High on a ‘Hill’top

Kimberley McGee

Friday, July 23, 1999 | 9:04 a.m.

Lauryn Hill tour

Award-winning singer, writer, producer, actress, mother, philanthropist, star.

At 23, hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill has the music world in her hands, and critics, friends and co-workers say it couldn't be in any better.

"First of all, she is the most beautiful person," says Joe Levy, music editor for Rolling Stone magazine. "She is a triple threat -- she's an extremely talented songwriter/producer, rapper and singer. What accounts for her success is not just that she can reach across genres but also reach across generations."

The winner of this year's Album of the Year Grammy award, among other music and social awards, graces the stage at MGM Grand Garden Arena at 8 p.m. Saturday with a disc jockey and 16-piece band, which includes three backup singers, two guitarists, two keyboardists, a three-piece horn section and a percussionist.

"We have a huge band," Hill said about her tour in a March interview with MTV Music News. "It's really kind of unlike anything in hip hop before. I've got a horn section and all these people onstage. It's a lot of fun, we bring the music to you live."

Her improvisational solo debut, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," with such top 10 hits as "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and "Ex-Factor," appeals to a varied fan base of hip-hop fans, Lillith Fair legions and pop followers with its spiritual, soulful melodies.

J.B., afternoon drive host for Las Vegas' contemporary hit station, KLUC 98.5-FM, says that Hill's incredible voice and mix of different sounds and styles make her a catchall for listeners hungry for something new.

"You are looking at a woman who, in the last year, has been on the cover of Rolling Stone), The Source, a hip-hop magazine, and Newsweek and Time," J.B. says. "She is a household name because the album can hit a lot of different individuals. It's a style that she is almost creating, not a formula style that you see a lot of."

Critics concur.

"Her (music) is a piece of art that works on a mass level and has an incredible amount of integrity," Levy says, adding that Hill's combination of "good music and traditional values" in both composition and lyrics made for a landslide at this year's Grammy Awards, where, out of 10 nominations, she took home five awards: Album of the Year ("The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"), Best New Artist, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance ("Doo Wop") and Best R&B Album ("Miseducation)." That was more than any other female artist in the history of the awards.

"The Grammy's (members) like songs that are traditional, they like things they can understand," Levy says. "There are a lot of (members) in their 20s but there are more people in their 50s who very consciously draw on old traditions.

"That's a thumbnail to why Lauryn is successful," Levy adds. "She has a real commitment to hip-hop's roots and where it comes from to the causes she believes in and she has a commitment to pop music."

As the dread-locked diva secured success, she also stashed away some of her first music-earned money for philanthropic endeavors.

"She never had a second moment's thought about what she wanted to do with her life," Levy says.

A little background: Hill was booed at a late 1980s Apollo Theater Amateur Night appearance, but won the audience over by the end of her nervous performance. She dabbled in acting, playing a troubled teen in "As the World Turns" in the early '90s and repeated the bad-girl-with-a-heart-of-gold role in the 1993 movie, "Sister Act II," with Whoopi Goldberg. But the songstress would come back to her roots in singing, where she could sincerely express herself and her personal beliefs.

Her first band, the Fugees, and their 1996 album, "Score," sold 13 million copies worldwide, moving the band and Hill into the hip-hop spotlight. Hill's lilting voice slipped the band's biggest hit, a remake of Roberta Flack's 1973 "Killing Me Softly," into mainstream markets.

"The first Fugees record (1994's "Blunted on Reality") was a good record and at the time an interesting record because it was more political than anyone else had been doing," Levy says. "On the second one, they decided to even the score and make it more popular."

The blend of message and popular music got the record plenty of airtime around the world. It was at this point that the not-yet-21-year-old Hill began an organization based on her personal beliefs and commitment to community.

The Refugee Project, Levy says, was "part of the point for her from the start. ... She was politically committed in that way from the start." The Refugee Project helps children who "have few if any positive social outlets to escape social ills which pervade our society," according to its mission statement.

Raqiba Sealy, executive director of the Refugee Project, based in New York, has known Hill for more than a decade. She says that Hill set up the community program as soon as she had the means.

"As soon as 'Score' started heating up (in 1996) she started this," Sealy says. "I've known her for a long time and she has always been civically involved. It didn't surprise me that she would take her celebrity status and use that to help others."

One of the project's 10 programs, Camp Hill, a two-week retreat into nature in the Catskill Mountains in Roscoe, N.Y., houses about 120 children.

Hill later told MTV News, "Simply put, (the camp) is all about young people, restoring the faith and the idealism to the young minds and trying to surround them with the healthy, happy, joyful, positive, strong, empowering environment."

Recently, Hill surprised a bus full of the camp's young recruits with a trip to her concert at Jones Beach in Long Island, N.Y., and a personal meeting after the show.

"She feels a commitment to give back, she feels like she has an obligation almost to help others and expose others to just how wonderful they are," Sealy says, adding that the project's programs "ensure for young people today that the world will be a happy and prosperous place across the board for all people."

In May Hill expressed her passion for God and children in a teary-eyed speech at the annual Essence Awards, which honors black accomplishments.

"I want to let young people know that it is not a burden to love (God) and to represent Him," she says, "and to be who you are, as fly and as hot and as whatever, and to still love God and to serve Him. It is not a contradiction. It is not a contradiction."

Motherhood has also affected Hill's compassionate world view. At a London press conference in June, Hill said that since becoming a mother -- she has two children under age 3, Zion and Selah Louise, with fiance Rohan Marley, son of the late reggae legend Bob Marley -- she is more aware of the effects of music lyrics on children, saying her toddler son repeated everything he heard.

Will the talent and ambition that has carried her so far be enough to keep this star in the heavens, or will she crash and burn to Earth, a one-album wonder?

Alan Light, editor-in-chief of Spin music magazine, met Hill years ago (while editor of Vibe magazine), before her first band, the Fugees, really took off. He saw the future burning bright for the struggling artist.

"Even at that time people were aware of the potential star power she had," he says. "She was self possessed in that way."

Her style, Light says, strives to paint a picture of today's issues that will move listeners, not just off their feet but down deep into their souls.

"She is trying to use urban music as a way to get to the full sweep of what the contemporary black experience is in all of its manifestations," he says. The last time people strove for that was Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield."

Her stage show, Light says, tries to reconcile hip hop with soul tradition, "to show the ways that singing and rhythm and instruments and DJs and spirituality and street sensibility can all blend. That is an incredible amount of pressure to take upon yourself."

Her fire-in-the-belly ambition has brought her to her full potential up to this point, he says. But there's more to come from the young talent.

"She is trying to do a lot of things," he says. "Her record and these performances are very ambitious and sometimes the ambition exceeds what her reach is at this point, which I applaud because I don't think a lot of people strive for that.

"My worry is that by treating her as this savior and treating her as if she has already accomplished these things, I worry about what that will do to her long term, what will push her in the future," Light says. "Who is going to be there to help her to grow and flower into a significant and long-lasting artist?"

From all the evidence on the rising star, she's got nothing but support from down here.

archive