The Black Eyed Peas are excluded for their disgraceful recent output. Exceptions – Digable Planets, Arrested Development and Juice Crew – didn’t break through the mainstream in the same way. There are very few mixed sex hip-hop groups, and there are even fewer groups in which the female is centre stage. The most potent difference about ‘The Score’? Gender. Their approach to gender roles was revolutionary Witness: “See hoochies pop coochies/ for Gucci’s and Lucci/Find me in my Mitsubishi, eatin’ sushi, bumpin’ Fugees.” The style of packing multiple rhymes into one sentence is unmistakably her. “So while you’re imitating Al Capone/I’ll be Nina Simone/And defacating on your microphone” is another classic rhyme that sees Hill take a dig at gangsta rap culture. Here she is rhyming the brightest star in Ursa Minor with a Bertolucci film in ‘Zealots’: “So while you fuming, I’m consuming mango juice under Polaris/ You just embarrassed cause it’s your last tango in Paris”. Hill’s a lyrical genius: imaginative, witty, moving and visceral. And that’s not just because Wyclef Jean’s disqualified for recording a duet with Brian Harvey in 2007. If you see ‘The Score’ as a collection of Battle raps – the order (usually) of Lauryn, Clef and then Pras holding up the rear competing for the prize – you’d place Hill at the top.
Private-DIC sell hits, like porno-flicks do chicks. Heretics push narcotics amidst its risks and frisks,Ĭool cliques throw bricks but seldom hit targets Hand-picked lunatics, keep poli-TRICK-cians rich The first verse in ‘The Beast’ sees 18 rhymes (some half) in an ear-blowing tour de force:Ĭonflicts with night sticks, Illegal sales districts, Playing with speeds – double-timing “thinking of all the kids”, for example – is just one ingredient of her ingenuity. “I get mad frustrated when I rhyme/Thinking of all the kids who try to do this/For all the wrong reasons” she raps in ‘How Many Mics’. It’s almost like a hip-hop version of ‘Tommy’, like what The Who did for rock musicįrom the off, Lauryn Hill sets out her stall with brio.
It tells a story, and there are cuts and breaks in the music. It’s like how radio was back in the 1940s. It’s a theatre of pandemonium, pain and pride shot with colour, dialogue, sound effects and some of the finest lyrics commited to tape. That’s not to say it’s all cupcakes and unicorns: ‘The Score’ contains grisly portraits of life in the ghetto. They’ve described the recording process in interviews as relaxed and organic you can’t hear the tension between Wyclef Jean and Hill that would lead to the band’s break up a year later. Fugees, a hip-hop trio from New Jersey, are in a liminal stage between the release of their totally underrated debut ‘Blunted On Reality’ and an album that would transform them into one of the most celebrated hip-hop groups of the decade: ‘The Score’, released sixteen years ago this week.Īt the time, Fugees (formerly Tranzlator Crew) were in their 20s – Lauryn Hill was just 21. It’s the year of mad cow disease, Dolly the sheep, NASA’s Endeavour and Apollo 13. Giuliani’s Mayor of New York and Clinton’s President. East Coast hip-hop is in excellent health with Raekwon, Mobb Deep and GZA leading the way.
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