best artists by telling them they made masterpieces? And now they have to

follow up masterpieces. I love Dreamhampton, mad props to Dreamhampton. My gut feels like the problem is the culture itself rather than the artist, that there ought to be a way to imagine more space for Lauren Hills and DeAngelo's to be able to operate on, as the Dylanist, eccentric. Why can't they, you know, do a post-motorcycle accident underground, you know, right? So there's a way in which obviously we know that historically black artists have been given a very narrow space in which to thrive and to be successful, to be legible as successful. You know, there are larger kinds of just structural issues that we need to tend to to allow for a multiplicity of ways in which black artists can tap into their creativity. It should be okay for them to be called Nina Simone

and Marvin Gay. It really should. That should not be, there's a problem fundamentally, right, with the culture itself. It's being called that is going to be destructive. Right. I was thinking just this morning about Dave Chappelle and how Lauren and Dave in the early to mid-2000s, like they both abruptly stopped doing what everyone wanted them to do. Dave walks away from Chappelle Show, Lauren refuses to follow up miseducation. You know, Dave is back now. He's very prolific. He's driving everybody nuts.

What do you think Lauren wanted or needed from the world at large to help her keep making albums? And like, what albums did you think she would have made in the 2000s and beyond if she'd had the right structure in place to support her? As divisive as unplugged is, if there had been a space to imagine a black artist, no matter what gender, or being able to critique racial capitalism and the exploitativeness of the industry. The fame. Yeah. And be affirmed for doing that, then we probably would have gotten more unplugged. Or maybe unplugged would have been just a bridge to a broader,

experimental palette that she, you know, was clearly deeply interested in tapping into. That unplugged record really scared and like disturbed people. Scared and disturbed are the words. They really are. There's a terrific scholar, Lamar Bruce, who's written extensively about the unplugged album and the ways in which that kind of elixir of presumed madness, and I'm using scare quotes here. Well, right. She says it herself. She does. She's like, go ahead. and go ahead and call me crazy because then you'll leave me alone. Yes, right. Right. And early on, the call out to the people inside her head.

Right, right. You know, I don't dress that way anymore. So, you know, the kind of, you know, just sharp critique of the industry's commodification of, you know, the product at all levels with regards to artistry, we're terrifying, right? To everybody and confusing, because popular music culture continuously reproduces these kinds of protocols that we are asked to consume and to read as being, you know, palatable and legible and desirable. And she was about, as we like to call it in academia, these radical refusals, you know. Yeah, yeah. But so was Dylan.

Right, right. You know? Of course. Of course we have to think about which kinds of artists are allowed to engage. To be radical. Yeah. Yeah. and to be experimental, you know?

Right? I mean, this is, you know, a moment in which we can really think more about, and this is why it's also significant to keep need in the room with us, to really think about the history of black women's pop experimentalism and what the culture is willing to tolerate. And it's why Lemonade is so brilliant and so shrewd, because it did really kind of manage to fold in all of these different kinds of formalistic, you know, sonic and lyrical and vocal and visual experimentalism within the context of a kind

of iconicity that people were already willing to accept and welcome into their goals. A pop record. A pop record, exactly. Have you seen Lauren Hill live? Yes, many times. This was actually, I'm glad you asked me this before the show because I had to think about it. It's striking how many times I've seen her. And some of the concerts I can't remember in great detail. But the first time I saw her was on the Miseducation tour. This would have been, I'm a Bay Area West Coaster. So this would have been in Oaktown, like circa 90, probably 99.

I think the tour hit the West Coast at the Fox Theater downtown. The Fox awesome. Yeah, right, man? And the thing that stood out to me about that concert was not only the type of of the set. I mean, she was really, you know, skewing heavily towards performing the album at that point was the audience, the fact that outside of a Prince concert, I've never seen a more multiracial audience in my life. And it was historically for me, the first time that I'd ever seen such a deeply diverse audience showing up for a black women performer.

In Oakland. In Oakland, right? I mean, you know, and let's just go there, just white boys who were who were showing up for Lauren Hill. And I think this is significant because there was a way in which the seriousness of how people treated her as an artist of, you know, excellence, you know, the music walkery, the Rolling stonery, you know, we're all about her. And, you know, that was the point I want to make about this, this is that this was also the moment when I remember it was the first time that somebody like a white, female actor,

Jenam-Malone, who was part of kind of It Prestige films at the time. She was on Letterman, which I watched religiously, and she talked about loving Lauren Hill. And I cannot remember a teen white girl ever talking about a black woman artist that way. Unless it was Maria Carrie, and they didn't know she was black at the time. You know, this was before Mariah's journey, right?

Yeah. There was something about her crossover appeal in a particular kind of crossover that of course has something to do with hip hop in that moment, but also about who Lauren Hill was as a singer-songwriter with just mad gravitas that just hit a bunch of demographics really hard. Sure. What did you make of Lauren Hill live when she stopped tightly performing the record, right? Like most people when they say they've seen her live, they either say it was fantastic or it was a disaster with very little middle ground at all. Like, have you been to those like fantastic or disaster type shows where, you know, X Factor is 20 minutes and so forth?

Like, what were those like for you? I actually have. And I saw her in Brooklyn outdoors, some kind of a thing. This would have been summer of 2001 when I was moving to the East Coast. It was before Unplugged to come out, but it was definitely one of the sets that was leading up to unplug. and it was, you know, a Black Brooklyn audience. And there was a lot of silence, you know. There was a lot of, it was just like incredulity and also, you know, something deeply

illegible about what was happening, you know, from, again, the fashion refusals to the fact that she was also playing largely almost entirely new material, you know, non-miseducation material. Sure. And then there was the moment in like the early aughts when I saw her several times. on the downtown New York. And she was famously quite late. Yes.

Tracks that just went on and on and on. The two times that I've seen her most recently that are kind of a fusion of all those things, one was in 2015 at the Apollo. It was a set in conjunction with the premiere of the documentary, Liz Garbus' documentary, whatever happened, Ms. Simone. Right. The Netflix. Yeah, yeah.

And then in 2018, she, I was. in Cleveland for the Nina posthumous induction ceremonies at the Rock Hall. And she did a short set there. And the thing about those two sets is that the sound quality was so poor. That's Cleveland. Yeah, right? And I mean, God bless the Apollo. But I don't know.

So to what extent it was about the engineering and the technicians she was working with or whatever. But it was very hard to make out what was happening. And that combined with the Miles Davis, back to the audience, deep conductor, unapologetic, I don't give a fuck, kind of toad. It just left you feel in some kind of way, you know? Yes. And her as well, I imagine. Yeah.

That's, it's tough. Somebody wrote in The New Yorker, it's like, I have been, I have waited six hours combined for Lauren Hill to walk on stage. I always thought that. It's about two, it's about four or five for me. I don't think it's quite six. but I've seen her just a couple times and still, it's like two plus hours per that I've waited. It's been worth it. But yeah, that's a huge part of the experience.

Yes, it is. At this point. I wanted to ask you about Drake. I know you do. Yes. I can't speak to it. I really can't. Okay.

Okay. I know. I mean, I'm interested in what you have to say. Well, so Drake has the whole Aaliyah thing, right? Right. He was going to make, and like everyone yelled at him until he didn't put out the Aaliyah out. him you was going to put out. And like, nice for what, which samples X Factor is probably my favorite Drake song in the past whatever five years. But it's, it seems clear to me. I've read this a lot

that like Drake gets something very specific from this era of R&B, from like the 90s R&B giants. Like there's some emotional quality. That's true. And it's just, it's a little bit creepy. It's a little bit sincere. And I everyone's trying to figure out what his deal is, the way that he uses Lauren and Alia to convey something very specific, something he wants us to know about himself. It's confusing. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to front like I'm, you know, deep in drakology, you know?

It's better for you that you're not, for sure. I'm fond of him. And I love the Atlanta episode where they're pursuing him. Yes. Beyond kind of my reading of his persona as being one that is driven by. emotional, I don't want to say turmoil, but complexity and a kind of commodification of black masculine and hip-hop tenderness. Especially since L.L. just rolled into the rock wall finally.

You know, there's a little bit of a legacy of L.L. there. Yeah, totally. So there's, I think, that kind of affinity for the, the kinds of contradictions and insecurities and, you know, real struggles that Lauren was able to map out in hip-hop in a way that had not been done before. You could kind of, I think on that level, you know, there's a little bit of dissaff Lauren in Drake, or at least that's what we could see him aspiring towards. I hadn't really thought of that. You got it. You just figured it out on the fly there. You did it. You did it. In your book, in liner notes for the Revolution, you write about Lauren.

song Black Rage. An unreleased track, I guess, she put on Twitter after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson in 2014. I'd forgotten about this song. Like, it's terrifying, right? It takes the melody of my favorite things, black human packages tied up in strings. Like, do we not talk about this song enough as recent protest anthems go? We don't. We should. You know, it's, it's extraordinary. It is, it is. It really is stunning. I mean, it's lyrically stunning. It's also just, again, you know, a way in which she showcases her, her deep immersion in black musical history, because this is also a callback to John Coltrane's cover of my favorite things, recorded in the run of the civil rights movement. You know, it's a disturbance of the ways in which

whiteness, you know, creates these notions of safety and contrast that with black precarity. it's a brilliant song. And in the ways that we were talking about her unpredictable live sets, you can find several different versions of the performance online. They all feel a little bit different.

And I think that's a sign of her genius because she really lives inside of that song when she is rendering this 400 story of, you know, captivity and Jim Crow, subjugation and non-citizenship for black folks. You need a thousand ways of interpreting that song, and she gives it to us. And she does it.

Is the Lauren Hill story fundamentally a tragedy, or is she doing what she wants? And like her biggest fans just think it's a tragedy because she won't do what they want her to do. It's a tragedy for pop that we don't have a more heterogeneous, lively, and daring way of imagining black women artists. I don't want to call her story tragic. I actually would love for her to, you know, be able to define, define her story on her own terms.

Yeah. Daphne, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say the word Bill Dungs Roma now loud before. And I'm so glad it was you. And I'm so glad it taught you today. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. It's been a blast.

Thanks so much, Rob. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Daphne A. Brooks. Thanks to our producers, Devin Ronaldo and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now without further ado, here's Lauren Hill with X Factor. See you next week.