The twentieth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is quite an occasion for a number of important cultural reasons. For me, it’s mostly a reminder of just how old I am, as 1998 still feels like a decade ago at most. I now regularly ultrasound pregnant patients who were born after Tupac died, and each time I sprout a new gray hair. But back to 1998, I was fifteen years old and offered up Ms. Hill’s debut album as a gift idea for my grandma, who wanted to buy me a present for some random reason. She was (and is) generally clueless about such things as popular music, so she walked into the store and asked one of the employees to help her find the album. They searched the entire store for a good fifteen minutes before the poor guy finally discovered it on a separate display in a corner of the store. Because of this, my grandma thought this was some unknown artist whose rise I had predicted. When Lauryn Hill took home all those damn Grammy’s the next year, my grandma was convinced that I was some kind of musical clairvoyant who could pluck future talent out of thin air. Which would be great if it were true, as A&R of Def Jam sounds infinitely sexier than OB/GYN radiologist. But I digress.
I devoured that album from the moment I got it. My friends and I were just learning to drive at the time, and we listened to it in the car on the way to study sessions. I played it in my headphones while I set the table for dinner. I bumped it in the bathroom while I took showers, and I sat with the liner notes, reading the lyrics until I knew them all by heart. I discussed its awesomeness and debated over the best songs with my best bus friend as we delved into Ms. Hill’s controversial interviews and political stances. I had acquired a decent music collection by this point and had plenty of favorites, but this was one of the first albums I truly engaged with to such an extent, because it virtually demanded such attention. From the beats to the lyrics to the level of discourse, this was a piece of art to be reckoned with. Continue reading “Memories of Miseducation”
