10. Lauryn Hill, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"

 

I like, but don't love, this album, which has peaks that can rival any album on this list but some patches that can drag.  I certainly understand why it's up here, but I think it's a top 20, not top 10, album.  God I'm such a fucking downer! Let's talk about it.

The peaks are really, really high.  Before we get to the hits, I want to spend some time with "To Zion," a song about motherhood and the kind of love you feel for a child that's unlike any other love.  Sorry for the naked sincerity but it's true!  God, it is such a beautiful song.  Hill's voice dances through the melody, and Carlos Santana's guitar provides just the right counterpoint.  The lyrics are a frank look at the tension between career and parenthood that so many feel:

Unsure of what the balance held
I touched my belly overwhelmed
By what I had been chosen to perform
But then an angel came one day
Told me to kneel down and pray
For unto me a man-child would be born
Woe this crazy circumstance
I knew his life deserved a chance
But everybody told me to be smart
"Look at your career," they said
"Lauryn, baby use your head"
But instead I chose to use my heart

I cannot adequately express how lovely this song is.  I remember one night I was listening to it in, of all places, an Embassy Suites hotel, and just playing it over and over.  (As it happens, Zion's grandfather is Bob Marley.)

There's "Everything Is Everything," an exuberant plea for equality with absolutely the best lyrics on the album; I absolutey love this:

My practice extending across the atlas, I begat this
Flipping in the ghetto on a dirty mattress
You can't match this rapper slash actress
More powerful than two Cleopatras

And a fucking great video in which a turntable arm sweeps across New York City.

And of course you know "Doo Wop (That Thing)," the first US Billboard number 1 written, produced and recorded by a woman since Debbie Gibson's "Lost in Your Eyes" in 1989.  It debuted at number 1!  And it is a fucking GREAT song, with a slinky vibe over a popping drum track and that great horn part setting it off.  

This album is really about two main themes: motherhood and the Fugees, Hill's former band, which dissolved in a pool of acrimony.  (Fugees member Pras famously stated, "Before I work with Lauryn Hill again, you will have a better chance of seeing Osama Bin Laden and Bush in Starbucks having a latte, discussing foreign policies, before there will be a Fugees reunion."  I don't know, Bin Laden seems more like a mochachino guy to me.)  From "Lost Ones":

It's funny how money change a situation
Miscommunication lead to complication
My emancipation don't fit your equation
I was on the humble, you on every station
Some wan' play young Lauryn like she dumb
But remember not a game new under the sun

It's not all great.  Honestly, the album drags in places, and there's a thing where at the end of every song there's a 30 to 40-second long spoken word thing that gets old fast.  But on the whole, it's a great album.  Like I said, top 20, probably not top 10.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.