At one point in time we thought this song was empowering

December 1, 2015 6:38 AM

Of course, no post-breakup wallow cycle is complete without revisiting Lauryn Hill’s debut album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. So one Tuesday evening, I got my glass of wine, dimmed the lights, and got ready for my almost daily routine of crying my eyes out until my tear ducts were depleted enough to be functional around well-adjusted humans for 8 hours the next working day.

That same Tuesday is when I promptly discovered that this album is terrible...As I am sure that a few of you are still vehemently denying reality, I will submit to you some incontrovertible track-by-track truth bombs. -- "The Miseducation Is Overrated", a truth bomb by Shamira Ibrahim
posted by Potomac Avenue (62 comments total)

Wheee!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:48 AM on December 1, 2015 [7 favorites]

Lauryn is one lifelong warning sign against island dick. ESPECIALLY if it’s married.

Ack! I'm from Long Island! MY WIFE WILL NEVER SLEEP WITH ME AGAIN
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:49 AM on December 1, 2015 [10 favorites]

I'm probably not the only one who has never heard of "hotep" so let my googling help you.

I don't think she's wrong about the fake-deep respectability politics, but in terms of music/production/flow the album is flat-out amazing and that's what I mostly care about *shrugs*
posted by naju at 6:50 AM on December 1, 2015 [10 favorites]

It's an important national debate whose time has arrived.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:50 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is why I deliberately learn as little as possible about the personal lives of people whose art I enjoy.
posted by STFUDonnie at 6:51 AM on December 1, 2015 [16 favorites]

Where's the lie?
posted by muddgirl at 6:56 AM on December 1, 2015

Also, Eminem talks about killing people in addition to mom's spaghetti, and nothing in "Ironic" is actually ironic. Truth bombs!
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:06 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yeah, a lot of these problems are solved by not paying attention to Lauryn Hill the person. Not the respectability politics, but in terms of problematic stuff from my teenage years, that barely even registers.

Though I did realize that I could totally hear the same opinions on my facebook feed today so maybe I just need to block more people from junior high.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:11 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm more sad that Idris Elba has been described as a fuckboy.
posted by Kitteh at 7:12 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

I also heard that Kurt Cobain didn't actually feel stupid and contagious and wasn't especially entertained by a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito or his libido. Truth bombs!
posted by signal at 7:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [24 favorites]

If loving Miseducation is wrong... you know the rest.

Just listened to it again the other day. Most of it holds up, 20 years later.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 7:23 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I guess some people aren't crazy about that thing.
posted by drezdn at 7:23 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I took a buzzfeed quiz once and I found out I'm a fuckboy. :(
posted by josher71 at 7:40 AM on December 1, 2015 [14 favorites]

Was excited at its release, bought it, listened a few times. Overall meh. I did not know any of the backstory though... though Im doubt it would have made a difference to me.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 7:46 AM on December 1, 2015

This was a pretty fun read and I am glad to have learned about "hotep" Twitter. While hotep has been exlpained, I don't know what "stannery" means. Googling shows it is an obsolete word that means "stony," but it clearly means something else int his context. Anyone able to enlighten me?
posted by Falconetti at 7:47 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

A "Stan" is a near pathological adoring fan a la the Eminem track "Stan." Stannery flows accordingly.
posted by aydeejones at 7:50 AM on December 1, 2015 [16 favorites]

This white boy who grew up in the hood still needs to google hotep tho
posted by aydeejones at 7:51 AM on December 1, 2015

Yeah, this dude is on crack. These lines alone kill a lot of rapper's whole albums, and certainly present-day ones.

You can't match this rapper-slash-actress
More powerful than two Cleopatras
Bomb graffiti... on the tomb of Nefertiti
Emcees ain't ready to take it to the Serengeti!

Back to the article: "It goes without saying that (some of) my criticism is a bit dramatized for effect." This is what you say when your friends are looking at you like you're nuts. It's usually preceded by your friends saying "WHAT?" and followed by your friends saying "That's what I thought".
posted by cashman at 7:57 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Potomac Avenue, I always figured we'd meet up some day. And now when we do, I'm going to say "You know you were wrong for that Lauryn Hill post, right."
posted by cashman at 7:58 AM on December 1, 2015 [10 favorites]

Most of this article seems to be taking Lauryn Hill to task for her hypocritical lyrics in the face of the whole Wyclef thing, but, like, she wasn't very well going to write songs saying, "Wow, I was totally wrong for sleeping with a married man, I'll tell you what!"

I was kinda hoping for more musical analysis as to why this album isn't as great as the hype, but there wasn't really any. Probably because . . . it's a really damn good album.
posted by chainsofreedom at 8:05 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Cashman, as long as you don't defecate on my microphone we shall part as friends.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:06 AM on December 1, 2015 [8 favorites]

I would just be defecating on my own microphone, because I understand universal law. Karma comes back to you hard.
posted by cashman at 8:08 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Back in the day, one of my Blackalicious-listening hipster buddies at the alternative weekly called Lauryn Hill "hiphop for white people." I was like, "dude, have you looked in the mirror, you are white people."
posted by entropicamericana at 8:10 AM on December 1, 2015 [20 favorites]

"dude, have you looked in the mirror, you are white people."

This is what that "Bill Clinton is the first Black President" schtick did to us
posted by thelonius at 8:11 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've been saying that this album was wildly overrated since the week it dropped, but nobody gave me an article to explain why I thought so. I think I would've come up with more compelling reasons than this article did, but so many years later I can't really be bothered or even remember, so you'll all just have to take my word for it.
posted by still bill at 8:16 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Plantation Lullabies by Me'shell Ndegeocello came out about 5 years before Miseducation and I always wished it got half the attention that album did. It has a similar vibe but is musically and lyrically stronger, more interesting, has aged better, and most importantly doesn't have those tedious interludes.
posted by girlmightlive at 8:32 AM on December 1, 2015 [7 favorites]

It's a fine album, apart from the skits.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:36 AM on December 1, 2015

Metroid Baby: "nothing in "Ironic" is actually ironic."

Which IS ITSELF ironic!
posted by Chrysostom at 8:39 AM on December 1, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm not sure why some artists get judged on their musical persona and not others. I don't think I've ever heard someone saying, "That Randy Newman guy wrote a song glorifying slavery and he hates short people!" But if you're Lauryn Hill or Eminem, prepare to be picked apart as a bad person for your lyrics or your personal life.

This is why, like others, I make an effort to ignore the private life of public people. If I didn't I'm fairly sure I would quit voting and consuming any form of artistic endeavor.
posted by Jacks Dented Yugo at 8:43 AM on December 1, 2015

I'm probably not the only one who has never heard of "hotep"

So it's not a sub-sub-sub-genre of music named with a misogynist pun on dubstep and hoes? The actual thing is...worse? better?
posted by straight at 8:51 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's always been overrated, for reasons that have nothing to do with its "hotep facts" or the moral travails and/or travesties (perceived or otherwise) of its creator. I would submit that if the main criterion for judging all albums was the hypocrisy of their creators in their everyday lives that all albums would be pretty much overrated to the moon. Go on, pick any great album out of a hat and tell me I'm wrong.
posted by blucevalo at 8:58 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is one of those things where I've heard of the album, sure, but I'm almost positive I haven't heard any of the music. I mean I must have, because it was huge and undoubtedly got lots of radio play but I look at the track listing and I could not recognize a single song. You could have made the track lisiting up for all I know.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 8:59 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

But if you're Lauryn Hill or Eminem, prepare to be picked apart as a bad person for your lyrics or your personal life.

Because both Hill and Eminem write autobiographically. I think it's unreasonable to argue, "Don't bring Eminem's history of beating his wives and girlfriends into songs about beating up women!"

Similarly, many songs on Miseducation are about Hill's personal heartbreak. I think it's fair to bring her personal life into interpretation and criticism of the lyrics.
posted by muddgirl at 9:09 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also, Eminem talks about killing people in addition to mom's spaghetti, and nothing in "Ironic" is actually ironic. Truth bombs!

This is a common mistranscription. Eminem in this line is rejecting materialism in favor of a spiritual life. The key here is the Proust's madeleine-type reference to the famous element of a larger discourse, in this case, Maugham's spaghetti serves both to tie Eminem's path to that of the main character in The Razor's Edge, as well as allude to his nascent interest in Pastafarianism.
posted by zippy at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2015 [31 favorites]

> I don't think I've ever heard someone saying, "That Randy Newman guy wrote a song glorifying slavery and he hates short people!"

Because you weren't around then? Because there have been plenty more things to come along in the intervening four decades? Newman caught a lot of shit for those songs at the time and has more or less disowned "Short People".
posted by ardgedee at 9:25 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Greg used a bad word
posted by shakespeherian at 9:38 AM on December 1, 2015 [12 favorites]

Yeah, I was going to say, lots of people are still mad at Randy Newman. I was really young when Short People came out and I remember news stories about the controversy. My dad liked it, but then he liked a lot of awful things.

I never had an opinion on about Hill's work one way or the other. It didn't speak to me, but I assumed it was just not for me.

Really glad to learn what "hotep" was, had seen it on Twitter and confusedly wondered if it had something to do with obscure movie Bubba Ho-Tep or something.
posted by emjaybee at 9:41 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

this greg was deleted for the following reason: pottymouth
posted by poffin boffin at 9:44 AM on December 1, 2015 [9 favorites]

[A couple of comments favorited. If you have something funny to say, this is definitely the place to say it. Don't stop!]
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:46 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Maugham's spaghetti is a thing one can overthink.
posted by zippy at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2015 [6 favorites]

Didn't the author just "Hotep" Lauryn Hill though, through this track-by-track analysis? I could be wrong, but I think there's some definite finger-wagging going on.
posted by singmespanishtechno at 10:31 AM on December 1, 2015

Didn't the author just "Hotep" Lauryn Hill though, through this track-by-track analysis? I could be wrong, but I think there's some definite finger-wagging going on.

Hotep is like bullshit retrograde dudes who think they're enlightened because they're "Afrocentric." At least that's how I understand it - not my cultural mileau but I do watch a lot of interviews with 90s rappers and doing that you see more than a few of that guy.
posted by atoxyl at 11:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

#CrepeBars
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:23 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hotep is partially 'failing at intersectionality - Afrocentric edition' and partially used to describe misunderstanding Black History and Afrocentrism in a kind of nebulous way.

I would also not refer to anything as hotep myself because I am really fucking white and not the arbiter of Afrocentrism by any means
posted by dinty_moore at 11:29 AM on December 1, 2015 [9 favorites]

Hotep is my new favorite word that I'll probably never get to use in real life. It took me awhile to find a write-up on a site that wasn't blocked at work, but A Letter to "Conscious" Black Folk and Hotep is Killing the Conscious Community are both pretty awesome essays. I haven't been immersed in American black culture since I left Detroit, decades ago, but I can see how totally see how what we called 'being conscious' evolved into this.

Back to Ms. Hill: there's a raw emotional truth to Miseducation, and I still think it's brilliant. Even so, I was following along with the author until she called Every Ghetto, Every City "a cute ode I guess" - and then she totally lost me. That song is pure fun.
posted by kanewai at 11:33 AM on December 1, 2015 [7 favorites]

Plantation Lullabies by Me'shell Ndegeocello

This album is spectacular. I think I've listened to Miseducation once in the past decade, but I listen to Plantation Lullabies at least once a month.
posted by Daily Alice at 12:06 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Springsteen advocated for both pink and black Cadillacs. MAKE UP YOUR MIND BRUCE.

Speaking of which, did he sell Mary Kay?
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:01 PM on December 1, 2015

I'm more sad that Idris Elba has been described as a fuckboy.

LEAVE IDRIS ALONE!
posted by thivaia at 2:23 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have a deep and abiding love for Meshell Ndegeocello and I feel like what she does is very different from Lauryn Hill. It feels weird to retroactively pit the two against each other.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 3:04 PM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

Not related to the Miseducation topic, but Lauryn Hill recently put on a show here. Tickets cost:

$325

I shit you not. $325 in 2015 for a two hour Lauryn Hill concert with no support acts. And it started two hours late, to boot.
posted by Bugbread at 3:31 PM on December 1, 2015

I don't think I've ever heard someone saying, "That Randy Newman guy wrote a song glorifying slavery and he hates short people!"

There was a huge backlash when Short People came out! In 1978, legislation was introduced in the state of Maryland to make it illegal to play "Short People" on the radio. Contrary to urban legend, the bill did not obtain enough votes to pass. Radio stations banned it. And I was a kid but my short friends hated it.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:38 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

(But I believe you have not heard the criticisms, of course.)
posted by Room 641-A at 4:39 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

L-Boogie was 22 years old when she recorded 'Miseducation' (full disclosure, she's a year older than I am). I'm not going to ding her for expressing her feelings about 'Clef.

Okay, the respectability politics have not necessarily aged well. And I didn't even like the skits, or that Carlos Santana guitar solo, at the time.

All of that said: nearly all of her rapping is great, and the best of it is amazing ('Lost Ones' is an all-world dis song, or consider 'Superstar,' where on second and third listen you're like 'when are we gonna get to the fireworks factory?', and then, then we get there). It's one of the best hip-hop albums (probably the best female one, and there are days where I'd give it the overall crown (sorry Nas and Big and Gift and 'em)), one of the best neo-soul albums, one of the best '90s albums. And, if popularity matters, it was huuuge.

It's not a perfect album (there are no perfect albums, but there are plenty that come close), but, me, I'd go with 'properly rated.'
posted by box at 6:10 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't like this article. I don't particularly agree with her premise (overrated? I don't think so, but it was so well-received it could be overrated and still good), but a well-done rant can be captivating even if you disagree. But this one really peters out towards the end, not just in the 'I'm too lazy to commit to this' way but also in how she just acknowledges how much she likes the songs at the end of the album, albeit in brief notes. The takedowns that commit work much better than the ones that seem to come from half a good idea left as half a good idea.

I also don't usually care for arguments that are along the lines of 'the artist sucks as a person so their art sucks for that reason alone'. Terrific songs have been written for all sorts of reasons, many of them not necessarily 'worthy'. So to say that her personal life makes the songs objectively bad wouldn't have sit well with me, especially as the focus seems to shift from 'he was MARRIED' to 'he was an ISLANDER', with 'what did you expect?' as the follow-up.

But I do think we can all agree that the number of skits on albums that suck and could be done without is easily in the high 90s, percentage-wise.
posted by gadge emeritus at 6:24 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think that, eventually, we'll come to see skits as part of the transition from the vinyl to the cassette to the CD era. There are some great ones (Stevie Wonder's 'Living For the City,' De La, Dre, Wu-Tang, etc.), but, like, you have 45 minutes of great material? Better pad that shit out.
posted by box at 6:34 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Similarly, many songs on Miseducation are about Hill's personal heartbreak. I think it's fair to bring her personal life into interpretation and criticism of the lyrics.


I really disagree. Lots of people write songs about heartbreak and I would bet that 99.9% of the listeners who go on to enjoy those songs really could give a fuck about the actual particulars of the musician's love life. For instance, I love Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust. I know exactly nothing about her relationship with Bob Dylan and that's a-okay by me--I don't love the song because I have any investment whatsoever in that relationship. I have an investment in what the song makes me feel, and the feeling in her voice and in the music. Because one doesn't listen to a love song hoping for a gossip magazine about your fave celebs, you're looking for something that's personally meaningful. It's like how you don't have you know about Francis Bacon's personal history to find Triptych 73 arresting and haunting.

Regardless, it feels mean and small-minded to dismiss deeply felt tales of heartbreak because the singer should have known better than to "get with a married Haitian." But mean and small-minded clickbait is what the Internet is in 2015, I guess, and what better way to make a name for yourself than petty sniping at people who have been successful at touching hearts and lives?
posted by zeusianfog at 11:17 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

"All of that said: nearly all of her rapping is great, and the best of it is amazing ('Lost Ones' is an all-world dis song, or consider 'Superstar,' where on second and third listen you're like 'when are we gonna get to the fireworks factory?', and then, then we get there). It's one of the best hip-hop albums (probably the best female one, and there are days where I'd give it the overall crown (sorry Nas and Big and Gift and 'em)), one of the best neo-soul albums, one of the best '90s albums. And, if popularity matters, it was huuuge.

It's not a perfect album (there are no perfect albums, but there are plenty that come close), but, me, I'd go with 'properly rated.'"

Nah, I mean, Talib's still stanning it now. Miseducation got HUGE and is still remembered as a GOAT contender, and it's always been kinda half-baked. Fugees were one of those groups that was better than the sum of its parts, and every solo piece from them has only made that more true.

This post isn't serious criticism, it's challops and the fun of seeing the righteous gasps when a "classic" album gets clownt on.

And it's delivered — weird invocations of autobiographical fallacy, sniffy Eminem comparisons (as if he isn't a great MC, and as if nobody took his shit-stirring as autobiographical), and seeing a bunch of people see "hotep" for the first time is pretty nice.
posted by klangklangston at 11:34 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah this is pretty lighthearted though I think the author is serious about not loving the album upon revisiting it. It's clickbait in the sense that it has a controversial premise meant to prompt debate but um - that's supposed to be fun.
posted by atoxyl at 12:14 AM on December 2, 2015

zeusianfog: " Lots of people write songs about heartbreak and I would bet that 99.9% of the listeners who go on to enjoy those songs really could give a fuck about the actual particulars of the musician's love life."

Citation needed, I guess? I understand that *you* aren't interested, and that's totally a fine way to approach it. But I'm not sure that it's clear that position is a near universally held one.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:13 AM on December 2, 2015

Citation: The fact that people use songs like "Every Breath You Take" or "The One I Love" at weddings. People don't even listen to the lyrics, why would people know about a musician's love life?
posted by entropicamericana at 6:29 AM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Eh, I think it's more common for people not to be up on all of the gossip behind every song they hear on the radio - even the ones they like. And a certain percentage of those who *do* know don't really take that account.

'I like the work of (Insert Artist Here) but don't like them as a person' is hardly a new phenomenon, and not an unpopular one.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:35 AM on December 2, 2015

I was in high school when this album came out; I remember she won like, 10 Grammys for it. Despite being a weird 'goth'/industrial headbanger who hadn't fully learned to appreciate hip-hop yet, I was curious and asked one of my friends to borrow it. I remember it being not really my thing, but musically, it was a solid album. I haven't heard it (or any Lauryn Hill for that matter) in years, but I can distinctly remember the hook to "To Zion", especially the way she sang "Now the JOOOOYYYYYYYYYY-" Really powerful voice.

Beyond that, I haven't really given it much thought, but I did always make a point to acknowledge its quality, especially in the face of that pernicious lie about Ms. Hill being racist against white people buying her album.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:59 AM on December 4, 2015