Lauryn Hill Concerts Tickets

About Lauryn Hill

American singer, songwriter and rapper Lauryn Hill was born on May 26, 1975 in East Orange, New Jersey, and she was raised in South Orange, New Jersey. Hill came from an affluent, musical family and her father sang in local nightclubs and at weddings.

During middle school, she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a basketball game and her performance was so popular that the school played a recording of it at the beginning of subsequent games. After middle school, Hill attended Columbia High, which is where she met Prakazrel "Pras" Michel in her freshman year. The two began a music group called Translator Crew, with Michel rapping and Hill and another girl singing. The other female vocalist left the group and was replaced by Michel's cousin, Wyclef Jean, and over time Hill began learning to rap as well as sing.

Hill had acting lessons in Manhatten throughout her time at school, making her debut in 19991 in a hip-hop rendition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. She was noticed by an agent and was cast in a recurring role as a teen runaway on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. Her big break in the acting world came in 1993, the year she graduated high school, when she was cast alongside Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, where she was praised for her performance, voice and rapping skills. That year, Hill, Michel and Jean signed a record deal with Columbia/Ruffhouse Records and changed their group's name to The Fugees.

Career

1994-1996: The Fugees

The Fugees released their debut album, Blunted on Reality, in 1994, reaching number 62 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, but failing to make an impact critically and commercially. The band found its breakthrough with their 1996 sophomore album The Score, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and stayed in the chart's top 10 for over six months, as well as debuting at number one on the Billboard Top Rap Albums Chart. The album was critically acclaimed and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album at the 1997 Grammy Awards. It was also eventually included on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was certified six-times platinum in the US and included the hit singles "Killing Me Softly", "Fu-Gee-La", and "Ready or Not". Hill received widespread praise for her vocal performance on their cover of "Killing Me Softly" and the song won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

Around this time, Hill had enrolled at Columbia University, but left when The Score became successful. In 1997, just a year after the score was released, The Fugees disbanded, due to tensions within the group and in order to focus on solo projects.

1997-2000: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

In late 1997, not long after the birth of her first child with Rohan Marley, Hill went into the studio to record her solo album: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Recorded at Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, Jamaica, the album was recorded with a variety of live instruments, eschewing the computer-aided music usually associated with hip-hop, and traversed a variety of musical genres, including R&B, doo-wop, pop, hip-hop and reggae. It was released on August 25, 1998, by Ruffhouse Records and Columbia Records, and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and R&B Albums charts, staying at the top spot for four and six weeks, respectively. The album broke a record for first-week sales by a female artist and has been certified eight-times platinum by the RIAA. In addition to receiving praise for its original musicality, The Miseductation of... was lauded for its lyrical content, which candidly tackled issues of love, god, motherhood and philosophy and painted a raw and honest picture of Hill's life. The album became the most acclaimed album of 1998 and has since been ranked in numerous best-album lists, often being noted as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2015, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was regarded by the Library of Congress to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and was selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.

At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in January 1999, the album earned Hill 10 nominations and went on to win five awards, including Album of the Year, Best R&B Album, Best R&B Song, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist. Hill was the first woman ever to receive that many nominations, and also the first women to take home that many awards in one night. The record was also the first hip hop album to ever receive Album of the Year, and it is seen by many as a forerunner in bringing hip-hop to the mainstream. Among her 10 Grammy Award nominations, in addition to her nominations for The Miseducation of..., Hill's nominations included her rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" for the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, and her writing and production on Aretha Franklin's hit "A Rose Is Still a Rose".

The following month, Hill received four awards at the 30th Annual NAACP Image Awards, and in May, she became the youngest woman ever named to Ebony magazine's 100+ Most Influential Black Americans list and also made People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. That June, she received an Essence Award.

The 2000 Grammy Awards also brought success for Hill. She had co-written, co-produced and rapped on the track "Do You Like the Way" on Carlos Santana's 1999 album Supernatural, and became one of many artists and producers to share the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for the record. She was also nominated for Best R&B Song for "All That I Can Say", which she had written and produced for Mary J. Blige.

2001–2003: MTV Unplugged No. 2.0

In January 2001, Hill received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for her concocted duet with Bob Marley on "Turn Your Lights Down Low", which had appeared on the 1999 remix tribute album Chant Down Babylon and in the 1999 film The Best Man.

Six months later, she taped a set of brand new material for a special MTV Unplugged session. The session was also released as an album in May 2002, titled MTV Unplugged No. 2.0. The album was stripped back and acoustic, featuring Hill singing and playing an acoustic guitar with no other instrumentation. The album was certified platinum by the RIAA and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. The song "Mystery of Iniquity", which appeared on the album, was nominated at the 45th Grammy Awards for Best Female Rap Solo Performance and formed the basis of Kanye West's 2004 single "All Falls Down", which was co-written with Hill.

2004-present: Continued Touring and Recording

In 2004, Hill appeared on The Passion of the Christ: Songs, the soundtrack to the film The Passion of the Christ (2004), with a new song - "The Passion". She also performed on a remix version of John Legend's "So High", which received a 2005 Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

That September, The Fugees reunited for the first time since 1997 to perform at Dave Chappelle's Block Party; a concert that was turned into an award-winning film, directed by Michel Gondry. The group appeared together at the BET Awards in June of the following year, and in September 2005, they released the single "Take It Easy", which peaked at number 40 on the Billboard R&B Chart. Later that year, they embarked upon a European tour together, but their reunion didn't last and the group disbanded again shortly after.

In 2007, Hill began sporadically touring as a solo artist once more, and in June of that year, a compilation album featuring cuts from The Miseducation Of..., various soundtracks contributions and other "unreleased" songs was released. The album, Ms. Hill, features guest appearances from D'Angelo, Rah Digga and John Forté. That June, she also released a new song, "Lose Myself", which featured on the soundtrack to the film Surf's Up (2007).

After a three-year hiatus, Hill returned to performing and recording in 2010. She appeared across New Zealand and Australia on the Raggamuffin Music Festival tour in January, and that June she performed at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California. A new track, "Repercussions", was leaked online that July and charted on the Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, marking her first appearance on the chart since 1999.

That August, Hill joined the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival series in the U.S., where she performed The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in its entirety for the first time. She also performed at the 6th Annual Jazz in the Gardens in Miami Gardens that December, and the following spring, she performed at the Coachella Valley Music Festival, the New Orleans Jazz Fest and at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

In May 2013, after more years away from music, Hill release her first official single in over a decade, "Neurotic Society (Compulsory Mix)". That October, she put out a single called "Consumerism" and performed several shows.

The following year, she leant her voice to narrate an award-winning Swedish documentary on the African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s called Concerning Violence. She also performed at Voodoo Fest in November 2014.

In 2015, Hill delivered a critically acclaimed performance on six tracks that she recorded for the soundtrack of What Happened, Miss Simone?, a 2015 documentary about the life of Nina Simone. Hill also shared production credits on the compilation alongside Grammy Award-winning pianist and producer Robert Glasper. NPR specifically praised her performance on the soundtrack, saying: "This album mainly showcases Lauryn Hill's breadth and dexterity. Not formally marketed as Hill's comeback album, her six tracks here make this her most comprehensive set of studio recordings since The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998."

Hill hosted and headlined what was billed as the inaugural Diaspora Calling! festival at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn in April 2016.

In 2018, Hill embarked on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 20th Anniversary World Tour.