- Lauryn Hill fought for creative freedom, as wild success can lead to greed and denigrate the art.
- Lauryn Hill sees herself as a Harriet Tubman figure, running to speak difficult truths before forces tried to silence her.
- Lauryn Hill believes creativity is most potent when free, and she introduced new standards and possibilities to a generation.
Lauryn Hill is opening up about why she never released another solo project following The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998, comparing herself to Harriet Tubman when it comes to the music industry.
On Instagram this week, Fraim World made a post dissecting the potential reasons why the Fugees rapper chose not to release another album. In the lengthy post, they pointed out multiple label issues along with the pressures that came with Hill being a perfectionist.
In response to this post, Lauryn made her way into the comments section on Friday, May 15, to deliver a her own explanation of the decades-long gap between her only album, and now. She started off the interaction with a simple comment that reads, “I disagree. 😊,” before going into a much more detailed explanation about her own reasoning.
“When you’re inspired and desire to be principled, what doesn’t get talked about enough is the drain…nor the challenge to find safety so that you can create with integrity,” the Grammy winner began. “Most see opportunity as dollars only and often exclude the ‘sense.’”
Hill continued, “The Score nor the Miseducation were made because we were ‘allowed’ to represent what we did, we fought for every inch. Wild success can cause greed that begins to denigrate the art for the money. We’re people living through all this. These conversations should allow for more nuance. Artists go through phases, creativity requires expression, exploration and experimentation. There were people who hated the Unplugged album and yet some today swear by its significance.”
The beloved singer and rapper then compared herself to abolitionist Harriet Tubman, saying that she did not feel empowered to express her truths to the fullest extent while her creative freedom was limited.
“I was like a Harriet Tubman figure in some respects running to speak difficult truths to power before certain forces tried to close those doors,” she continued. “If it was so easy to do, where is that expression now on the world stage? Systems fear what they can’t control. Creativity is most potent when it’s free. If I did nothing else, I introduced standards and possibilities to a generation that didn’t know they could operate on that level before then.”
In her conclusion, Hill wrote, “I am often doing things outside the support of the system before people can even realize what I’ve done. Another artist who values inspiration then recognizes IT’S value and re-presents it to an audience then ready to receive it.”
Lauryn Hill only releasing one album has always been a topic of conversation among music lovers. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released in August 1998 and debuted atop the Billboard 200, selling 422,000 albums in its first week, per Billboard. The highly-regarded project went on to win album of the year at the Grammy Awards in 1999, making her the first rapper ever to win AOTY.
