Lauryn Hill

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Born:
May 25, 1975, she's 37 and American.
Birthname:
Lauryn Noel Hill.
Snapshot:
An Artist with 11 releases, a member of 1 group, and credited 11 times on others' music. 7 collaborations.

Biography

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Lauryn Hill is an actress and multi-award winning, multi-million selling hip-hop artist from New Jersey.

She originally rose to fame as a young actress, appearing in the TV soap As The World Turns and the Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act 2. As a musician she reached worldwide fame as the lead vocalist in The Fugees, whose 1996 album The Score was an international smash. Her voice was especially noticed on the hit singles "Ready Or Not" and "Killing Me Softly" (a Roberta Flack cover). The Score won Best Rap Album at the Grammys, and "Killing Me Softly" won Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. The album went on to sell over 18 million copies worldwide.

Incredibly, she followed that up with an equally successful solo album called The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (1998). It was universally acclaimed by critics and earned her an incredible five Grammys in 1999: Album of the Year, Best R&B Album, Best New Artist, and Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for hit single "Doo Wop (That Thing)". The Miseducation... has also gone on to sell around 18 million copies worldwide.

However, Hill had very mixed feelings about her own success and retreated from the public eye. Her return in 2002, MTV Unplugged 2.0 was met with bemusement by many. Recorded as a live show, it featured poorly performed acoustic songs that were heavily reliant on their confusing lyrics, and a performer who seemed on the verge of a breakdown. To some it was fascinating, to others it was a fiasco, but it still sold over two million copies thanks to the reputation she had built with her previous work.

The Fugees reformed in 2004 and went out on tour. Plans for a new Fugees album were shelved in 2007 because of personality clashes within the group.

Music

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Genres

Contemporary R&B,
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Discography

33 releases – 11 under her own name, 12 in other groups and 11 credits on others' music Edit
Collaborations, Groups and Family
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Lauryn Hill

Has worked with

Has been in these groups

  • Fugees

    founder member
    • rapper/singer/producer:
      • 1994-1997
    Fugees

Has this family

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In the News

( 2 stories between 6th April 2009 and 7th September 2010 )

The Tentative Return Of Lauryn Hill

Sep, 7 2010

Picture the scenario: you've toured all around the world, sold over 30 million records, won seven Grammy awards, and even starred in a handful of movies, by the time you celebrate your 24th birthday. Does your thirst for fame and fortune persist, or do you decide to try something new? Lauryn Hill has been discussing her recent return to performing, twelve years since the phenomenal success of her one-and-only studio album The Miseducation Of.... She says the reason she never recorded a sophomore was because she took on an entirely new challenge: motherhood. "I was a stay-at-home mom," she told FUSE, and she wanted her children to have "normalcy, privacy and the right to be real people without the scrutiny... [of] the media." "I wanted a real life as well, out of public scrutiny," she added. "I never did music for attention, I did it because it stimulated me." Now she's back to performing occasionally, and there could be "some new recordings" forthcoming, but don't bet on them necessarily being in album-form. "In terms of what kind of context they come out in, I'm real free."

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Lauryn Hill

Apr, 6 2009

Could reclusive R&B star Lauryn Hill be making a comeback? The ex-Fugees star has been billed to perform at two concerts in central Europe this summer, which will be her first shows since a widely criticized tour in 2007. She's set to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in July, then as a headliner of the Nova Jazz & Blues Night in Wiesen, Austria, on July 25. Since winning five Grammy Awards and selling almost twenty million copies of debut solo album The Miseducation of..., Lauryn Hill has courted controversy on the rare occasions she's spoken to the media, and has disappointed fans with poor live performances and a lack of new material. She has apparently been working on a new album since 2004, but with more than a decade now having passed since that debut, it's looked increasingly unlikely that a follow-up will ever materialize. The news of two upcoming gigs doesn't indicate whether a record is imminent, but it does show she hasn't retired from music altogether.

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