The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Review

The scale of what she does here is almost absurd. She wrote it, produced most of it, raps on it with the confidence of a specialist and sings on it with the range of a different specialist, and the album never once sounds like a set of skills being displayed. Doo Wop is the perfect single, a warning delivered as a party record, with a horn arrangement that lifts every time it arrives.

Ex Factor is the definitive song about staying in something that is over. Everything Is Everything builds slowly into one of the great closing statements. To Zion is unguarded about a decision she was pressured to make differently and it is genuinely moving. The band plays live, the arrangements breathe, and the sequencing is patient without ever dragging. She never made another one, which is a real loss and does not diminish this by an inch.