Lauryn

"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" is one of my five favorite albums. It was the first album that felt, to me and to most of my friends, like a cultural event that everyone was experiencing, and acknowledging, at the same time. Like how "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" must have felt to 20-year olds in 1967 or "Songs in the Key of Life" in 1976. My best friend Rey bought a CD player just so he could buy the CD. I still remember laying in my bed at night, in the heat of the African summer, and listening to the album over and over. Rolling Stone recently did a nice piece on the 10-year anniversary of the album, including this quote by one of Ms. Hill's back-up singers that nicely sums up the impact of the album:

I sang with her until 2006. One of my last conversations with Ms. Hill was about her feeling like there's no room for her music and people biting and stealing the formula and making it into something dishonest. And my words for her were, "You changed my life in a day."

Miseducation dropped in 1998. Ms. Hill's follow-up, an MTC Unplugged album of unfinished songs, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2002 and since then, nothing. Every now and then, an article about her "erratic behavior" or the new album she is supposedly working on. But it's really kind of amazing. She drops an album that touches a generation, an album that will be played for years and years, and that's it. Done. Ms. Hill, wherever you are, we miss you...