Inside "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"

Commissioner Gordon: "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" was never meant to be a commercial single. It was originally recorded for [the soundtrack for the movie] Conspiracy Theory and ended up on the radio, became popular, and that's how it ended became a bonus track. She called me and said she was behind and had to get it done. She didn't know how the arrangement of the song went, so we went and got a copy from Coconuts or Sam Goody. I had a little one-room 16-track studio in my apartment in Jersey. Lauryn was eight months pregnant, laying on her back on the floor, half asleep, holding a handheld mike. She did all of those vocals off the top of her head pretty much in one take, with the beat box and all of that. That blew me away.

Candice Anderson (backup singer): I came in during the last two songs. I had just auditioned at her house and they were like, come to Chung King. I had no clue what was going on but she told us what to sing. "Tell Him" took a while because she's very particular about how she wants it to sound. We'll keep going until it gets to exactly what she hears in her head and she won't stop until she gets exactly what she wants.

Jackson: For the album title, she wanted something like The Education of Sonny Carson and we were like, why don't you make it more self-deprecating, like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill? People heard it as her opus and what she was, but in hindsight I think it was more about what she aspired to be. And what else is art but the best side of who you are and who you wanna be?

Ras Baraka (poet, politician and teacher who served as Miseducation's narrator): I was running for councilman in Newark and was also an eighth grade teacher. I was just about to take two of my students home and Lauryn called and asked if I could come up to her house in South Orange. There were chairs set up in the living room and a bunch of kids were there. She told me she wanted to discuss the concept of love. There was a blackboard and I wrote the letters "LOVE" and we just went into the whole discussion.

Release and Reception

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released on August 25th, 1998 and sold 422,600 copies its first week in stores — a SoundScan record for best-selling debut week for a female artist. In January 1999, Hill received 10 Grammy nominations. The following month she took home five trophies including the awards for Album of the Year, Best New Artist and Best R&B Song. She read from Psalm 40 during one of her acceptance speeches.

Jackson: Lauryn became an international superstar. She couldn't go to the grocery store without makeup and I think that had an adverse effect on her. We had a huge year at the Grammys and then Carlos Santana had the big year next year and she presented for Carlos. It wasn't so much the amount of records we sold but how we sold them — we didn't put out six singles, seven videos, do every TV talk show and just milk it. We marketed and presented her as a classy, genuine person and that resonated and that's why we're still talking about it 'til this day.

Poyser: The lyrics of that record really struck a chord with everybody, it really touched a lot of souls. The best songs are testimonies of life that everybody can relate to. Everybody can't relate to balling and drinking Cristal and running around with a million chicks and driving a Bentley. Everybody can relate to heartache and love.

D'Angelo: Churches were substituting God in the lyrics [for "Nothing Even Matters"]. Whenever they make a gospel version from a secular song, that's significant.

Commissioner Gordon: Knowing Lauryn was definitely a blessing and whatever time we spent together was all very significant and that is evident in the thing that we created. She was just gifted.