The Culture Isn’t Finished With ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’—and Neither Is She

#TIA – Reading the story of this 20th anniversary may reinforce your realization of how many others go by without our attention.

“Given all that has come in its wake, it is still hard to believe that Lauryn Hill released The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill when she was 23 years old. True, Hill had lived plenty of lives by then, had tried on a variety of roles—straight-A student of Maplewood, New Jersey’s Columbia High School; founder of her school’s gospel choir; promising teen actress stealing scenes in Sister Act 2 and As the World Turns; sole female member of the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning group that the media dubbed “the new conscience of rap”; and of course at her most braggadocious, “Nina Simone, defecating on your microphone.” Yet somehow, none of this quite prepared people in the summer of 1998 for the monumental achievement of her first and, to date, only solo studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill—a collection of songs as timeless and disparate as the tough-love anthem “Doo Wop (That Thing),” the break-up dirge “Ex-Factor,” the fire-starting “Lost Ones,” and that tender ode to impending motherhood “To Zion.””

Read more at the Ringer