Too Much InformationLauryn Hill's 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill': Everything You Didn't Know
As the record-breaking album turns 25 — and Ms. Hill announces an upcoming anniversary tour — Alex and Jordan educate you on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. You'll learn all about the intense relationship drama that went into its creation, the controversy surrounding the proper credit for the album's songs, and how the stress of making and then living up to the masterpiece ultimately led Hill to retreat from public life. Plus, they also do a lengthy sidebar on the surprising genesis of "Killing Me Softly With His Song," and a rundown of celebrities who (reportedly) don't let non-famous people look them in the eye.
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Hello everyone, and welcome Too Much Information, the show that brings you the hidden histories and secret fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more. We're your two fujis of facts.
I don't think I can say that anymore because it's refugees, right. Oh that's what that means. I didn't know that. Oh wow, we're the whitest guys in the room. I'm Alex Heigel, I'm Jordan run Talk and Jordan.
Today we're talking about one of the load stars of hip hop's late nineties Imperial era. A masterpiece that's one of the last genuine pieces of monoculture from the pre oughts. Turns twenty five this week, last week, whatever, we're in the balls week. Yeah, the Best Education of Lauren Hill. I remember this album being everywhere. I remember that cover art. I could probably draw it from memory. We're just talking before we started about the do wop.
Video that I used to see all the time on I guess this would have been The Box and maybe MTV because I didn't watch a Yeah, yeah, because I didn't have the patience for MTV, which had non music on it, but.
The Fox was just videos. Miseducation is a great document of the times. It's a great snapshot, but it's also just like, I don't know if he can genuinely be called auturist based on some of the controversies that we're talking about, but Hill was definitely a real talent, still is probably, but we don't have that much evidence. She was a real talent. Around this time, Tom Bryant wrote a stereogum. She's generally remembered as one of the greatest rappers and singers of an era when singers didn't really rap and rappers didn't really sing, so and the record is this great multi genre mix of you know, it's I really like the neo soul from around this era. Like one of my favorite records is is that Dangelo Voodoo and I like a lot of the Solquarian stuff, and this has some of that in there.
But it's also you know, parts of it were recorded in Bob.
Marley's studio in Jamaica, and so there's this heady mix of almost every genre of black music in there. And she was twenty three.
Brian Wilson was that age when he made Pet Sounds yeah, and it cost both of them, oh everything, and it was a huge hit, which we'll get to in a bit. Jordan, your thoughts. Yeah, I'm kind of embarrassed to tell you that I came to this pretty late, so it's not itched in my syneps is the way it should be for most people in my age group. Allow me to cite my oft expressed excuse, which is that I really didn't engage with a lot of contemporary pop music when I was a kid. This was my Beatles and malt Shop Memories era, which is ironic considering the song du Up that thing. But I probably heard of that song, listen to it, realized it was not actually a do wop song, got mad and refused to listen to any more. So, Yeah, I didn't really gone onto this, and I think by the time I became aware of her in a serious way, it was mostly as a tabloid story. When I first started my career as an entertainment journalist, and that would have been in the early twenty tens, when she was going through tax evasion stuff. I must have seen. I have this memory of her, I think like a Guinness Book of World Records, like the picture of her at the Grammys with an armful of statues. Yeah, she became I think the first woman to win five Grammys in one night. But yeah, my impression of her until very recently. Again I'm ashamed to say this wasn't as much that she was a major musical force, but she was an artist who had a big record and then never came back and was like almost in the one hit Wondered Territory, which is obviously an extremely unfair characterization of her career. And yeah, it really wasn't until fair recently that I went deeper. I am a huge Amy Winehouse fan, and I think it was when the documentary Amy came out in twenty fifteen. They had a lot of deep cuts on the soundtrack and there was a cover of Amy doing due up that thing, which makes total sense. You could really tell that that's totally Amy's vibe, and that sent me back to this record and I realized just how incredible it was and just how wrong I was well from the debate over the proper credit for the album's songs, how the stress of creating and then living up to the masterpiece ultimately led Hill to retreat from public life to the long shadow it casts on.
Actually, I realized I didn't really get to that last part to a third bullet point that I'll decide on later. Here's everything you didn't know about the Miseducation of Lauren Hillo. Lauren was born in Newark, New Jersey, and she grew up middle class and suburban South Orange, New Jersey, which I believe she may still live there to this day, and I think when she was definitely living there for a while, she doesn't still. Both her parents were amateur musicians. She grew up listening to her mom's soul records, and fittingly, she had a defining moment of her teen life when, at the age of thirteen, she got booked to sing at the famous amateur night at the Apollo.
I'm wincing as you say that, because it is brutal. Yeah she's fine, but the crowd is famous.
Yeah, that's that's the bit she's saying, Who's Loving You, which is a nineteen sixty single Smoky Robinson wrote for The Miracles, and like at the performance, like she's not bad by any stretch, Oh she was just like her voice waivers just a little bit, and the crowd immediately comes for her because.
She's obviously nervous. That's the thing that I think is just an excuse of post that she's clearly very good but nervous, and instead of being a generous audience, come.
For the thirteen year old girl who damned to get up on stage to dream. Yeah, but so she soldiers on. The hook doesn't come out, you know, that's the whole bit. At the Apollo, they bring out the hook.
Executioner yest to the come. I don't think it's a hook. I think it's because that's the gong show. I think it's a guy with a broom who would chase people off the stage as if they were like woodland creatures on a back porch or something. The guy who did that, that was one guy's job. He was a vaudeville tap dancer named sand Nan Sims, and he did that role from the fifties until two thousand. For half a century. He crushed hopeful streams passage on the stage at the Apollo as his professional gig. And then there was also I don't know if this was reserved for people who were especially bad, or just if sam Man Sims had the night off or what, but I guess there was another guy who would chase off people who were getting booed with a cap gun to the sound of a siren that that would layover the sound system. So that's that's nuts. Yeah, but yeah. Another person who bombed another future celebrity who bombed open Mic Night or Amateur Knight the Apollo was Luther Vandros, who appeared there five times and was booed off every single time, and then he went on to sing on Sesame Street before getting his big break backing David Bowie on Young Americans. Jimi Hendricks though one first place at an amateur music contest at the Apollo in nineteen sixty four, so they at least got that right. But we should punch in punch in a clip from that performance Lauren did because it's really great. Dred you b It's interesting to me. I mean, who's loving you? I'm imagining she chose that song because there's almost as well known as the Smokey Robinson version is Michael Jackson's version when he was like in a very early Jackson five days probably nine ten years old. So I wonder if that's like the official like preternaturally gifted motown anthetal singer anthem. Yeah, it wasn't Quitney Houston from Newark or South Orange. Rather, who though she's from Newark. Whitney Houston. Yeah, No, Jersey's got a lot of Jersey's got a lot of great story's, musical states. Go, Jersey's got a lot of great claims to it, you know, Bruce miss Fitz. Oh, yeah, Whitney, you know, Lauren, Frank Sinatra, right, most Italian? Most Italian guys from the Four Seasons on Joe. I was gonna say it's Frankie Valley there, George Clinton, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Bill Evans, Donald Fagan. Like, it's really crazy when you actually start to tally it up. Paul Simon no oh no, he was a native of New York City, but he was No, he was born in New York. Paulse, I didn't know that. Wow. I like to pretend that you're just doing this for memory right now. No, No, I didn't think I could do that. No. It's funny when you get into like the really granular people like Blues Traveler and the Bouncing Souls. I would have been anything that Blues Traveler was from, like North Carolina. Yeah. Sarah Vaughan that's crazy, Count Basie, Yeah, man Jersey Saravan, the one who flipped the table on the Rea Franklin. She sang from time to time, I know that for in fact, you dramamonger, get this back, all right, all right. Lauren Hill was a straight A student in high school, and she also ran track and field and was a cheerleader and was also elected homecoming queen. But the most defining moment of her teen life came in ninth grade when she teamed up with a classmate Pras Michelle to form a rap group called Translator Crew with a Z, which also featured Pros's cousin Wycleft John, and together they became the Fujis. Wycleff was the only one of this threesome who was born in Haiti, though Prose's parents were also and Wycliff and Lauren Hill's on and off relationship with color a lot of a lot of went into miseducation, which we will get to in a bit.
Yeah, their relationship is bad on like MESSI on both ends. Anyway, It's a measure of hills talent that before she even graduated, she had the owns of a fairly promising acting career.
Going. In nineteen ninety one.
She was emc lights understudy in Club twelve, which was an off Broadway hip hop reimagining of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which sounds awful.
Wycliffe was always Larren Hill. Well that's well, she was an understudy mc who's what did mc light? I should know this off the top of my head, mc light, Cha cha cha, Yeah. This is when it becomes apparent that we do not have not a riging background and hip hop as we do in most areas of pop culture nerdery.
She also landed a role in the soap opera As the World Turns, and then in nineteen nine That's Bizarre, and then in nineteen ninety three, at eighteen, she made her big screen debut in Your Favorite sequel Sister Act two.
Back in the Habit I did. That was actually where I first encounted Lauren Hill. That's true. She's great in that movie. She had like a real she could been a real actress, Like she had a real presence and she's yeah, she's great. I think that actually may have been where I first saw her and then was like, yeah, actually same. She also decided to go to Colombia for college while the Fujis were like blowing up with their nineteen ninety six sophomore album The Score Fuji La. The song with where she sings the hook On peaked at number twenty nine in the Hot one hundred, but the album eventually sold seven million copies just in the US, mostly on the strength of their version of ROBERTA Flax Killing Me Softly, which you are about to ruin, Yeah, but before I do, I'm going to ruin Colombia. Also, Our Garfuncle also went to Colombia just as his career and Sabbin a Garfunkle was taking off. I forget if he was studying architecture, mathematics. I think it was mathematics, but he wasn't so sure. I think he thought that the whole Sabbin a Garfunkle folk pop thing was gonna be a flash in the pan and he won and to go study up and get his degrees, so he went to Columbia. One of the many ways that Our Garfuncle and Lauren Hill are similar. But yes, that was the worst thing you've ever said on this but yes, my little detour and killing Me Softly with his song It's written about your favorite and mine, Don McLean? Did you know that? Did we talk about this in the American Pie episode? We must have that? Yeah. So the song was written by a twenty year old singer song un her name, Laurie Lieberman, saw Don McLean perform at LA's Troubadour Club, the very famous club in nineteen seventy one, and she really loved Don's song empty Chairs, and she started scribbling notes on presumably like a beer coaster or something or a napkin that very night for the lyrics that would become killing Me Softly with his song. And the song was actually written by Norman Gimble and Charles Fox. She was signed to a production deal to these two songwriters, and so she went uncredited for years as a co writer on this song, and it became a source of a very ugly legal squabble. I guess she was signed to them, but she also started a romantic relationship with gimbal and then he, apparently, according to Lori Lieberman, became abusive and their partnership crumbled, and so the songwriting due. I would spend decades trying to minimize her role in this song that through the Fujis and ROBERTA. Flack would sell a gazillion copies. That's a whole other episode. But I think she's finally credited now after many, many years. But Laurie Lieberman, she was the first person to record this song in nineteen seventy two, and it didn't do much on the charts, and then they tried to shop it around to other singers. Helen Ready of I Am Woman Hearing Me Roar Fame has said that she was sent the song, but she said the demo sad of My Turntable for months without being played because I didn't like the title. That's true, it's kind of a weird title. ROBERTA. Flack, Who did? I mean, arguably the most iconic version to me, more so than the Fuji's version. But then again, I would say that because I, in my mind, lived through the seventies. She first heard the song while on an airplane while listening to like an in flight music program, and she loved it so much. She just I think she didn't even know what the song was. She just wrote down the lyrics and then as soon as she landed, I believe she called Quincy Jones, who she was acquainted with, and said, you know, hum the song to him and said some of the words that can you track this down for me in like you're publishing contacts? I love the song, and she did. She recorded it went to number one and it was how many years would it have been? About twenty years later the Fujis did a version. It was recorded for their album The Score I think was the last song recorded for that album after pros made the suggestion to cover it anyway wow okay man.
Yeah. Meanwhile, in nineteen ninety seven, why Cleff went solo with the double platinum The Carnival, thanks to the strength of goun to November great song. It was a bad time for the Fujis. Wycleff had always either forced himself into the spotlight. He used to do like backflips on stage and play guitar behind his head, or just force himself into the spotlight. And his relationship with Hill, which had continued after Jean Mary designer Marie Claudnett, was effectively destroying the group, not that their relationship was really functional or fun at any point, As why Cleff wrote in his biography, we had fights on planes. We had huge fights, and a few times when it went down, she started swinging at me right there in the seats, people would scatter. We never got arrested, but we came close a few times in Europe in this In his autobiography Why Cleff, who it's important to note, defrauded an entire country with his Yale Haiti charity, which was launched after the wake of the twenty ten earthquake and essentially served as a piggy bank for y Cleft and his cronies to just fly around and live large. He blames Lauren Hill for breaking up the Fujis because this is where I say this gets really messy. At some point, Lauren meets Bob Marley's son, Rohan, who's playing football for the University of Miami, and she gets pregnant with his child. But she lies to Jean and lets him think that the kid is his, and plays up this ambiguity and basically until the kid's born, and then when he found out, he wrote, in that moment, something died between us, which is sort of understandable. A friend told Torre for Rolling Stone in two thousand and three. He wrote a great feature about kind of what happened, And honestly, she didn't even want the relationship with Rohan. Everyone was pushing her towards Marley to get her out of the other thing. They pushed her towards him, like why don't you give him a chance? Come on, go out on a date, Just do it, not knowing this man had all this other baggage and drama in his life. That baggage turned out to be the fact that Rohan had gotten married in nineteen ninety three and had two children with a woman and was still married probably at the time he met Lauren. I found a note on his Wikipedia that said he later produced divorce documents from Haiti, which is funny because that's not a country that we were talking about with regards to their relationship. You would assume he would maybe have gotten the papers in Jamaica or in the United States.
But is Haitian divorce a thing? Isn't that a Steely Dan song? Huh? I don't know what it says about.
Oh, it says this song refers to the alleged ease of divorce in Haiti. Okay, cool manal scam all right, great.
An anonymous source told Rolling Stone, people don't know how calculating she can be. Lauren used Road to pull herself out of the relationship with Clef and she happened to get pregnant. She hoped that the baby was y Clefts because it would have forced his hand, but it wasn't. She would later have, according to my Notes, five kids with Rohan Marley. Yeah yeah, which is a.
Kind of a shocking thing when you maybe didn't even really want to be in a relationship with the guy in the first place.
Yeah yeah. Hill, for her part, told Trance Magazine at the time the Fujis was a conspiracy to control, to manipulate, and to encourage dependence. I took a lot of abuse that many people would not have taken in these circumstances. Are the fuji Is the most white collar crime band of all time? They absolutely must be. I'm trying to think of because why Clef defrauded a charity. Lauren went to jail for tax evasion and I just found that the this year, Praz was convicted of a spearheading a multi million dollar political donation fund money shuffling campaign that involved a Malaysian fugitive named Joe Low. It's wild. I think Rolling Stone had a big expos on that.
That's truly nothing nefarious. I mean, on the right side, I think some of the money was going to Barack Obama and some of it was going against Trump or whatever.
Oh sorry, we're not allowed to get political.
But yeah, I wasn't like he was funding like coups in like Somalia or whatever. But still really wild. If you threw a dartboard at all the nineteen nineties hip hop acts, who you thought would commit this this slew of crimes? Would you have thought it would have been the fujis? Yeah, tax evasion, charity defrauding, and international political money laundering. I would have bet on Drew Hill.
I wouldn't have expected TLC. Maybe Saltan Pepa mm hmm mmmmm a friend or I guess more of an acquaintance's mom. Was Lauren Hill's cellmate in prison? Oh she wasn't jail. Yeah, apparently she was very nice.
Yeah, I mean she was there for like three months. It was not it was not she wasn't doing a hard time. Why, Cleff sounds like a piece of sh I'm not gonna lie.
Uh.
Torre had this thing in the in the in the Rolling The Rolling Stone Future in two thousand and three where uh basically Praz talked about how when Wycliff was writing the Carnival. Both Lauren Hill and Praz were supportive of him, wanted him to branch out, and then when Hill started writing her own songs, y Cleft was like, yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna help you out with that stuff. Praz told Torre, I remember when PEPSI wanted her for a commercial and they were like, all we want is you. We don't know the the other two cats. She said, without them, I'm not doing it. There's a lot of things she didn't do because of the group. Then when she goes to work on her music and she doesn't have the support that can have an effect. Several quotes later, he calls Wycliff Jean a cancer. In case you needed a more forceful quote.
That's his cousin, right, Yes, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, I mean the man did defraud Haiti while she was pregnant. Hill wrote and produced songs for women like Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, which is insane to think about. Aretha's nineteen ninety eight single A Rose is Still a Rose that H'll produced with peaked at number twenty eight. Imagine you have you're like twenty and you're producing and writing for Aretha Franklin. That's Wild Marley Rowan. Marley and Lauren Hill's son, Zion, was born in nineteen ninety seven, shortly after Hill dropped out of Columbia and turned twenty. Lot happened to her, and not very much time. She was feeling frustrated on multiple levels. People told her that having a child at this stage would be bad for her career, and she was also fed up with her label, who was bulking at her desire to go solo like Wyclef. So she began the process of assembling a crew of musicians and got to work on what would become her defining artistic statement. She told Rolling Stone, when I decided that I wanted to try a solo project, I was meant with incredible resistance and discouragement from a number of places that should have been supportable. So that had a motivating factor, but it was less about proving myself and more about creating something I wanted to see and hear exist in the world. I think most of her emails or most of her interviews since like the mid two thousands have been email based or like on Tumblr. Because for that tore feature, he was like called her for a quote, and you got this long thing that was like miss Hill does not do interviews that do not compensate her for her time and effort, and he asked around in another magazine had also been in contact with her, and she wanted ten grand for the cover, which is, you know, it's funny because like a lot of what she talks about makes sense, but in like a kind of like that's just not how any of this works way, you know, Like she she's arguably right that the music industry is disgusting and parasitic and that like you know, doing interviews and stuff and like and all this stuff is a big drain on time and resources. But like that's just not the world. We're all sorry, and she has chosen not to live to live in it.
So yeah, which I mean again, at least she's stuck to her guns with that. Did you ever have an interview request ask for money?
No?
I did, and it was always with like the people who were close to the actual stars and not an actual famous person, a lot of people. I worked on a feature on Freddie Mercury, just into his life from Bohemian Rhapsody came out and got some quotes from people like Brian May and like people were actually quote close to him. But I was also was trying to get on more ancillary figures, and a lot of those types of figures were asking for money. And then I did a show a podcast about the life of David Bowie, and it was sort of the same deal. A lot of people who were kind of on the fringes of him, including people who claim to have had romantic relationships with him, were all asking for money, including his former wife. Yeah.
I mean, I think some of the nineties stuff, like I'm sure, like Inside Edition and some of the tabloids just kind of set that precedent in people's minds. But it's always like, yeah, legitimate places don't do that anyway. One of miseducations mixers and engineers was a guy named Gordon Williams with the charming nickname of Commissioner Gordon, which I of course loved because it's a Batman reference.
Uhh. Yeah.
He was an A and R guy who'd come up through New York's hip hop scene, and he told Okay Player In twenty twenty one, I met Lauren when she was a member of the translator crew. She asked me to work with her on the Miseducation of Lauren Hill. After a lot of bumping into one another at other people's sessions, we recorded in New York, Miami, and at Hope Road, which or Tough Gong Studios in Jamaica. To be in Bob Marley's house created a landscape for magic. Stephen Marley was the one who invited us to come in, which is odd considering she had a kid with the non Stephen Marley.
It's all family.
I had organized the equipment that had to be brought to Jamaica, and we had to make sure it could work as a museum. When we weren't recording, they let Lauren occupy the main studio. We were there for a couple weeks at a time, across multiple sessions, and.
Rich Nice, who was an A and R man at Columbia at the time, told Okay, Player Commissioner Gordon was in control of the studio as a track master's producer. I had a respected ear. She would ask me what I thought. She would give us five different versions of one song with other verses differing hooks, and we'd love all five. Lauren always has her idea of what she wanted. It was never a scenario where she was lost or asked what do I do? And in an interview, Lauren described the first day of recording by stating, the first day in the studio, I ordered every instrument I ever fell in love with harps strings, timpany organs, clarinet's. It was my idea to record it so that the human element stayed in. I didn't want it to be too technically perfect. I love that.
Yeah, She's talked about her like liking older keyboards like Whirli's and electric pianos and Hammond organs that might not be perfectly in tune. She says she never uses compression on her voice on her vocal tracks. Commissioner Gordon said that when James Poyser, who was at the time playing keys for DiAngelo, came in to play on the song Superstar, they rented a harpsichord that was so out of tune or so old it fell out of tune so much that they had the tuner on hand and by the time James finished playing it on a track, it.
Was already out of tune, which just hilarious. Can I ask you a mega nerd question, how do electric pianos go out of tone.
Because the times so they're they're instead of strings like a piano, they're metallic times, and because they're being struck repeatedly, they can get just get bent out of shape.
Oh okay, yeah. Yeah. The few ones that.
I've ever actually touched or like been in a studio with, I've I've gone in and immediately like wanted to sit down, and people have been like, please don't do that, because apparently, like people sit down at them unplugged and want to play them hard enough to actually like produce sound, and that's really bad for the times.
You always have to play them amplified as you meditate on that. We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, so.
We'll get into some of the higher profile musicians on the record, including one of my nemeses, but Carlos Santana. Oh yes, yes, But it's worth talking about the core of the studio musicians behind mis Education because that's where one of its biggest controversies come from. They were gang of musicians who Hill christened the New Arc, although they are by their own admission, were known for a while after this whole thing as the lawsuit guys, the four musicians who formed the studio band Rashim Kilo Pugh, Vada Nobles, and the twin brothers Johari and Tejamold Newton sued Lauren Hill and the label Columbia when they were not credited as writers and producers. They eventually settled out of court for five million. Kilo PW brought his crew to Hill's house in Orange, New Jersey. Everyone hit it off initially. She's really like a sister. If there was a female version of me, it would be her. Joe Newton told her XXL mag I knew the family, her mother and father, brother, her man, her kid. We were extensions of her family. Hill brought the team into a studio that she had in the attic of the house, where they began working on songs for Aretha Franklin another singer named Andrea Martin. Before starting work on Miseducation, either in the attic of this Orange house or Manhattan studios, they were recording on two inch tape, trying to use as few loops as possible or samples. Commissioner Garden told Rolling Stone in the beginning, the New Arc guys were the core who put the basic tracks together. Vadder was a programmer who made drum beats. Kilo would write hooks and lyrics. Tessumal Newton played piano and Joe Newton played guitar. Joe told XXL Lauren was definitely the guide. It was her vision. Our job is to take whatever was in her head and put it down for her. This led to a collaborative way of writing, where a riff or sound with morph into an idea and become a groove and finally emerges a song. Everybody had jobs, Pew remembered fat Is jobs to find the groove that made us hum. Then t t Jumol and Joe's job was the instrumentation to enhance that groove. When the groove was so catchy that it made us hum, either Lauren or me, then it was time to create the words that she wanted to sing. It was literally constant work. Even when you didn't think you were working, you were working. The vibe was incredible. Much like the band, this informal division of labor, in which nothing was set on paper until it was too late, would come back to bite both Lauren Hill and the Newark.
The band came with her to Jamaica for a little over two weeks, according to Pew, where they worked on Lost Ones, do wop that thing then it hurt so bad and forgive them father, And there was a really cute moment apparently on the record Commissioner Gordon recalled Lost Ones was recorded the first day we were in Jamaica. I saw all those kids gathered around Lauren, screaming and dancing. Lauren was in the living room next to the studio with about fifteen Morley grandchildren around her, the children of Ziggy, Steven and Julian, and she started singing this rap verse and all the kids start repeating the last word of each line, chiming in very spontaneously because they were so into the song, and it made it onto the record.
After Jamaica, things got messy. The Newton twins say that Nobles convinced them to sign a publishing deal with him, which they did in the middle of making Miseducation, but at some point Nobles was informed that Hill would be taking all the writing and production credits. He and Pugh were not happy about this and exited the project six months before it wrapped, while the Newton stayed on to finish the album, but they were ultimately ensnared in the lawsuit after the release due to the deal that they signed with Nobles. Joe said, we got dragged into a lawsuit we didn't even want to go into, and initially this super backfired on these guys. Hill was basically hip hop's golden child at the time, so a bunch of relatively unknown session musicians, all male, suing her was seen at He was seen as an ugly move, and they said it had repercussions for them. Pugh was basically passed over for an opportunity to work with Missy Elliott, who was as she still is but extremely hot at the time, just because she found out that he had been involved in the lawsuit. Another of the album's producers, guy named Chay Vicious, told Rolling Stone that Hill might have faced pressure from the label to make herself seem an auteur. He said, she gave me co production on to Zion, but I did the track on my own. There was label pressure to do the Prince thing written and produced by Once it became clear that I wouldn't be credited or compensated according to what's fair, I had to voice how I felt I had a wife and family. She barely credited me. She gave Chay my credits as God is my witness.
That was in spite. I tried my best to resolve it without lawyers, but it became impossible, and all of this was reopened in very ugly fashion by jazz pianist Robert Glasper, who in twenty eighteen went on a rant about Hill on a radio show in Houston. Asked the question about managing egotistical personalities, Glasper took aims squarely at Hill, bringing up moments from a gig he did with her in two thousand and eight in which she frequently changed arrangements, demanded she be addressed as miss Hill and never looked at directly in the eye. And she also threatened to cut the band's payment in half, presumably if any of these things were not abided by. And a two thousand and three features on Lauren Hill for Rolling Stone, a few people mentioned that when they asked her how much they would be paid for working on a record with her, she said, do it for God, do it for free. Glasper continued, you've already stolen all my friends. Music miseducation was by great musicians and producers that I know personally, you got a big handoff of music. You didn't even write. Those songs were written by other people and they did not get their credit. She likes to take credits so she could become this superperson. If you're a superperson and you're that talented, do it you feel me? She couldn't tune her guitar and rehearsal, and Lauren was moved to respond to Glasper later that month, writing three thousand words on medium medium dot com, she said, these are my songs. Musicians are brought in because of the masterful way they play their instruments. You may be able to make suggestions, but you can't write for me. I am the architect of my creative expression. No decisions are made without me, no matter how incredible the musicians who play with me are. My name is on the marquee. The expectation to make it all come together is on me. The risk and financial losses are on me. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know, man, it's so ugly. You don't want t tar and feather people, especially women. But the evidence does not really look good for her, based on you know, the unplugged performance where she insisted on playing solo guitar and was not a very good guitarist. And yeah, I mean it's kind of like the Robbie Robertson thing where it's like, oh, yeah, that was all you so when's yeah, when's that happened?
And again.
Anyway, Yeah, I mean I don't know, it's exact same thing as the band man goat.
You can't. You're going to go into the studio and collaborate with people, better get the exact nature of your legality straight, because you will something bad will happen. You will get bitten in the ass at some point. Sorry, well weile reading this account, I was moved to think. You know, I've heard a lot about celebrities who reportedly demand that Underling's not looked them in the eye. I think Diana Ross was when he sprung to mind. And I was just thinking about this and I did a little googling, and there is a lot written on this subject. I was sort of shocked to find. The New York Post wrote a piece in twenty eleven called stare Wars. The ultimate star perk is forbidding eye contact, and it includes the passage we've all heard this for years, attached to pretty much every A list celeb or rockstar out there. Barbara streisand Force's hotel workers to turn and face the wall when she enters a room, goes one tail. Same for Michael Jordan at the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Some say Nicole Kidman insists her makeup artist refrained from making eye contact. Tom Cruise supposedly ordered extras to avert their gazes on the set of Magnolia. So I'd like to do a little sidebar on the phenomenon of celebrities, alleged Leaguele saying that people can't look them in the eye because it's fascinating to me. This same story in page six reports that the smoking gun leaked Katy Perry's tour writer for twenty eleven, which provided in their mind, definitive proof because of this clause covering her driver's behavior, She stipulated that her chauffeur is quote not to start a conversation with her or quote stare. In this same New York Post Piece pizza story that Jessica Albel told I think on several occasions about a time she had a bit roll on two episodes of Beverly Hills nine O two one zero back in nineteen ninety eight, and she was apparently contractually forbidden for making eye contact with Luke Perry or Tory Spelling. Otherwise she would have been thrown off the set. She said, you wouldn't be allowed to talk to them unless they spoke to you first. It was bizarre, but I guess that's what happens to you when you become a big star. It's like the queen. The same piece also said that Sylvester Stallone was sued by five of his household staffers in nineteen ninety nine, complaining that they could be fired if they looked him in the eye. I apparently when Sylvester Sloane entered a room, they were expected to quote back out and vanish immediately. A piece on Yahoo about this phenomenon cites an example from Boy Meet's World actor Ryder Strong, who was in a nineteen ninety three movie with Donald Sutherland called Benefit of the Doubt, and apparently he was informed nobody can make eye contact with Sutherland. He talked about this on the iHeart podcast Pod Meets World. If you were in a scene with him, you could make eye contact with him. But his whole thing was that every crew member has to look away. And the theory I guess behind all this is that actors are sensitive and the getting in the zone and any kind of like you know, eye contact is a very intimate thing and it might throw them or shake their performance or I'm waiting for you to make a fart sound.
I mean, dude, it like it's never like good actors that you hear about right, like, sorry, Donald Sutherland, you're not you know been. If like Daniel da Lewis said it like I would suddenly I would be I'd be like, oh, yeah, okay, that that has credence. If like Meryl Streep said it, I'd be like, okay, sure. But it's like, oh, Donald Sutherland, do you really need the purity of your getting into character for the movie you made with one of the guys from Boy Meets World, like the old asshole. Having said all of that, if I had that kind of power, I would probably do it.
I want to be able to look. I want people look at me in the eyes. That makes makes fair insects. Where's a quick lightning round of stories about other famous other A listers who have been linked to this demand. Sandra Bullock, entertainment journalist Steve Hessler claims back in twenty ten, I was an extra in The Lake House when Sandra Bullock was in it, and we were told that we were not allowed to make eye contact with her unless she initiated the eye contact. But apparently the crew started this policy on her behalf, and when she found out about it, she threw a big party for the cast and crew just to show that she wasn't a terrible person. You if somebody ruined Sandra for me, I'd be pretty broken. Yeah. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, rumors about killing Miscavige, Yeah, it's astounding to me that anyone would bother cherry picking this particular weird thing about Tom Cruise out, like what, Yes, he has denied them. In an interview with an interview that director Chris macquarie gave to The Sunday Times, he said that he asked Tom Cruise what the weirdest story was ever heard about himself, and Cruz laughed and said that it was a myth that people were not allowed to look me in the eye. So he says that's not true. Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood Reporter, claimed in twenty nineteen that on the side of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood quote, some crew members on there were instructed to avoid making eye contact with him. The qualifier of some crew members is interesting. Maybe they're people that he just specifically didn't like. Yeah, I mean again, Leo is not exactly like. I don't think anyone's like expecting Leo to be like the nicest guy in Hollywood, right, especially if you're a twenty six year old woman. Maybe that's what he meant. Maybe he meant anyone who's over the age of twenty six, do not look at me in the eyes. And also a dude, the rest of you please do this brings us, of course, to Ellen DeGeneres, she responded to multiple reports of a toxic environment on her sound stage. According to page six, she had a zoom call meeting with her with her staff and she addressed these reports. She said, I don't know where this rumor started that you can't look me in the eye. Please talk to me, look me in the eye. That is a command, and finally noted a comedy hero of mine, but noted eccentric Mike Myers, a bodyguard who worked with Mike on The Love Guru maligned Love Guru in two thousand and eight, has claimed that he was fired for looking Myers in the eye. He said he was informed of this policy, but accidentally made eye contact while allowing him into his trailer and his bodyguard. I guess. He took to Twitter to say, within an hour, I got a phone call letting me know that I'm fired and I have to get off the set because I broke this weird rule. Mike meanwhile denies this claim. That's just so dumb, like he really needed to be in the right head space for the Love Guru icon would have broken.
Come on, shud he had to make I guess. I guess he really had to pour it into writing the Pentaverate.
Oh my god, I forgot anybody remember that? Anybody remember? Like? What was that two summers ago? A summer ago? Who knows?
It doesn't matter God, for these people. The least they can do is something interesting like Laura Hill and just say I'm not paying taxes anymore because of society. Uh so, pedestrian and boring eye contact? All right, No for that ugly stuff. What about the songs? A couple of them were pretty good, I'm told. Uh DiAngelo came by to seeing on nothing even matters, he told Rolling Stone. Originally we were going to swap tunes for each other's projects because I was working on Voodoo at the same time and my keyboardist, James Poyser of the aforementioned out of Tune Harpsichord was working with her. When Lauren and I went into the studio together, I laid down my vocals in the course of an hour. I don't know why he felt compelled to add that, but sure. And then this was actually interesting to me, he said. Churches started substituting God in for the lyrics to nothing else matters, and he was like, whenever they make a gospel version out of a secular song, that's significant.
Wow. Yeah, I'm I'm having a tough time thinking of another example. Maybe I shall be released. I mean, neither of us go to like Black Baptist churches, so probably there are others, But yeah, I shall be released. Is a pretty has been adopted? Meanwhile on Everything Is Everything, Future R and B star John Legend showed up. I did not know this, yep, that I was in the spring of my junior year at the University of Pennsylvania. He's tucking a Rolling Stone. A friend invited me to give her a ride to Lauren's house in Jersey. Lauren was working on Everything Is Everything. I sang and played a couple songs for her, and she asked me to play piano on the track. She got me a little bit, but it was pretty simple because I was playing along with a string part that was already there. So I became known around campus as the dude who played on Everything Is Everything. It was my little claim the fame at Penn for my whole senior year. That's cool. You know what's less cool?
Carlos Santana, Yes now canceled, transphobic boomer guitar wank icon. Carlos Santana a man who never met somebody else's song. He couldn't play the same licks over uh plays on two Zion, the most personal at the tracks, addressed to Lauren Hill's son with Marley. I hate Carlos Santana.
I always have. That really was Yeah.
I just watched so he was like a talking head that I was exposed to a lot when I was watching a bunch of like music documentaries, and he just had nothing profound to say ever, and it came clearly was a guy who thought he did you know uh and had a lot of like like the trans rant, he just went on like who the asked you get.
Up there, play that that she lick and go go wherever it is you go. You know what a prick? Can you help the Santana guitar lick? Is it like the same lick over and over? You have more? No?
No, no, I'm just thinking about well now, I'm just thinking of the smooth lick. But he has a very identifiable style, I mean, and and some of it is I don't know, it's just sounds like guitar center. It can the tone like out of time, just like sour bends. His bens are out of tune. Yeah, fat guy.
He's a time intervative a few times, and he's a tough interview. Were you being insufficiently deferential? No, no, you just it was just it was like nailing yellow to the wall. It was just everything you said was so conceptual that there was nothing to grab onto, so there was no follow ups, there was no Everything would just drift off into like oh wow, that's really wow, that's really yeah. Where'd you get that leather fedora?
So anyway, he plays on tu Zion because Hill promised to be on Supernatural, and in fact she was. Although not one of the songs that that album is remembered for, she apparently was a big fan of his going way back, she said. I told MTV News in nineteen ninety nine, I used to write music, you know, write songs over Santana's guitar playing when I was a little kid. I had all his records and I would play Samba Pati off the Abraxis album and just write rhymes and songs on top of it. So I knew Carlos way before he knew me. That song, Hill told The Guardian in nineteen ninety nine is about the revelation that my son was to me. I had always made decisions for other people, making everybody else happy, and once I had him, that was really the first decision that was unpopular. It was one that was based on my happiness and not what other people wanted for me or for themselves, and it was the best decision I could have made, because I'm the happiest and healthiest that I have ever been.
We like to hear that, yeah for the album Smash Hit do Wop parentheses that thing close breath Anisha Randolph, a backup singer on the track, told Rolling Stone that quote, I got a phone call asking if I was available to come to chun King Studios. Lauren came in eating spaghetti, palmadoro and garlic bread. For some reason, I really want to know if she was like walking in with that and eating it as she was walking, or if if she came in eating Yeah. I just like the fact that this person remembers that. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's like pretty I'm trying to think of I have any celebrity experiences where they were eating and I'm remembering what they're eating. No, okay, moving on. Uh. Lauren explained where she's trying to go with this album for Duop. She said, I'm want to play with fifties and sixties harmonies, like barbershop guys on the corner, and then we all just jumped in and harmonizing a cappella. Woo woo woo. I should have given that more passion. Commissioner Gordon added, when I mixed Duop at Sony Studios, it was one hundred and twenty eight tracks, two forty eight machines, plus two twenty four to two inch machines all running at the same time. I know there are a lot of vocal harmonies on that track. I know that, And I'm sure there are a lot of samples running at the same time. I'm sure there are a lot of drums that are individually miked and have their own track. How are there one hundred and twenty eight tracks on that song?
I mean everything you just said, Jesus, her vocals will probably tracked over a few times everybody. I mean, they might have done the Queen thing, you know, where everybody everybody's harmonies are tracked over multiple times.
Yeah, I mean that stuff piles up quickly. It's crazy. I mean yeah, I mean you can there's like prog rock wonks who put like fifty mics on a drum kit. You know.
Yeah, some of the lyrics and du wop though, haven't age particularly well in an era that's much more sex positive. Hill's moralistic stance can see them in a little bit judgy, but in a details interview at the time, she skirted a whether or not she was taking aim at some of her peers. I mean, to contextualize all this, this is, you know, an era in which like Little Kim and Foxy Brown are rapping about sex in a very aggressive female centered way, and do wop that thing is? Lauren was her image was not at all sexual, and this song in particular has a few different too.
What's that? I mean her pardon sister act too? Or she was you know she's singing in a choir in a nunnery. No nice she has been, or no, she's one of the teen kids I forget. Yeah, it's been three weeks since you were looking for your friend, the one you let hit it and never call it again. You act like you ain't hear him, then give him a little trim to begin.
How you think you're really going to pretend like you wasn't down and you called him again. Plus when you give it up so easy, you ain't even fool in him. If he did it, then then you'd probably again.
Trim is such like a rat pack expression.
Yeah, who are you gonna tell when the repercussion spin showing off your ass because you're thinking it's a trend.
Yeah.
So anyway, she said she wasn't taking aim at them in particular. She said, I'm not dissing them, I'm dissing their mindset. My music talks about a certain way of thinking and if the cap fits. You know, I knew girls like Kim growing up. I might have even been one at a certain age, and there's a huge lack of self esteem behind that thinking.
I don't think little Kim's problem is a lack of self esteem. No, yeah, no, to quote a little Kim. Around this period, I used to be scared of the dick. Now I throw lips to the There you have it, Yes, as true today as when it was written. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. The album's cover of Frankie Valley's hit Can't Take My Eyes Off You was actually never meant to be a commercial single. It was recorded for the very forgettable Mel Gibson Julia Roberts movie Conspiracy Theory, but once it hit the radio, it became immensely popular and wound up as a bonus track on the record. I would imagine this would have been around the time of its resurgence and Ten Things I Hate About You. Maybe that was ninety nine. That might have been ninety nine. Yeah, I was always confirsed.
Yeah, good couple of years for Frankie. Yeah, royalty checks must have been fat.
And then he got Jersey Boys premiered, probably around then too, jeez. Living Large Commissioner Gordon told Rolling Stone, Lauren called me and said she was behind and had to get the song done. She didn't know how the arrangement of the song went, so he went and got a copy from Coconuts or Sam Goodie record stores. I had a little one room, sixteen track studio in my apartment in Jersey. Lauren was eight months pregnant, laying on her back on the floor, half asleep, holding a handheld mic. She did all those vocals off the top of her head pretty much in one take with the beatbox and all that. That blew me away. That is a great version of that song. I love that song.
The album, as I was mentioned at the top of the episode. The album is in conversation with a history of a wide swath of black music.
Hill and Mary J.
Blige's duet I Used to Love Him samples a hook from ice Cream, which was a Wu Tang member Rakwan solo track. The album's title track, Miseducational, Lauren Hill also calls back to another nineties rap star. It's a play on Commons nineteen ninety four song I Used to Love Her her as an acronym for hip hop in its essence is real, which has always felt like a stretch to me. Common Hill also nods at a foundational classic from the dance music genre on the album, which he says, jack your body in every ghetto, every city. She's referencing the nineteen eighty six club anthem jack your Body by Chicago DJ producer Steve sil Curly and Lost Ones is built on a sample of the famous dancehall track Bam Bam by Sister Nancy, which itself interpolates a hook from the nineteen sixty six Toots of the Maytol song of the same name.
That's just so cool, man. I love when I love.
It's like it's like the old folk songs, or like old blues songs that just have a bunch of common lyrics. Everything's just kind of shared and passed around. Funnily enough, the teacher who's heard talking with students on Miseducation's interludes is Ross Baraka, who is now the longtime mayor of Newark. He is the son of Amir Baraka, who is a writer, very foundational jazz writer, music writer who wrote a lot of his stuff under the.
Name le Roy Jones.
He said, I was running for councilmen in Newark, and I was also an eighth grade teacher. I was just about to take two of my students home, and Lauren called and asked if I could come up to her house in South Orange. There were chairs set up in the living room and a bunch of kids were there. She told me she wanted to discuss the concept of love. There was a blackboard and I wrote the letters love, and we just went into the whole discussion. So for the album's title, he'll reach back to a nineteen thirty three book called The Miseducation of the Negro by doctor Carter G. Woodson that her parents had a copy of. And in the book, Woodson railed against what he saw was cultural indoctrination by the US school system against black students, writing at one point, when you control a man's thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him to stand here or go yonder. He will find his quote proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. The titles also referenced to nineteen seventy four black exploitation film called The Education of Sonny Carson. Carson was a real life figure. He was a Korean War vet activist community leader in Brooklyn who organized protests to get of the school systems in black communities in New York in the nineteen sixties, and that film has become a huge touchstone in hip hop. The Wu Tang Clan, Prodigy of Mob, Deep, Common, Ghost Face Killer, Pete Rock, Two Chains, and Meek Mill, among others, have all sampled dialogue from the film in their music, and twenty one Savage and Travis Scott both sampled a song from the film's soundtrack to use as the basis for their tracks.
Lauren Hill told The Guardian the title of the album was meant to discuss those life lessons, those things you don't get in any textbook, things that we go through that force us to mature. Hopefully we learn. Some people get stuck. They say that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And these are some really powerful lessons that change the course and direction of my life. And for the cover of the album, so Beloved by My Dear friend Alex Heigel. Laurence Hill initially pursued a school themed art direction at our old high school in New Jersey, shot by a guy named Eric Johnson who'd actually grown up in South Orange also. But after these images have been shot, Aaron Grozia, then Sony Music's art director, got a phone call from Lauren Hill's team. He recalled the ok Player. An image of Eric's was selected that would be carved in quotes from the wood of the desk. I provide a direction to Will Kennedy, a gifted retoucher that was part of the art department in nineteen ninety eight. To shop wasn't anywhere near as powerful retouchers made up for it with all their skills and talent. Will had a knack forgetting the art to look just right. There have been various versions of the cover art, including some with the wood chips that had just been carved out if you will and visible on the surface of the desk that got rejected as the various woodchips were visually distracting. Then there was another version that had no pencil, but in the end the cleaner desk was finally selected.
Yeah, it always reminded me of the burnin the Whaler's album cover, which I think in that interview, that Okay Player interview, there's a different executive who's like, yeah, they didn't want the album the Bob Marley album cover, which means more than one person made that same mistake. And I also made me think of the Alice Cooper the schools out schools at which I doubt was an influence. I'm just gonna go on a limb there. Despite the album's status in this day and age, there was internal friction about it at the time. Rohan Marley told Rolling Stone and her mom took early versions of the album to Sony Records and they said, this is coffee table music.
What is it?
She took her and walked out of there. Rich nice A and R. Columbia told Okay Player, the buzz in the album in the building wasn't as popular as you might think, and her being a black woman added touchiness to it. There was a who does she think she is in the building. The climate from some senior execs was that they were not in favor of the record, and it was no secret to the people who created and worked on it. It was insulting that this great artist put together this amazing album, but all they want is a jukeboxed artist. Somebody actually said to Zion is okay, but there's no killing me softly here.
However, the label was able to get a lot of press in the order for Lauren. She was on the cover of Time magazines tribute to hip hop's twentieth anniversary, which I guess they're counting as nineteen seventy eight, which is weird because now we've got a big fiftieth anniversary of hip hop. Anyway, what is Time? Yeah? True, it's a flat circle. And they also scored covers not just more black focus magazines like Honey, Essence, Vibe, and The Source, but also Harper's Bizarre, GQ, and Rolling Stone. Stephanie Gale, the senior director of marketing at Columbia at the time, told Okay Player, the biggest issue at the time seems silly now, but the label was concerned about how people would react to her being pregnant. I needed to make sure we could accomplish everything that was needed to properly set up an album without making it obvious that she was with child. We pushed to get the album photoshoot done as soon as we could deliver the iconic concept she was insisting on and use great discretion to get the Doop that Thing video completed. Now, Higil tell us about this video for Duop that Thing, because we were talking before we started recording. I don't think I've ever seen this video, which is one of my many cultural blind spots from the era in which I allegedly grew up.
Yeah, for any of you who are similarly in a blind spot, it is a split screen set up with Lauren and in the current day and then as a kind of very obviously Motown influenced singer, and it kind of pans around the streets of Harlem and everybody's dressed currently and then dressed from the sixties. Very vibe, very cool. The senior director of video production for Columbia at the time, Camille Yorick, told Okay Player that she reached out to a bunch of directors and it was actually a British production due named Big TV who submitted the split screen idea. They flew to New York in advance of the shoot and we had a great meeting with Lauren at her hotel. It was Lauren's decision to make the split screen invisible. She liked that one image blended into the other as opposed to a stark line. It was this big TV done, that's not really googleble just brings up best by.
Big TV.
Anyway, York continued. The styling, photography, and production design were also key to the magic of that video. The challenge, we were basically shooting two videos at once. It was a five day shoot, two sets of wardrobes and art direction from two very different time periods, requiring lots of research. We shot the whole thing in the Inwood section of Uptown Manhattan. We took over a city block for five days. Lauren was also very pregnant at the time, but she was a trooper. It paid off at the mtvma's back when that meant something. Do Wop video won four Awards for Best Female Video, Best R and B Video, Best Art Direction, and Video of the Year, making Hill the first solo black artist to win and the second overall after TLC in nineteen ninety five. Because MTV didn't like black people.
The song Lost Ones was leaked early and with it being presumed shot at WYCLEF radio stations, ate it up, causing a wave of hype around the album. Consequently, when the full record dropped on August twenty fifth, nineteen ninety eight, it debuted at the top of the Billboard two hundred, making Lauren Hill the first unaccompanied female solo rapper to do so, and she's still one of only five female rappers to hold the honor, with the other four being Foxy Brown, Yes, Eve, Yes, Nicki Minaj, Sure, Cardi B. How do you feel about that? That's fine? Okay. During its first week on the shelves, Miseducation sold over four hundred and twenty thousand copies, breaking the record for the release week sales by any female artist. Wow. That stood until Adele's twenty five Jesus Not twenty one twenty five Yeah Wow, that is crazy. The Recording Industry Association of America certified the album gold a little more than a month after it came out, which is a sales of five hundred thousand copies or more, and the record spent eighty one total weeks in the Billboard two hundred. In twenty twenty one, the Guinness Book of World Records noted that Lauren Hill became the first female rapper to reach RIAA Diamond certification for selling ten million copies of Miseducation. Not only has no other female rapper achieved the feat since, but the only rappers period to reach Diamond status for an album eminem Outcasts, Notorious Pig presumably not in his lifetime, Tucac presumably not in his lifetime. Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys, NMC Hammer was Beasti Boy licensed to Ill? Must have been licensed to Ill? Yeah, could have been Paul's fatigue Okay Wow.
Miseducation was intended to function as a full album, and consequently, at first du Wop wasn't even going to come out as a commercial single, But the album was such a success that Columbia printed up a limited number of singles for the song and released them two months after the album dropped, Uh, that's just wild to me in October of nineteen ninety eight. They weren't going to release it. The album was such a success that they were like two months later they were like, as I guess, I guess we gotta do this. The single debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot one hundred and Hot Rap Songs chart, became Hill's only top ten hit. Two other singles from mis Education charted X Factor at number twenty one and Everything Is Everything at number thirty five, and then at the Grammys the following year, Hill set two additional records for female artists. She received ten nominations and won five awards, the first female artist to do so, with Miseducation becoming the first hip hop record to win Album of the Year.
Wow.
And then the music goes into a minor key because all of this came at a price. Hill's manager at the time, Jason Jackson, told Rolling Stone, Lauren became an international superstar. She couldn't go to the grocery store without makeup, and I think that had an adverse effect on her. Two thousand and three Rolling Stone article by Torre contended that Hill was offered the role in Charlie's Angels that ultimately went to Lucy Lou and that she took meetings with Matt Damon about being in the Bourne Identity, Brad Pitt about a part in The Mexican and with the Wachowskis about a role in the last two films in the Matrix trilogy, which I am betting dollars to donuts is the role that ultimately went to.
Jada Pinkett Smith yeah. Oh yeah, Wow, that is crazy. Did she do any big movies after no? I assumed not. Yeah. Lauren Hill told Rolling Stone there were definitely things I enjoyed about stardom, but there were definitely things I didn't enjoy. The pedestal to me is as much about containment and controls at his adulation. Finding balance, clarity, and sobriety can be very hard for some to maintain. She added, the idea of artists as public property I always had a problem with that. I agreed to share my art, I'm not agreeing to necessarily share myself. The entitlement that people often feel like they somehow own you or own a piece of you can be incredibly dangerous. I chafe under any kind of control like that, and resist expectations that suggest I should somehow dumb down and be predictable to make people feel comfortable, rather than authentically express myself. So Lauren withdrew into her family life and went deeper into religion. Jason Jackson, her manager, told Rolling Stone it started to get strange. Bible study went from one day a week to three days a week to five days a week. I went to a couple of them, but was like I completely understand if it's your calling, but it's not mine and I can't force it. As that picked up, we drifted further and further again. Hard to know, hard to know what actually happened, but we do have. I mean.
Hard to know what actually happened, but what seemed to happen was a guy named Brother Anthony came in.
In two thousand.
He sort of a Bible centric spiritual advisor, and possibly under his influence, Hill fired her management team and other people close to her with no notice. Sources told Rolling Stone that she began starting many of her sentences with Brother Anthony says. People couldn't pin down what exactly it was that he believed in other than the Bible. One person told Rolling Stone, I don't think he had a religion. I think he was more like my interpretation of the Bible is the only interpretation of the Bible. I'm the only one on earth that knows the truth. Shortly after recording her disastrous installment of MTV Unplugged, Hill told MTV Online, I met someone who has an understanding of the Bible like no one else I ever met in my life. I just sat at his feet and ingested pure scripture for about a year. Pras Michelle never won to mince words. Said, brother Anthony was definitely on some other I had a tape of his teachings that she is ill me up. I can't explain it. It was some weird man. It was some real culture. So MTV Unplugged two point zero, which is her only album length proper release, comes out, and it was a It was just something. It was quite a thing. She didn't have any full band arrangements. It was just her and acoustic guitar, which she did appear to not to have spent a ton of time practicing. And the entire album is punctuated by a lot of just raw emotion. She breaks down in tears repeatedly. She makes statements like I'm crazy and deranged. I'm emotionally unstable. I used to be a performer, but I don't really consider myself a performer anym more. She said, I created this public persona this public illusion, and it held me hostage. I couldn't be a real person because you're too afraid of what your public will say. At that point, I had to do some dying. Yeah there is Do you remember this?
I dimly Yeah.
They recorded in July twenty first, two thousand and one. It did get a sample. It became the basis for Kanye's song All Falls Down, one of the songs off of it, so it had that, But of course now now it's all just being you know, reappraised. Sam Smith treated that MTV Unplugged Lauren Hills is their bible. Britney Spears praised the album as amazing.
I mean, I'm sure the performances were great, but it must have just been a troubling document of an artist in some form of what alternatively say collapse. And I'm saying that as somebody who doesn't really know the intricacies of her personal life. But yeah, it doesn't sound like an especially healthy place. And she elaborated on this a little bit in in two thousand and six interview with Essence. She said, I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised. I had to fight for an identity that doesn't fit in one of those boxes. I'm a whole woman, and when I can't be whole, I have a problem. And by the end I was like, I've got to get out of here. People need to understand that the Lauren Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at that time. There was much more strength, spirit, passion, desire, curiosity, ambition, and opinion that was not allowed in a small space designated for consumer mass appeal and dictated by very limited standards. It's a very articulate way to I mean, I assume this would be in her email interview phase, but it's a very articulate way to put feeling at odds with the machine. Yeah.
I mean again, everything she says is like not wrong. Yeah, it's not wrong. It's just you know, not how unfortunately, not the way that the system works. Torre's two thousand and three feature in Rolling Stone had some sources claiming that Columbia had spent over two and a half million on a follow up to Miseducation by that point, and that they had subsequently cut her off. Her live shows around this time gained a reputation for starting hours late, if at all. Performances were frequently canceled. In December of two thousand and three, during a performance in Vatican City, she spoke of the corruption, exploitation and abuses by the Catholic Church, which again not wrong.
Sure, yeah, read the room.
Very shenade like yeah yeah yeah, but again in Vatican City, which is arguably like the most punk thing that you could possibly do. But yes, totally, but like, yeah, I don't know how she thought that would go for her. Fuji's reunited in two thousand and four for Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and Hill released she has released new music. She's become just more and more of a recluse. I found this delightful note in Wikipedia. One of the few public appearances Hill made in two thousand and eight was at a Martha Stewart book signing in New Jersey. A fellow inmate, yes exactly. Speaking of tax evasion, then, of course there was the tax evasion. In June of twenty twelve, Hill was charged with three counts of tax fraud for failing to file taxes on one point eight million of income earned between two thousand and five and two thousand and seven. In a long screed on her Tumbler account, Hill said that she had gone underground as a result of quote a climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism, and agism. Going on to state when I was working consistently without being affected by the interferences mentioned above, I filed and paid my taxes. This only stopped when it was necessary to withdraw from society in order to guarantee the safety and well being of myself and my family, which again makes sense. Sure, yeah, not a thing you can do.
Though. She's a brilliant woman. I mean everything we discussed earlier about, you know, writing songs for Rutha Franklin and Ya Houston at age twenty and going to Columbia and being a homecoming queen and an athlete I guess, oh, an yes, athlete I mean, and also an incredible actress too. I would assume that people who are that brilliant maybe assume the rules don't apply to them, or that the only way to change things in society is not to comply.
Well, the government was of a different mind, and she served just under three months in the minim security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. In twenty twenty one, Hell made the claim on a podcast that her label never asked how they could help her make another album, which is a commonly aggregate news piece. Despite all of that stuff that I said, about Torre's feature claiming Columbia spent two point five million on her. I have to believe that that was not true. Like I far be it for me to call Lauren Hill a liar. But I don't think there's any way that that was. That's a true thing. Yeah, A source described the label to him as bending over backwards for her. But the fact of the matter is that, other than if you're counting unplugged, Hill has never given a proper full length album fall up to this. The big news this month is that she announced a twenty fifth anniversary toort commemorate Miseducation, and all the obvious jokes about whether or not it'll start on time or if a new record will be timed to the album's fiftieth anniversary have been made, So thank you. That contest is now closed. Thank you to everyone who wrote in yes, you know, I think the thing that makes me sadist about this is just the potential. I was reading a lot of inner views from artists like also now canceled Lizzo, and but just a lot of the young hip hop adjacent or R and B adjacent artists who talked about how truly crazy it was to have to see someone like her have such a level of visibility and just world domination when they were.
Growing up, you know.
And one of the things we didn't mention at one point was that she had a tour that was like co sponsored by Levi's, like you know, the jeans that was a big deal, Like it was a big fashion coup, and getting on the cover of like Harper's Bizarre and Time magazine like that was really genuinely crazy, you know, for a black woman at the time, especially in that era of hip hop. So that's what just makes me sad about this is like, you know, there was seemingly such a long on road ahead of her and it just never materialized. She took the off ramp instead, you know, And being is that she hasn't talked about it a ton, you know, you can't really we can only take her at her word that it was the right move for her and her family. But it's still, Yeah, it's just like seeing that that idea of that potential never really materialize is really heartbreaking.
What a bummer. Yes, but it almost gets back to the old is a better doo have loved and lost than never loved your girl?
Yeah, you know, we still have the album. Man, it's still sold ten million copies. You know, you can't take that away from her. She broke all those records. She was and even if you know, even if she never lived up to the potential of being that figurehead and that person for the hip hop community, she was still out there for a lot of kids growing up who needed to see that. And that's what's ultimately still really important and what we can take away from it. And hey, you know, if you get tickets, I really hope the show starts on time.
I'm Alex Heigel. This has been too much information. Thank you for listening, and I'm Jordan run Tagg. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
