Ms. Lauryn Hill,
Music is dying and it needs you back on top. Today, we turn on the radio to listen to music that speaks to our souls and all we hear are people who sing – and I use that term as loosely as possible- about making pies and anacondas that ‘don’t want none’, whatever the f*ck that means.
It’s heartbreaking that today’s version of hip hop and R&b has lost all meaning and resorts to the ultimate basic-ness. I pity those who have never listened to you spill your soul or teach us what pain was really about. Whenever you voice flutters through my radio as a throwback, I remember that once upon a time people needed to be talented in order to make it in music.
You taught us about what guys and girls needed to watch out for. You were real. Sugar coating was never your way with words, and that’s why you will always be the queen. Whether you were hypnotizing us with your sick rhythms and rhymes on Lost Ones, or bearing your soul in Killing me softly, you knew how to get a crowd going and speak to people in the deepest of ways.
Each word on your album meant something. Each and every word. Your heartache was raw, your attitude was flawless. Flying solo or rocking out with the Fugees, I could never get enough of you. I always knew you with the realest, but recently I started searching for even more of your music. Today, you would slay all these ‘artists’ that claim to be “the truth.” No one on the spectrum has your passion, no one has your feels.
Have you heard how music today is destroying the classics? Trying to reinvent the hits of the past with a new flavor and ending up with musical catastrophes. To this day, the only person who knew how to twist an old hit into something beautiful is you and your version of, “ Can’t Take My Eye off You”. You understand music on a different level.
Ready or Not came out in 1996; I was 5 years old and remember singing whatever words I knew at the top of my lungs, while my teenage aunt danced around her room. It just goes to show, your music spoke to people of all ages.
I know you’ve been touring and have been working in the studio; no matter where you’ve been or how late you may have showed up to a show, I have faith that you will once again rule the airwaves.
Your 2013 single Consumerism was absolute fire and behalf of music lovers everywhere, I’m sorry people didn’t have a greater appreciation for your phrasing and intelligence.
We all make mistakes. Sooooo, maybe you forgot to pay your taxes; I don’t care that you did a little time. With the bullsh*t these wannabe thugs are coming out with today, you need to put them in their place. As you said in Superstar, “ music is suppose to inspire.”
I know you haven’t completely abandoned music and that your still killing it whenever you put your lyrics to a beat, but for the sake of Hip Hop and R&b, you need to once again take back the throne.
Inspire us once again, Ms. Lauryn Hill.
Music needs you to make the comeback of a lifetime.