Jan. 19, 2026

Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation Deep Dive (1998) | 50 For 50

Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation Deep Dive (1998) | 50 For 50

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill redefined music in 1998. In this episode of 50 For 50, hosts Garrett Gonzales and Mike Joseph deep dive into the masterpiece that shifted the culture. Many fans know the hits, but few understand the internal friction and the complex legacy of the woman behind the art.

We explore the origin story of The Fugees, their meteoric success, and the eventual breakup fueled by the tumultuous affair between Lauryn and Wyclef Jean. Mike and Garrett break down the sonic landscape of 1998, Lauryn’s transition from a group member to a solo powerhouse, and the legal and personal battles that followed her debut's massive success. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a profound understanding of why this album remains a blueprint for Neo-Soul and why Lauryn Hill walked away from the spotlight.

Highlights include:

  • The Fugees' rise from New Jersey to global superstars.
  • The 1998 musical landscape: Where Miseducation fit in.
  • The Wyclef Jean affair and its impact on the music.
  • Lauryn's post-1998 career and her enduring cultural legacy.

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WEBVTT

00:10.173 --> 00:11.294
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Mike, you know what's funny?

00:12.035 --> 00:12.575
[SPEAKER_00]: What's funny?

00:13.556 --> 00:16.159
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny how money changes situation.

00:18.622 --> 00:24.227
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the lead lyric on the album that we are about to talk about.

00:24.247 --> 00:28.752
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going all the way back to 1998 in our 50 for 50 series.

00:29.753 --> 00:31.735
[SPEAKER_00]: The misedge, excuse me.

00:31.855 --> 00:39.943
[SPEAKER_00]: The misedge occasion of Lauren Hill.

00:42.556 --> 00:58.707
[SPEAKER_01]: I was salty because on August 12th, 1998, I was out at midnight at a local record store that was open past midnight, hoping to get a copy of the misjudication of Lauren Hill, which didn't come up for another week.

01:00.169 --> 01:01.071
[SPEAKER_01]: So.

01:01.523 --> 01:16.512
[SPEAKER_01]: On August 19th, 1998, I am fairly certain that even though I was working in a record store at the time, I went to one that was open past midnight to buy my cassette copy of miseducation.

01:16.576 --> 01:45.992
[SPEAKER_00]: you know what's funny is that was a thing because I had worked at blockbuster video for many a year when I was in college and there was a point where blockbuster music became a thing right and then they decided to start selling CDs at blockbuster video as well so we would get all of these CDs and we couldn't sell them because of the street date right so

01:47.052 --> 02:00.496
[SPEAKER_00]: Like people who were, you know, maybe not as on the up and up, they're like, oh, Wu Tang, the double album, this thing doesn't come out for like three weeks and we have them, sorry, it's now mine.

02:00.717 --> 02:01.919
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that was happening.

02:02.881 --> 02:09.212
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, and I think part of the reason is because the blockbuster video store understood how to,

02:09.192 --> 02:12.696
[SPEAKER_00]: do that stuff with movies, but the music stuff was like so different.

02:13.517 --> 02:18.642
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we didn't even know how many units we had, like we didn't even know like how that stuff worked.

02:18.702 --> 02:28.112
[SPEAKER_00]: So people were doing some stuff with those albums and having these things in there and their CD players many weeks before the release date.

02:28.993 --> 02:36.381
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think everyone that worked at a record store, at least back then, I can't speak to now.

02:37.593 --> 02:43.710
[SPEAKER_01]: had stories of there being some internal shifting of product.

02:45.756 --> 02:49.206
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the origin story of how

02:50.182 --> 02:52.345
[SPEAKER_00]: Filesharing happens.

02:52.706 --> 02:52.946
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

02:53.507 --> 02:53.667
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

02:53.707 --> 02:58.295
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it happens at a CD printing plant essentially.

02:58.575 --> 03:00.478
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because you get this product early.

03:00.538 --> 03:03.843
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in case of a CD plant, you're getting it weeks early.

03:04.645 --> 03:10.734
[SPEAKER_01]: When I worked at record stores, we generally got product that came out on Tuesday, the previous Thursday or Friday.

03:11.796 --> 03:13.618
[SPEAKER_01]: So usually you only got things a few days early.

03:13.899 --> 03:15.902
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're at the plant,

03:15.882 --> 03:29.718
[SPEAKER_01]: you're getting stuff three weeks, four weeks, five weeks early and you can get on the internet and for a highly anticipated record to leak it, you know, and then tons of people couldn't get it for free.

03:30.378 --> 03:36.305
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the cloud, the cloud back then that was what I was about was, oh, who's got the new stuff.

03:36.986 --> 03:40.810
[SPEAKER_00]: So where was I, I was trying to figure this out.

03:40.975 --> 03:49.078
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember now my memory versus what the actual release date of the album is my memory is that

03:49.835 --> 04:05.409
[SPEAKER_00]: on in college like on the first day of classes for the fall semester that I was rocking this album and I think I in in my mind maybe I'd gone to because we had a warehouse record right across the street from campus.

04:05.950 --> 04:19.842
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of times I would leave lecture early to just go because the record store opened at 10, go get the stuff and then come back to the back class and I have everything with me and and so that's kind of my memory about this but it's quite

04:19.822 --> 04:36.092
[SPEAKER_00]: That I bought it and then had it by the time I was on campus with my mini disc player, but yeah, for some reason I always think about this album with the beginning of fall semester of 1998 and also thinking like

04:37.439 --> 04:42.384
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder who else has this album on this campus at this time?

04:42.645 --> 04:49.993
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was the hot thing, but I don't know that people thought it was gonna blow up like it did.

04:50.033 --> 04:55.419
[SPEAKER_01]: Huh, that might be West Coast versus East Coast perspective.

04:56.880 --> 05:02.907
[SPEAKER_01]: I was, the record stroke that I was working at was in the Bronx and from the first day.

05:03.578 --> 05:06.321
[SPEAKER_01]: people were coming in and buying that record out.

05:06.801 --> 05:13.328
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say we played it in this door probably every day for six months, because every time it played, it got a reaction.

05:14.450 --> 05:17.933
[SPEAKER_01]: But at people of the streets, we're just super, super hyped for this release.

05:18.634 --> 05:21.737
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what's funny is, we're going to talk about this album as well.

05:22.778 --> 05:25.561
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't even say I was a giant fan of the score.

05:25.601 --> 05:28.084
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I liked the score.

05:29.583 --> 05:35.697
[SPEAKER_00]: mine, I know what album you don't have back there, which is called Blun it on what should I let me.

05:35.717 --> 05:38.404
[SPEAKER_01]: I would fuck your head up and pop on the copy of that out right now.

05:40.288 --> 05:44.839
[SPEAKER_00]: That was, yeah, this is a little bit of what we'll talk with the differences in the music back then, too.

05:45.099 --> 05:47.946
[SPEAKER_00]: But like I liked the score.

05:48.533 --> 05:54.945
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought a lot of those songs just got overplayed on the radio, so there was a little bit of a burnout of the food use for me.

05:55.506 --> 06:04.163
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I knew that Lauren was coming out, I was like, okay, because to me, and you'll see this in kind of the evolution of the food use.

06:05.341 --> 06:10.047
[SPEAKER_00]: I care way more about what Lauren's doing than anybody else in that group.

06:10.448 --> 06:10.688
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

06:11.309 --> 06:24.806
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's interesting is that I'm going to guess now, I'm not 100% sure because the stories of the Wycliffe side and the Lauren side, which we will also get into, they're not the same necessarily surprise surprise.

06:25.087 --> 06:33.998
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to guess that Wycliffe wrote a lot of the rhymes or Wycliffe or maybe even people closer to him.

06:33.978 --> 06:53.775
[SPEAKER_00]: then Lauren because Lauren was kind of like um she was a little bit of a hired gun as a rapper kind of learning had a rap versus being a being an MC from the beginning like on the score you mean like on like just in the foodies like I don't know man I mean as a lyricist even

06:54.346 --> 07:04.839
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say even as the youngest member of the group and maybe kind of like a amateur rimer, Lauren Hill from a skill set perspective was like leagues ahead of Wycliffe.

07:04.939 --> 07:06.361
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a hundred percent.

07:06.881 --> 07:14.751
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I think that's why I really thought that she was maybe the big start of the group, because

07:14.731 --> 07:38.275
[SPEAKER_00]: if Wycliffe is writing her rhymes or somebody else is writing her rhymes, and Wycliffe is also writing his rhymes, he comes off so corny compared to Lauren every time they rap and and so you're I'm just thinking like okay it's like the same person why does this sound so much better coming out of her voice why is the conviction why the the way that she

07:38.407 --> 07:50.966
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the way she uses syllables to extend and, you know, doing some research, it sounds like she literally just kind of taught herself how to do it by listening to really good rappers.

07:50.986 --> 07:53.049
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like heavily influenced by ice cube.

07:53.690 --> 08:00.320
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she becomes the, you know, she's not only the voice and the singer of the group.

08:00.400 --> 08:03.064
[SPEAKER_00]: She's also the best rapper in the group.

08:03.044 --> 08:10.416
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it makes a hundred percent sense as to why misjudication of Lauren Hill is becomes what it is.

08:10.857 --> 08:11.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

08:11.418 --> 08:11.578
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

08:11.638 --> 08:20.373
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, I think in every episode so far where we've talked about a group, we've said something to the effect of no group is created equally.

08:21.134 --> 08:29.608
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this case, you had by-clap, Lauren, and prize, and, you know, Lauren was Michael, why-clap was maybe your main,

08:33.605 --> 08:45.576
[SPEAKER_00]: I was joking with Mike as we were doing research, and I was like, yeah, you know, I listened to both Fuji's records, you know, I listened to a lot of, I didn't go through the Wycliffe catalog, but I listened to a lot of the, the solo singles and stuff.

08:46.037 --> 08:53.464
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, it was in the Lauren, and I was, and I joked and I said, yeah, I did a search for process greatest hits, and it's nothing turned up.

08:54.645 --> 09:01.772
[SPEAKER_01]: Geto superstar, geto superstar, the remix, geto superstar, the instrumental, exactly.

09:02.056 --> 09:03.598
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so we're going to start here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we were both 22 years old.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Years of album came out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You're working at this point.

09:14.914 --> 09:16.295
[SPEAKER_00]: You're at the record store.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I am working at the Wizz on forum road in the Bronx.

09:21.583 --> 09:26.950
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you think about what this album was in 1998 and to me,

09:27.402 --> 09:33.975
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this is a superstar in the making is coming through my headphones.

09:34.636 --> 09:44.155
[SPEAKER_00]: And then to what it means now, which is Lauren never reached the level of fame that she probably should have reached based on her talent.

09:44.296 --> 09:46.440
[SPEAKER_00]: For many reasons, and we'll go into some of them.

09:47.686 --> 10:06.252
[SPEAKER_00]: And in some ways, it's almost like her career is a bit of a disappointment, but in other ways, I kind of wonder if having the one iconic album and nothing else to change the memory of who you are might actually be the play.

10:06.232 --> 10:10.299
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people talk about that a lot with certain artists.

10:10.319 --> 10:22.079
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, when people talk about Nirvana, it's like, if Kurt Cobain didn't die after three Nirvana albums, we have like a bunch of really crappy late 90s, early 2000s, Nirvana records.

10:22.680 --> 10:23.802
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes,

10:24.592 --> 10:28.235
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, DeAngelo may he rest in peace, only made three albums.

10:28.956 --> 10:30.357
[SPEAKER_01]: And all three of those albums are good.

10:30.938 --> 10:40.106
[SPEAKER_01]: Would his legacy be the same if he had made six albums or nine albums, because they probably wouldn't all be as good as the three that came out, you know.

10:40.966 --> 10:46.351
[SPEAKER_01]: Miseducation means that Lauren is essentially one for one, like she's batten a thousand.

10:46.411 --> 10:50.315
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to like, then make two ass albums after that.

10:50.335 --> 10:51.336
[SPEAKER_01]: And you never had the story.

10:51.356 --> 10:52.196
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a lot more jinx.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

10:53.718 --> 11:21.447
[SPEAKER_00]: which is which is what happens to a lot of these folks and you've heard the stories of your album your first album is great and then the second album maybe doesn't reach the paypacks of that first album and then your label is disinterested in you because they expected the follow-up to be just as big or bigger right right exactly so there's something to be said as much as I wish there was another Lauren Hill record eight

11:21.713 --> 11:28.308
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of okay with the fact that she never really got the opportunity to make like a crappy record.

11:29.791 --> 11:37.649
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a live album, the MTVM plug record, which was just weird when it came in.

11:37.669 --> 11:41.477
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it has, there are people that love that album.

11:41.963 --> 11:42.744
[SPEAKER_01]: Kudos to them.

11:43.085 --> 11:45.087
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I might have tried to get through that out in twice.

11:45.508 --> 11:47.351
[SPEAKER_01]: I have not listened to it in 25 years.

11:48.092 --> 11:50.615
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like I have no interest at all.

11:51.476 --> 12:02.672
[SPEAKER_00]: If Kanye doesn't sample the song for all falls down, then that album is probably even more forgotten than it is.

12:02.652 --> 12:09.822
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, ultimately, and I don't want to make a lot of noise and like get on Wikipedia or whatever, but the album went platinum.

12:10.243 --> 12:12.826
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but that was just awful like fumes.

12:12.866 --> 12:15.730
[SPEAKER_01]: That was off of people wanting to buy something by Lauren Hill.

12:16.151 --> 12:19.656
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I mean, this was maybe 1999, 2001.

12:20.137 --> 12:24.002
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember people buying that album and trying to return it.

12:24.843 --> 12:45.248
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure I bought it the first day that it was, well, and I even saw the live performance, I remember seeing the performance on TV just going like She's kind of weird during this performance right now the one thing that is really cool now she is in a by the

12:45.329 --> 12:50.764
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the definition of rock star guitarists like she's an amateur with the guitar at this point.

12:50.804 --> 12:52.629
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if she's improved or she's still.

12:52.709 --> 13:01.313
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's gotten better, but she's like she's playing very simple things, but what's cool on that album is she'll play.

13:02.002 --> 13:12.397
[SPEAKER_00]: and she'll sing, and then she'll wrap, and then she'll put, like that was very artistic and that's what I even though the guitar playing was very simplistic, that was awesome.

13:12.697 --> 13:24.874
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was maybe the one thing I got out of that album is like, okay, there's like something bubbling here with this woman and like she's got all of this talent and just these ideas and her life goes a different direction.

13:24.914 --> 13:25.275
[SPEAKER_00]: Direction.

13:26.016 --> 13:31.063
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, I respect her doing something that's really unexpected.

13:31.178 --> 13:34.603
[SPEAKER_01]: just because I didn't like the execution doesn't mean that it was a miss.

13:34.683 --> 13:36.506
[SPEAKER_01]: It just means it, you know, wasn't for me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Wasn't for a lot of people.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, people are going to go the direction they're going to go.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

13:43.056 --> 13:50.849
[SPEAKER_00]: So through this recent listen of this album, and I'm sure you've listened to it many, many, many, many, many times over the instance, an easy one to get to get into.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is my wife's favorite album of all time.

13:54.054 --> 13:54.975
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So did your views change?

13:59.041 --> 14:06.484
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just like that very familiar like I put you in a nice place like what were your feelings around your recent listen?

14:08.067 --> 14:09.149
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a few things.

14:09.509 --> 14:11.292
[SPEAKER_01]: One is that it definitely puts me back into that.

14:12.273 --> 14:18.042
[SPEAKER_01]: Fall 1998, winter 1998, where, like I said earlier, I'm working in a record store.

14:18.082 --> 14:22.208
[SPEAKER_01]: My life is kind of this record store because I'm traveling two hours to get there.

14:22.268 --> 14:23.730
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm traveling two hours to get home.

14:24.231 --> 14:27.636
[SPEAKER_01]: It is pretty much all of my day five days a week.

14:27.696 --> 14:29.319
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm super invested in this job.

14:29.900 --> 14:36.910
[SPEAKER_01]: And we only had a rotation of maybe like 15, 20 albums that we could play over and over on Instor, play in the store.

14:37.328 --> 14:39.710
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, you can't play anything with explicit lyrics.

14:39.831 --> 14:41.372
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's really fast on this album.

14:41.392 --> 14:45.356
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, she has a cost, I mean, she might say one of two cost words.

14:46.698 --> 14:54.706
[SPEAKER_01]: So miseducation, believe me when I tell you, not exaggerating, we played that record every day for like six, seven, eight, nine months.

14:55.407 --> 14:57.569
[SPEAKER_01]: So that album is like embedded in my brain.

14:58.570 --> 15:01.513
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I listen to it now,

15:01.493 --> 15:05.441
[SPEAKER_01]: The music is still really good, like I, you know, I can recite most of that.

15:05.461 --> 15:06.704
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm from memory at this point.

15:07.686 --> 15:12.116
[SPEAKER_01]: I, it's hard for me to get through some of the skits.

15:13.959 --> 15:16.144
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish there was a way to program those out.

15:16.985 --> 15:29.278
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, it's really hard to listen to the album without considering everything that Lauren Hill has done since and having it kind of call it your perception of the record in a certain way.

15:31.260 --> 15:35.084
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I try to make that separation and just enjoy it for the music.

15:36.025 --> 15:38.768
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's still, you know, it's still a great record.

15:39.169 --> 15:39.949
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree.

15:40.170 --> 15:40.530
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.

15:40.610 --> 15:43.313
[SPEAKER_00]: When I listened to it this last, there have been moments where.

15:44.204 --> 15:49.470
[SPEAKER_00]: I would listen to it and I'd go, I know this record's so well, let's become a little bit boring to me.

15:50.431 --> 16:09.334
[SPEAKER_00]: But my recent listen, I was just kind of mesmerized again with her voice and but it is some of it is that whole idea of like, if we run Lauren's life back or musical career back 10 times,

16:09.314 --> 16:16.503
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, the the the apex of it, she's the biggest star in music and like the Michael Jackson of her time.

16:17.324 --> 16:21.410
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, maybe that's what she was maybe trying to avoid also.

16:21.510 --> 16:22.791
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she was trying to avoid that.

16:22.831 --> 16:38.832
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I think she wanted to be successful and look Lauren Hill was groomed right to be a super success like she was on TV as like 14, 15 year old.

16:39.233 --> 16:45.261
[SPEAKER_01]: she wanted it, but I think when she got it, she was like, oh shit, maybe I don't want this no more.

16:45.682 --> 16:47.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe I don't want it this way.

16:47.644 --> 16:57.538
[SPEAKER_01]: And that caused a certain reaction, but don't get it twisted for the last couple of years of the 90s, like Lauren Hill was as big as anybody there was.

16:57.578 --> 17:05.308
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, she also and maybe I'm getting further along than probably need to at this point, but in terms of,

17:06.402 --> 17:10.468
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every rapper that comes out now is like it tries to be like a triple threat, right?

17:10.749 --> 17:15.777
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you got, I'm thinking about Drake because Drake came in through acting, he wraps any sinks.

17:18.160 --> 17:20.745
[SPEAKER_01]: Lauren did all of that much better.

17:21.305 --> 17:22.728
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.

17:22.748 --> 17:29.338
[SPEAKER_01]: But Lauren was one of the first artists to come out other than like Latifa that

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[SPEAKER_01]: was a really good rapper, a really great singer, and like also did all the other multimedia stuff like was she could have been a model, she was an actress, she could have done all of these different things and done them really well.

17:41.850 --> 17:45.494
[SPEAKER_01]: Like to me, she's a prototype for like a Donald Glover type of person.

17:46.816 --> 17:55.107
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she could have totally gone a different commercial route if she had wanted to, but that just didn't seem to be who she was.

17:55.587 --> 17:56.669
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

17:56.809 --> 17:56.929
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

17:56.909 --> 17:58.071
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, 1998.

17:58.512 --> 18:02.079
[SPEAKER_00]: Go through a few things that happened in 1998.

18:02.139 --> 18:07.388
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm actually that year has no real significance for me.

18:07.408 --> 18:08.751
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious what happened in 1998.

18:08.771 --> 18:15.323
[SPEAKER_00]: The 40th Grammys, February 25th, hosted by none other than Kelsey Grammer.

18:16.433 --> 18:17.534
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember this.

18:18.215 --> 18:18.955
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a TV.

18:19.295 --> 18:22.518
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did not watch that.

18:22.618 --> 18:24.940
[SPEAKER_00]: I may have to fact check my fact checking there.

18:25.060 --> 18:27.903
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to go to internet archive and if you can pull that show out.

18:28.483 --> 18:37.751
[SPEAKER_00]: Bob Dylan, Allison Krauss, and Arch Kelly, all wind three awards each with Dylan winning album of the year for Time Out of Mind.

18:38.432 --> 18:46.018
[SPEAKER_00]: Sean Colvin, Sunny came home wins both record and song

18:46.640 --> 18:51.407
[SPEAKER_00]: There's your 19, 98, such an unseasoned list.

18:51.867 --> 18:57.215
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, our Kelly stands out, but then it's also not in a great way.

18:57.655 --> 18:58.396
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

18:58.697 --> 19:07.669
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, April 6th, organizers announced that Lala Palusa, which I think had been going on for like seven years in a row.

19:07.649 --> 19:17.528
[SPEAKER_00]: will not happen in 98 due to the inability to sign a major headlining act and it would be kind of dark for about six years before they brought it back.

19:17.969 --> 19:19.191
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, well it came back.

19:19.753 --> 19:24.662
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it came back as just like a Chicago thing whereas previously it was traveling around the country.

19:25.807 --> 19:41.988
[SPEAKER_00]: April 14th, 1998, the very first VH1 diva's live concert, starring Aritha Franklin, Gloria Stephon, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, and one Mariah Carey.

19:42.368 --> 19:42.969
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a list.

19:43.590 --> 19:44.471
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a crazy list.

19:44.731 --> 19:45.352
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

19:45.372 --> 19:50.278
[SPEAKER_00]: Aritha and Mariah, man, in the same room, at the same time, how does that even happen?

19:50.765 --> 19:52.127
[SPEAKER_01]: Mariah talks about it in her book.

19:52.247 --> 19:54.470
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're going to do an episode on Mariah.

19:54.490 --> 19:56.593
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to, I read the book.

19:56.674 --> 20:00.519
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we do the Mariah thing, I'm going to go back and get the audio books.

20:00.539 --> 20:01.581
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can listen to it again.

20:01.601 --> 20:02.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Right on.

20:03.223 --> 20:13.718
[SPEAKER_00]: But talk about two legends, giant personalities who like things their way, let's just say.

20:13.883 --> 20:20.593
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, this is an aside and we're not going to do in a read the episode because she's a little bit before us.

20:22.075 --> 20:22.215
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

20:22.235 --> 20:25.320
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see that Jennifer Hudson or read the movie?

20:25.340 --> 20:25.480
[SPEAKER_00]: No.

20:26.181 --> 20:31.810
[SPEAKER_01]: I started, I got like 20 minutes in and I was like, you know, I'll do something else.

20:33.552 --> 20:35.295
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not fantastic.

20:35.535 --> 20:36.837
[SPEAKER_00]: Jennifer.

20:36.952 --> 20:39.277
[SPEAKER_00]: tries our ass off by the way in this movie.

20:40.299 --> 20:50.742
[SPEAKER_00]: But I went back to I was trying to figure out like what's the quintessential Aritha story in book form and I found it and I started reading it.

20:51.481 --> 21:01.037
[SPEAKER_00]: And what book is this that I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll tell you a fair fight if I remember, but I stopped reading that book as I was like Swillman's life, man.

21:01.578 --> 21:03.561
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy and I think I know what you're talking about.

21:03.661 --> 21:07.988
[SPEAKER_01]: So I read the in the 90s put out an autobiography.

21:07.968 --> 21:12.920
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's called from these roots and it was co-written with David Ritz, who is an awesome writer.

21:12.980 --> 21:22.944
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had the good fortune of meeting him a few times, has written or ghost written biographies from Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Lenny Crabbits, so on, so on, just big deal.

21:23.786 --> 21:24.407
[SPEAKER_01]: And

21:25.079 --> 21:33.011
[SPEAKER_01]: Arita rewrote that book so much and pulled out so much information about her life that a few years later, David Ritz was like, fuck this.

21:33.511 --> 21:35.414
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wrote his own biography.

21:35.434 --> 21:36.055
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be it.

21:36.075 --> 21:36.796
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be the one.

21:37.037 --> 21:37.818
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

21:37.838 --> 21:44.087
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just reveals, and Arita was very not happy with it and spoke out against it.

21:44.728 --> 21:53.601
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know that she spoke out against it for any reason other than there was just personal stuff.

21:53.986 --> 21:54.707
[SPEAKER_01]: in the public.

21:55.068 --> 21:58.916
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be what the movie is based on, by the way, which is the book that you're talking about.

21:59.297 --> 22:00.560
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

22:00.580 --> 22:05.830
[SPEAKER_00]: And in any ways, you know, part of the reason for me to go see that movie and that the theaters is just here, the music, right?

22:06.031 --> 22:11.522
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's part of the reason why I see these music biopics, which I know are not great, like the, uh,

22:12.481 --> 22:15.486
[SPEAKER_00]: The one the Freddie Mercury one.

22:15.766 --> 22:16.708
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we're giving Rapsity.

22:16.768 --> 22:17.649
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he means Rhapsody.

22:17.709 --> 22:24.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not like that movie, but I get to hear Queen songs on in, you know, in a theater, which is kind of cool.

22:24.560 --> 22:25.302
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

22:25.322 --> 22:25.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

22:26.564 --> 22:27.986
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would talk about it.

22:28.186 --> 22:29.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Just real quick.

22:29.288 --> 22:47.837
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going through Reels the other day and there is this, there's this guy on Instagram that pulls out like the lyrics from songs in the 80s that we all sung as kids that we probably were innocent that reveal

22:48.273 --> 22:52.919
[SPEAKER_01]: What the lyrics really were, you know, I'm out on the line and he did freeway of love, okay?

22:52.939 --> 22:56.704
[SPEAKER_01]: Which was like a Rita's big hit in the 80s and all these years for 40 years.

22:56.764 --> 22:58.486
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like she's think she's sing about a car.

22:58.786 --> 22:58.966
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

22:59.467 --> 23:02.050
[SPEAKER_01]: A Rita was not singing about a car.

23:02.070 --> 23:03.853
[SPEAKER_00]: What was she singing about?

23:04.353 --> 23:08.579
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna ride on a freeway of pink Cadillac.

23:08.979 --> 23:12.103
[SPEAKER_01]: That pink Cadillac was not a car.

23:16.066 --> 23:16.547
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.

23:16.607 --> 23:19.911
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't tell me who zoom in who had some sexual undertone's problem.

23:19.931 --> 23:22.235
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you would do it some while shit.

23:23.576 --> 23:25.159
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, the metaphor is crazy.

23:26.621 --> 23:27.362
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.

23:28.804 --> 23:31.427
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you're going to tell me that pink cookies in a plastic bag.

23:31.688 --> 23:32.669
[SPEAKER_00]: You crushed by a building.

23:33.651 --> 23:34.812
[SPEAKER_00]: This is about something different, too.

23:35.053 --> 23:37.316
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, hello, we'll tell you straight up with that.

23:39.138 --> 23:41.321
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, May 31, 1998.

23:42.283 --> 23:42.924
[SPEAKER_00]: My birthday.

23:43.524 --> 23:44.706
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

23:44.838 --> 23:56.605
[SPEAKER_00]: You turn 22 on the same day that Jerry Hollowell goes into hiding as her public relations representative Julian Torton confirms that she has left the spice girls.

23:56.986 --> 23:57.868
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.

24:00.008 --> 24:04.153
[SPEAKER_00]: God, what does a Jerry Hallowell do without the spice girls?

24:04.554 --> 24:07.738
[SPEAKER_01]: She apparently has been really big in the UK.

24:09.360 --> 24:10.902
[SPEAKER_00]: I was never a celebrity.

24:11.362 --> 24:12.344
[SPEAKER_01]: No, she may records.

24:12.784 --> 24:13.265
[SPEAKER_01]: She had hits.

24:13.946 --> 24:14.506
[SPEAKER_01]: She had hits.

24:15.127 --> 24:17.991
[SPEAKER_01]: I was not really a spice girl's fan.

24:18.351 --> 24:19.473
[SPEAKER_01]: I still feel a lot.

24:19.973 --> 24:20.274
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

24:20.774 --> 24:26.742
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can't really speak to what she was doing musically, but she stayed popular.

24:28.072 --> 24:28.733
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, scared.

24:28.753 --> 24:30.195
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a big scary spice fan.

24:30.715 --> 24:31.516
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

24:31.536 --> 24:37.104
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, Mel B was a very attractive and talented woman.

24:37.404 --> 24:37.885
[SPEAKER_01]: It still is.

24:38.886 --> 24:41.630
[SPEAKER_00]: She even dated Eddie Murphy for like, she has a kid by Eddie.

24:41.750 --> 24:41.990
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

24:42.431 --> 24:42.951
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no way.

24:42.991 --> 24:43.873
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that part.

24:44.233 --> 24:44.674
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

24:44.694 --> 24:46.896
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's part of Eddie's like 14 kids.

24:47.137 --> 24:47.758
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

24:47.778 --> 24:51.222
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of Eddie's, you know, Eddie Murphy class on.

24:51.923 --> 24:53.505
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

24:53.485 --> 25:01.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, sub 10 or 28 1998 Britney Spears is debut single baby one more time is released.

25:01.157 --> 25:20.809
[SPEAKER_00]: It would become a top selling single of 1999 selling over 10 million units It was also the biggest hit single of 1999 that baby one more time music video was ranked as number three on billboards 2010 list of best music videos of all time So how often did you have to play this song or did you not play it at all?

25:20.789 --> 25:22.851
[SPEAKER_01]: not very because our store is in the hood.

25:23.392 --> 25:26.956
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we didn't, we didn't do a whole lot with Britney Spears.

25:27.076 --> 25:36.446
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say that, you know, and we're going to talk about boy bands and all that stuff later, when in sync got super popular, they had the stamp.

25:36.466 --> 25:41.611
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we played a lot of in sync, but other than, yeah, because they had two guys who could sing.

25:41.651 --> 25:42.152
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

25:42.953 --> 25:47.978
[SPEAKER_01]: MTV used to make these

25:47.958 --> 25:50.000
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were like 15 volumes of those.

25:50.040 --> 25:57.067
[SPEAKER_01]: And then actually probably around the same time, 98, 99, now that's what I call music, all those albums came out.

25:58.609 --> 26:07.758
[SPEAKER_01]: So we would play those records just because it was a way to like, you know, there'd be like five or six different styles of music and on one album and they were all like the current popular hits and stuff.

26:07.778 --> 26:08.879
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was just easy to play.

26:09.640 --> 26:16.767
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure one or two of those records had baby one more time on it.

26:17.422 --> 26:28.044
[SPEAKER_00]: But in 1998, Billboard changes its policy for its hot 100 chart to allow airplay only singles or album cuts to be accounted in the chart.

26:28.545 --> 26:28.745
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

26:29.607 --> 26:30.549
[SPEAKER_00]: This is right up your alley.

26:30.589 --> 26:32.353
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the catnip for you.

26:32.393 --> 26:33.996
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you work stuff?

26:34.330 --> 26:47.249
[SPEAKER_01]: there are a lot of songs in the 90s that were super popular that did not chart on the billboard high 100 because they weren't released as singles killing me softly right with killing me softly don't speak by no doubt.

26:48.170 --> 26:51.215
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you that somebody by Alia?

26:51.535 --> 26:53.258
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the strategy for that by the way?

26:53.278 --> 27:02.852
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know what song is blowing up but you don't release it on single is it just because the

27:03.727 --> 27:25.330
[SPEAKER_01]: interesting like they'd rather because if you're on a single cassette singles were maybe two ninety nine sometimes you get a cassette single from ninety nine cents sometimes you get a cassette for forty nine cents nobody is making any money off of that cassette single and often here's some record industry secret stuff cassette singles and CD singles were often given to record stores for free.

27:26.002 --> 27:28.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so the artists made more promotional things.

27:28.866 --> 27:30.309
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were very, they were promotional.

27:30.329 --> 27:32.252
[SPEAKER_01]: They were enticing people to buy albums.

27:32.552 --> 27:33.553
[SPEAKER_01]: It was creating awareness.

27:34.074 --> 27:37.419
[SPEAKER_01]: So, uh, nobody was making any money on singles.

27:38.781 --> 27:42.707
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, I guess at some point labels were like, okay, the business is healthy.

27:42.727 --> 27:43.669
[SPEAKER_01]: People are buying stuff.

27:44.110 --> 27:45.732
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are we, why are we giving it away?

27:46.505 --> 27:48.208
[SPEAKER_01]: And she only then turn around and give it away.

27:48.569 --> 27:48.789
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

27:51.734 --> 27:52.957
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's get into Lauren here.

27:53.778 --> 28:03.175
[SPEAKER_00]: So as you mentioned, Lauren was a little bit of like a child prodigy, Lauren Noel Hill, the Noel Middle Name.

28:03.215 --> 28:05.519
[SPEAKER_00]: Not so sure about that, that fits her.

28:05.579 --> 28:10.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I expect like a little bit more of like a forceful middle name because of who she is.

28:11.159 --> 28:15.345
[SPEAKER_00]: like, I don't know, something that like, is it good?

28:15.365 --> 28:20.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Pam, like Lauren, Pam, he'll look like that just hits.

28:21.234 --> 28:26.722
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because she's out there sticking up for herself.

28:26.782 --> 28:30.788
[SPEAKER_00]: She's calling people out, that sounds like a Pam more than I know well.

28:31.028 --> 28:40.963
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, she was born on May 26, 1975, an East Orange New Jersey in grew up in a nearby town

28:41.112 --> 28:55.358
[SPEAKER_00]: So her parents, Valerie, school teacher, and Maal Hill, a computer consultant systems analysis and analyst, so no family music background there for her.

28:56.131 --> 28:56.892
[SPEAKER_00]: very interesting.

28:57.093 --> 29:00.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but she did obviously grew up around music.

29:00.919 --> 29:06.448
[SPEAKER_00]: Marvin Gaye, Arytha, Stevie, Gladys Knight were big in her house supposedly.

29:06.989 --> 29:10.455
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was a really good student also excelled in athletics.

29:12.919 --> 29:15.363
[SPEAKER_00]: She was a cheerleader took violin.

29:15.403 --> 29:21.193
[SPEAKER_00]: So this woman is really

29:21.410 --> 29:33.764
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, she was like, you know, sometimes you think of athletes, I do a lot of sports stuff and, you know, in as you're raising kids in today's day and age, they want to silo the child.

29:33.864 --> 29:44.816
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, Oh, well, they're going to play baseball and they're going to play on these club teams and they're all year round and I would go well, they also like to play basketball like why do they got to play baseball all year round.

29:45.236 --> 29:48.480
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then, you know, they do that with sports today.

29:48.460 --> 29:53.565
[SPEAKER_00]: But Lauren was just kind of doing a little bit of everything.

29:53.726 --> 30:04.997
[SPEAKER_00]: Great student, great athlete, choir, just a bunch of other things, which makes a lot of sense because of how well rounded she became as a performer and as an artist.

30:05.137 --> 30:07.580
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also, we'll get to her acting career.

30:07.600 --> 30:11.064
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was kind of her first break was actually in acting.

30:11.104 --> 30:12.005
[SPEAKER_01]: In acting, yeah.

30:12.025 --> 30:16.189
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think her upbringing really speaks to what

30:17.772 --> 30:33.233
[SPEAKER_01]: black folks designed is like the middle class dream for themselves like Lawrence parents if she was born in 1975 they were probably born in the early fifties and went through the civil rights movement as teenagers and all that kind of stuff and

30:33.213 --> 31:00.739
[SPEAKER_01]: you know the whole idea of black cultural ascendancy was really important like there was a dream to like move on up like the Jefferson's right so here you have a very middle class family and what is a middle class family want to do with their child they want to put their child in as many activities as possible make them culturally well rounded so it doesn't really surprise me that they were like let's put this girl in sports let's put her in music let's make her cheerleader let's you know let her find out

31:00.719 --> 31:04.991
[SPEAKER_01]: what her interest is by making her as well around it as possible.

31:05.893 --> 31:12.231
[SPEAKER_00]: So before she even gets into music, her first gig is an off-broadway show.

31:12.413 --> 31:19.402
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's a hip hop production of Shake Spears 12th night called Club 12.

31:21.825 --> 31:30.397
[SPEAKER_00]: She also, in that same year, landed a recurring role on as the world tour tour turns.

31:30.557 --> 31:31.839
[SPEAKER_00]: Why can I say turns?

31:31.859 --> 31:33.140
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the world turns.

31:33.841 --> 31:36.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Playing the troubled teenager, Kira Johnson.

31:36.725 --> 31:40.270
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you ever see any of her soap stuff?

31:40.290 --> 31:42.032
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not a soap advocate.

31:42.012 --> 31:43.935
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I've seen clips.

31:44.596 --> 31:49.743
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that people remember most though, Sister Act 2 with Whippy Goldberg.

31:49.763 --> 31:51.525
[SPEAKER_00]: She plays Rita Louise Watson.

31:53.748 --> 31:55.931
[SPEAKER_00]: She sings on in the movie.

31:56.712 --> 31:59.737
[SPEAKER_00]: Very memorable moment of her getting up to sing.

32:00.297 --> 32:07.868
[SPEAKER_00]: She was also in the 1993 movie, King of the Hill, directed by Steven

32:07.848 --> 32:13.897
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know that this exists, and I looked it up, and yep, she's in this huge, yeah, I mean, she was also there.

32:13.937 --> 32:25.535
[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking about people who unfortunately passed away this year after Cosby, Malcolm Jamal Warner had his own show called here and now, where he played like the counselor or something like that.

32:25.555 --> 32:31.003
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't last very long, but there's an episode of that show, which Lauren is a guest star.

32:31.625 --> 32:32.790
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no way.

32:32.810 --> 32:34.538
[SPEAKER_01]: So what year would this have been 93?

32:35.382 --> 32:36.929
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so right at the time.

32:36.950 --> 32:39.441
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can find that on YouTube

32:40.535 --> 32:42.999
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I mean, she was all over the place.

32:43.119 --> 32:53.434
[SPEAKER_01]: I looked to confirm something and to bring another one of my favorites into the room, Lauren Hill and Zach Braff were actually childhood friends, and they would know that together.

32:53.614 --> 32:54.536
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

32:54.556 --> 32:55.277
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

32:55.557 --> 33:02.608
[SPEAKER_01]: So Zach Braff, writer, actor of Scrubs, which is one of my favorite shows of all time.

33:02.628 --> 33:05.071
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming back next year, some super site, it's about that.

33:05.231 --> 33:09.057
[SPEAKER_01]: But they grew up in New Jersey together.

33:09.037 --> 33:11.943
[SPEAKER_01]: had a friendly relationship back in the day that's pretty cool.

33:12.484 --> 33:13.967
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

33:14.548 --> 33:16.231
[SPEAKER_00]: He was never on a Fuji's album though.

33:16.792 --> 33:17.594
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was never on it.

33:19.197 --> 33:19.938
[SPEAKER_00]: It all works out.

33:20.700 --> 33:21.120
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

33:21.140 --> 33:23.445
[SPEAKER_00]: So now we're getting to the foodies here.

33:23.966 --> 33:26.030
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, who were not the foodies originally.

33:27.192 --> 33:29.256
[SPEAKER_00]: So while she's still in high school,

33:29.557 --> 33:35.423
[SPEAKER_00]: They form what is eventually going to become the Fuji's, but it's not yet.

33:35.884 --> 33:42.931
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the trans-later crew, T-R-A-N-Z trans-later crew.

33:42.952 --> 33:52.662
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was that they would rhyme in different languages, not only in English, so that was kind of the gimmick.

33:53.114 --> 34:18.042
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... she meets pros and and then y-cliff joins uh... after they kind of get the thing going so imagine that though like Lawrence like pros year the one that i'm in a team up with in music like what was like i'm maybe maybe pros is doing some other stuff because i don't know is role in the foodies was kind of like just a little cancels i think

34:22.274 --> 34:22.776
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man.

34:22.937 --> 34:26.391
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, you know, how that meeting happened or what the purpose of that meeting was.

34:26.451 --> 34:27.435
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, translate a crew.

34:27.455 --> 34:28.740
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if you

34:31.201 --> 34:38.087
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm looking on like, oh no, on their first album, it was Fuji's slash translator crew on the score.

34:38.187 --> 34:41.050
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Fuji's slash refugee camp.

34:41.571 --> 34:49.278
[SPEAKER_01]: But translator crew even made it into, you know, it made it into their career as like, like actual sign recording artists interesting.

34:49.438 --> 34:59.267
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and yeah, there is a delay in which blended on reality comes out like they recorded it and it doesn't come out until like two years later for whatever reason.

34:59.348 --> 35:09.238
[SPEAKER_00]: So she goes to Columbia University studying history, but she really only stayed there for a year because the food she's take off.

35:11.761 --> 35:15.365
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1994, blended on reality comes out.

35:16.646 --> 35:25.896
[SPEAKER_00]: She is the lead female vocalist, one of the main songwriters and this album,

35:26.180 --> 35:33.170
[SPEAKER_00]: is so different from what we eventually get from the score, just from like a quality perspective.

35:33.190 --> 35:49.133
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like like, I know these albums, they come out about two years apart, but it makes a little bit more sense in knowing the delay and blended on reality because it does sound like they're like five years apart from a musicality perspective.

35:49.602 --> 35:59.700
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Blan on reality came out around a time when there was like, digible planets and arrested development in PM Dawn.

36:00.160 --> 36:03.927
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was this very kind of alternative hip hop being happening.

36:04.809 --> 36:05.670
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was,

36:06.865 --> 36:09.708
[SPEAKER_01]: a marketing strategy to be weird to be a little different.

36:10.088 --> 36:12.230
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you have like live instrumentation in your music.

36:13.471 --> 36:14.592
[SPEAKER_01]: Just be a little different.

36:14.632 --> 36:23.240
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the original premise of like getting over with that first album was like, oh, we're gonna fall into this arrested development camp and just be like kind of the weirdos of hip hop.

36:23.660 --> 36:29.285
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas the score is much more in line with what was happening in commercial hip hop at that point.

36:29.605 --> 36:36.872
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's the whole sort of like my feel,

36:36.852 --> 36:44.491
[SPEAKER_01]: all that stuff, like it was just, you know, let it all reality felt like people trying to just get like their creativity out.

36:44.892 --> 36:50.406
[SPEAKER_01]: This score felt much more commercial minded like they were trying to like figure out a way to have a hit.

36:50.926 --> 36:53.790
[SPEAKER_00]: So blended on reality does not sell.

36:54.471 --> 36:55.192
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it comes out.

36:55.773 --> 36:56.214
[SPEAKER_00]: It does not.

36:57.095 --> 37:06.089
[SPEAKER_00]: They have blamed the label and outside producers who are having too much control of the sound and the direction.

37:06.169 --> 37:10.515
[SPEAKER_00]: Lawrence, like, 16 while they're recording the majority of the album, by the way.

37:10.535 --> 37:12.618
[SPEAKER_00]: So that tells you how young she is.

37:12.678 --> 37:15.162
[SPEAKER_00]: And so

37:15.293 --> 37:27.430
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time blend on reality comes out, you're like, okay, next and they're just kind of forgotten and you know what's interesting is I think a lot of I would say most people

37:28.321 --> 37:34.776
[SPEAKER_00]: went, uh, listen to blended on reality after the score came or yeah, I mean, I've never listened to that album and full.

37:35.096 --> 37:39.827
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in New York anyway, er, and East Coast, there was a song that I'm called, Nappy Heds.

37:39.867 --> 37:40.709
[SPEAKER_01]: They got a remix.

37:40.890 --> 37:41.190
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

37:41.310 --> 37:43.556
[SPEAKER_01]: And that became in New York, a radio hit.

37:43.676 --> 37:45.520
[SPEAKER_01]: So you turn on high 97.

37:45.500 --> 37:49.148
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had the Nappy Head's remix, but that wasn't on the album.

37:49.609 --> 37:51.553
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a different version of Nappy Head's on the album.

37:52.856 --> 37:57.747
[SPEAKER_01]: So even the few people who bought Blundin on reality looking for the one-hit single were like super disappointed.

37:58.368 --> 37:59.290
[SPEAKER_01]: So...

37:59.692 --> 38:01.555
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to go back to the lab a little bit.

38:01.955 --> 38:10.026
[SPEAKER_00]: I had two people who were big time into the Fuji's and Lauren, mostly Lauren during this time frame.

38:10.487 --> 38:25.007
[SPEAKER_00]: So my buddy Albert and my friend Aubrey who I went to school with, they were in on blunted on reality, but it was because of the Nappy heads remix that where you kind of saw like, okay, like, there's something here.

38:24.987 --> 38:40.088
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what they like it sounds so much different from the rest of the album by the way, this remix and you're like, okay, this is the bridge to the score, but nothing else on blended on reality sounds even really close to what they were eventually going to do on the score.

38:41.670 --> 38:45.636
[SPEAKER_00]: So so for the the second album.

38:47.839 --> 38:54.268
[SPEAKER_00]: They took according to this this internet researcher, they took complete creative control.

38:54.721 --> 39:04.195
[SPEAKER_00]: and they set up their own studio which may have been just based off of the kind of the pre-payment for the second album called the Buga Basement.

39:05.537 --> 39:18.356
[SPEAKER_00]: So Wycliffe says that the score, what the score really means as a title for their second album is settling the score for those who slept on the foodies.

39:18.477 --> 39:22.062
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he said that the album, the album title really means.

39:22.632 --> 39:39.932
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the group was nearly dropped by rough house after the the first album, but we're given a chance thanks to the Nappyhead remix and they use that leverage to to try and get a little bit more of the artistic control of that second album.

39:39.912 --> 39:47.608
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Book of Basement was built in Wycliffe's Uncle's Basement in South Orange, New Jersey.

39:47.648 --> 39:50.474
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the studio in Wycliffe's Uncle's Basement.

39:51.776 --> 39:53.199
[SPEAKER_00]: So who worked on this album?

39:53.219 --> 39:58.771
[SPEAKER_00]: Wycliffe, Lauren, and Proz, of course, but also Wycliffe's cousin, Jerry Wanda.

39:59.091 --> 40:00.013
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry Wanda?

39:59.993 --> 40:09.922
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also they use Salam Remi, who remixed Nappyheads, and Diamond D, who kind of helped them shape the album.

40:10.743 --> 40:14.406
[SPEAKER_00]: And then really, it's Lauren's a scent here.

40:14.866 --> 40:21.372
[SPEAKER_00]: When you hear killing me softly, you kind of like, if you knew nothing about the Fuji's, right?

40:21.412 --> 40:30.000
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you didn't know the background of the album, the the artist, and you just heard this song for the first time, it's like a

40:30.284 --> 40:38.151
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it essentially is and the narrative around the foodies from day one was like yo.

40:39.363 --> 41:01.810
[SPEAKER_01]: Let her go solo, drop those other two dudes and make your own records from like jump every piece of press, you know, album reviews, all that stuff was always like, here's the star and you know, obviously that I caused quite a bit of friction, I think, but killing me softly was the song that really blew that album up and.

41:01.790 --> 41:09.763
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the contribution from Wycliffe and or a prize aside from like one time is minimal.

41:10.384 --> 41:11.005
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm staying.

41:11.746 --> 41:16.053
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so yeah, I mean, essentially, he's a Lauren, Lauren Hill solo record.

41:18.417 --> 41:19.539
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here's an interesting thing.

41:20.441 --> 41:27.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, because that wasn't a single, that song helped sell that record a lot.

41:27.592 --> 41:37.086
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, while it made the score Uber successful, at the exact same time, it's pulling Lauren away.

41:38.067 --> 41:43.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's like, this is really what the thing is, not this other thing that you guys think it is.

41:44.797 --> 41:57.396
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll get into kind of the breakup and why the breakup happened, which is mostly because Lauren and Wycliffe are romantically involved

41:57.376 --> 42:02.763
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, but like, if you have a, you know, a star is born, right?

42:02.823 --> 42:08.791
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of a star is born, like she's ready to get launched into the, into space.

42:09.091 --> 42:09.672
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

42:09.692 --> 42:12.897
[SPEAKER_00]: And she kind of leaves these two guys behind and also it's also interesting.

42:13.557 --> 42:15.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't know the timeframe in which it was recorded.

42:15.880 --> 42:20.066
[SPEAKER_00]: But why Cliff actually releases a solo album first, right?

42:20.086 --> 42:23.130
[SPEAKER_00]: There's, there's hubris in that, you know,

42:24.562 --> 42:26.284
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really interesting thing.

42:26.384 --> 42:33.112
[SPEAKER_01]: And the one thing I can compare it to is when Destiny's child decided to make their solo records.

42:33.152 --> 42:34.773
[SPEAKER_01]: The first album that came out was Kelly's album.

42:38.217 --> 42:46.907
[SPEAKER_01]: So I, you know, I think when groups split up, it's not uncommon and there's like,

42:48.929 --> 42:52.372
[SPEAKER_01]: a one in one A type relationship.

42:52.392 --> 42:57.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you need to get the jump because if you don't get the jump, you're going to get swallowed by the time Warren comes out.

42:58.217 --> 43:02.601
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know what, that, you know, what also makes so much sense.

43:02.661 --> 43:18.615
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll talk about this when we do, well, I think we are going to do an in sync album, but the Justin and Jason, yeah, like that phenomenon is

43:19.473 --> 43:23.701
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some people who just like Justin because he was more polished.

43:23.741 --> 43:27.448
[SPEAKER_00]: He came up through the Mickey Mouse Club stuff and all that stuff.

43:28.230 --> 43:28.911
[SPEAKER_00]: So did Jay C?

43:29.332 --> 43:29.573
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

43:29.593 --> 43:31.276
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was for whatever reason.

43:31.296 --> 43:35.524
[SPEAKER_00]: He was kind of a little bit more famous while the group was happening.

43:36.027 --> 43:43.981
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, J.C. takes this odd turn for his first album and he never catches up because of it.

43:45.163 --> 43:54.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's an incredible thing to think about because I always thought I was liked him better than Justin, but if I was to guess, I would say, yeah, Justin, of course, Justin's going to be more successful.

43:54.801 --> 43:57.225
[SPEAKER_00]: He just has that it thing a little bit more.

43:57.205 --> 44:04.244
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, he has the it thing, but I think in terms of from like a talent standpoint, not to say I love Justin Timberlick.

44:04.264 --> 44:13.088
[SPEAKER_01]: I he's quite talented, but in terms of who is a better technical singer, I would give Jc that title.

44:14.367 --> 44:34.806
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the score just blows up it's 7x platinum in the US has sold an estimated 22 million copies worldwide and just the praise of the critical praise.

44:34.786 --> 44:45.141
[SPEAKER_00]: When you talk about charts, it was number one in Billboard 200, number one in the top R&B in hip hop, Fuji law, which was the first single.

44:45.161 --> 44:49.628
[SPEAKER_00]: First single was 29th on the Billboard Hot 100.

44:49.928 --> 44:52.091
[SPEAKER_00]: Killing me softly was not released.

44:52.111 --> 44:56.878
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't actually chart and then

44:57.635 --> 45:05.349
[SPEAKER_00]: ready or not also is does not chart because it is not released, but it is a big hit.

45:06.130 --> 45:12.321
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I guess no woman no cry, which is an extended cut, or is that on the actual album too?

45:12.341 --> 45:13.123
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on the album.

45:13.143 --> 45:13.403
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

45:13.864 --> 45:17.871
[SPEAKER_00]: So that also was successful in the UK, number two in the UK.

45:17.851 --> 45:27.704
[SPEAKER_00]: So the 1997 Grammys, it is nominated for album of the year, only the second rap album ever to be nominated for album of the year.

45:27.744 --> 45:29.306
[SPEAKER_00]: This is 1998, by the way.

45:30.608 --> 45:35.595
[SPEAKER_00]: And it lost to just the force that was Celine Dion in 1996.

45:35.775 --> 45:44.567
[SPEAKER_00]: It won best rap album and won best R&B performance by

45:44.952 --> 46:03.096
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so now you know everything's on the up and up for the food cheese and then it really isn't because they are soon to break up now what was the the Dave ship hell block party movie was that when they had he got them back together for a song or something.

46:03.076 --> 46:03.797
[SPEAKER_01]: He got them back.

46:03.857 --> 46:11.224
[SPEAKER_01]: They did a performance and then they got back in the studio tried to make a third album and they released one single call, take it easy.

46:11.665 --> 46:13.587
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I remember.

46:13.607 --> 46:17.591
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I think just internally, they couldn't get it together for a whole album.

46:18.332 --> 46:29.944
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, interesting because at that time, had they been able to for that third album a bit of

46:30.599 --> 46:31.741
[SPEAKER_00]: Huh.

46:31.761 --> 46:32.061
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

46:32.121 --> 46:33.543
[SPEAKER_00]: So why does the group break up?

46:33.924 --> 46:42.616
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, personal betrayal seems to be the number one, which is interesting because of the dynamics of this relationship.

46:43.277 --> 46:45.681
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Wycliffe is six years older than Lauren.

46:46.903 --> 46:47.864
[SPEAKER_00]: He was married.

46:49.547 --> 46:55.175
[SPEAKER_00]: Lauren, like I mentioned, when the Fuji started to become a thing, she was only 16.

46:55.215 --> 46:58.159
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was like a sophomore junior in high school.

46:58.527 --> 47:04.740
[SPEAKER_00]: They soon become romantically involved while Wycliffe has a wife.

47:05.682 --> 47:35.402
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure, you know, I'm basing this off of like 20 year old over 20 year old vibe magazine like stories right, but for what I remember is from Lauren side, it was always that why Clef is going to get divorced and that they were like that's what he was feeding her to kind of keep her around as the the mistress and then after the score comes out, Lauren gets pregnant.

47:36.952 --> 47:49.594
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Wycliffe, Lauren told him it was his child until the very end when it was Rohan Marley's child.

47:49.675 --> 48:02.688
[SPEAKER_00]: And so why clef who had Lauren on the side is mad because she was hooking up with Rohan Marley and was going to have a kid with Rohan Marley.

48:03.148 --> 48:03.689
[SPEAKER_00]: Typical dude.

48:03.709 --> 48:07.312
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a crazy power dynamic thing there going on.

48:07.332 --> 48:08.373
[SPEAKER_00]: Typical dude shit.

48:08.473 --> 48:09.975
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just that is so messy.

48:10.856 --> 48:17.202
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, I'd like you publicly, if this happened today, Wycliffe would be canceled.

48:17.587 --> 48:26.560
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know about that because, you know, there's different rules in hip-hop, but it's still, it's just messy.

48:26.660 --> 48:33.049
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you can't control, I mean, hey, no one should, no one has the right to control anybody.

48:33.690 --> 48:46.108
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you are in a relationship and you are messing with a side piece and at side piece decides to mess with somebody else, then you have no say in

48:47.607 --> 48:49.009
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're the one with the ring around your finger.

48:50.432 --> 49:06.760
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing where I feel like Wycliffe is not looked upon is that he said one of the main reasons why the score was good was because of the passionate undertone and love triangle.

49:07.521 --> 49:11.067
[SPEAKER_00]: There was passion in this album.

49:11.502 --> 49:33.209
[SPEAKER_01]: because Lauren was his mistress and like I don't know that just makes me feel gross I don't know there is a really interesting story in one of Questlobs books about how the foodies used to open for the roots.

49:33.589 --> 49:34.270
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.

49:34.840 --> 50:00.595
[SPEAKER_01]: And the roots, until when, I mean, until it came out, and anything's flipped, but one thing that Questlove says in the book is that him and Black thought and the band used to do like covers of old hip hop songs or like or do covers of R&B songs with like hip hop beats or that kind of thing.

50:00.575 --> 50:18.238
[SPEAKER_01]: and what he intimates in the book is that the Fuji is basically took that recorded the score and the biggest song from the score is what a remake of killing me softly over the tribe call quest been to Apple Bumbi.

50:18.258 --> 50:23.004
[SPEAKER_01]: So it they in a way and maybe I'm just reading a lot into it.

50:23.044 --> 50:24.726
[SPEAKER_01]: Questlove is like yo.

50:25.010 --> 50:32.442
[SPEAKER_01]: Lauren and Wycliffe stole this thing that we did, and then they turned it into their thing, and it was a million times more successful.

50:34.145 --> 50:40.556
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to bring in Jaguar right or somebody before and do it themselves, right?

50:40.636 --> 50:46.045
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they tried, eventually they did get, they did start making more commercial stuff like that, right.

50:46.285 --> 50:48.349
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's, that's really interesting.

50:48.609 --> 50:50.933
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's also the sense that like,

50:50.913 --> 50:57.902
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuji's got popular on other people's music, essentially, like I was listening to the score earlier today.

50:57.922 --> 51:11.900
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a line in the song, Zellett's call that says, kill the notion of biting every cycling and calling it your own creation, which is essentially what the Fuji's do throughout this entire damn album.

51:13.942 --> 51:17.086
[SPEAKER_01]: Like killing me softly and no one would know quite a straight-up cover.

51:17.106 --> 51:18.608
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like there's no

51:19.060 --> 51:21.443
[SPEAKER_01]: there's not even like them rapping different versus it.

51:21.463 --> 51:23.105
[SPEAKER_01]: They just straight up re-nakes.

51:23.346 --> 51:39.147
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and then, but the excuse or the reason for the song to happen is they try and create hip hop ballads, versus like that's like, you were not covering at the same because we're putting like hip hop beats underneath the music.

51:39.167 --> 51:40.649
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's their excuse, right?

51:41.310 --> 51:46.637
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, and that's saying you can't do that, but it,

51:47.208 --> 51:51.576
[SPEAKER_01]: the originality, they're not as original as they say they are.

51:52.558 --> 51:53.179
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?

51:53.600 --> 52:08.889
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in a lot of I would say the reasons the score got as popular as it did is one, Lauren Hill, just being a force of nature and being charismatic and talented and all that stuff.

52:08.909 --> 52:09.891
[SPEAKER_01]: In two,

52:10.495 --> 52:12.718
[SPEAKER_01]: The familiarity of the songs, right?

52:13.339 --> 52:16.283
[SPEAKER_01]: He's very much like, wow, why did you can't touch this blow?

52:16.323 --> 52:17.205
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's super freak.

52:17.665 --> 52:20.429
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did you know, uh, uh, high-stice baby?

52:20.990 --> 52:22.092
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, high-state blow.

52:22.192 --> 52:25.737
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did you tell me the bad boy records blow is because you're already familiar with the record.

52:26.198 --> 52:32.407
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, killing me softly, they got their audience grieved because there was already a generation of people that were familiar with this song.

52:32.927 --> 52:34.670
[SPEAKER_01]: The young people were familiar with this song.

52:35.271 --> 52:36.132
[SPEAKER_01]: So to hear it,

52:37.208 --> 52:44.358
[SPEAKER_01]: rendered in a style that was more in line with what, you know, we as young people were listening to, that just kind of magnified it.

52:44.418 --> 52:59.419
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I mean, not hating, but just saying that a lot of their blowing up commercially was kind of based on familiarity of other people's material.

53:00.023 --> 53:08.464
[SPEAKER_00]: I always call it like the always on my mind aha moment because I remember when Willie Nelson did that song.

53:09.052 --> 53:33.608
[SPEAKER_00]: It shocked me that Elvis had done it like I don't know 10 years prior and then when you learn that okay he didn't even like do it originally right like and so I always think about it from that because I remember being like a little kid and going like always on my mind what Elvis did this song like how like why like you know in that whole idea so

53:34.364 --> 53:58.465
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the son that Lorne Hill gives birth to Zion, Zion David born in 1997, it's funny when this is much later, Zion Williamson, when he was drafted by the Pelicans, first pick overall.

53:58.647 --> 54:04.636
[SPEAKER_00]: I played a joke on Twitter and I was like, Lauren Hills, baby boy, finally.

54:04.656 --> 54:10.726
[SPEAKER_00]: The timing was probably close, but not exactly, but I tried to get that one going.

54:10.826 --> 54:20.200
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if anyone bought it, but I played the Zion song over some Zion Williams in highlights at some point to try and figure out what's going on.

54:20.180 --> 54:28.232
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so the other thing that, you know, the white clef is taking a little bit of a hit on this one.

54:28.412 --> 54:29.434
[SPEAKER_00]: I think deservedly so.

54:30.475 --> 54:41.952
[SPEAKER_00]: So he said, in the moment of the betrayal, a finding out that the father was actually real Han Marley and he writes about this in his biography, his autobiography.

54:42.674 --> 54:45.999
[SPEAKER_00]: He stated, in that moment, something died between us.

54:46.299 --> 54:51.006
[SPEAKER_00]: I was married and Lorna and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine.

54:51.126 --> 54:53.190
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't forgive that.

54:55.733 --> 54:56.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, dude.

54:56.554 --> 54:57.516
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother.

54:59.058 --> 55:00.420
[SPEAKER_00]: So who, like, doesn't it, doesn't it?

55:00.440 --> 55:03.284
[SPEAKER_00]: Wycliffe have any, like, people he goes to advice for?

55:04.206 --> 55:05.728
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he says,

55:06.637 --> 55:32.172
[SPEAKER_00]: Lauren could no longer be his muse and their love spell was broken and that is basically why he says like that he couldn't really get into doing another album like that that is wild I don't buy that it's wild okay

55:32.742 --> 55:43.252
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you guys at least get back so we could do this because he doesn't I mean he has get all super star which I mean I don't even remember why he was actually chosen for that song.

55:43.773 --> 55:49.838
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean there's but get all superstar was a hit but who do you remember the most on that record?

55:50.599 --> 55:52.321
[SPEAKER_01]: ODB right.

55:52.341 --> 55:55.404
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah so it's like you had a hit but did you really?

55:57.646 --> 55:58.767
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that your record?

55:59.557 --> 56:01.280
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bullworth Soundtrack, baby.

56:02.742 --> 56:11.135
[SPEAKER_00]: And, okay, so the group breaks up and they start going solo.

56:11.215 --> 56:14.741
[SPEAKER_00]: Why clef releases the carnival in 97?

56:14.781 --> 56:18.547
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we said, beats, beats Lauren to the punch.

56:19.328 --> 56:22.273
[SPEAKER_00]: Does ghetto superstar come out before miseducation?

56:22.675 --> 56:24.657
[SPEAKER_00]: He had get a superstar, I think, was early 98.

56:25.258 --> 56:30.944
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so even pros beats Lauren to the solo album release.

56:32.245 --> 56:46.540
[SPEAKER_00]: So Lauren says that at some point in 1998, I don't think that everybody was necessarily that happy that I decided to do a solo project, which I, how can,

56:46.773 --> 56:54.483
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm sure she feels that way, the pressure of what she was doing is really a lot of in misjudication.

56:55.023 --> 57:01.632
[SPEAKER_00]: But if these two dudes were already doing solo projects, it just seems natural that she would be next, right?

57:02.092 --> 57:08.881
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I mean, look, the writing was always on the wall that she was going to do her own thing at some point.

57:09.862 --> 57:12.966
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's even

57:13.486 --> 57:23.345
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the midst of a y-clap putting out his record, there's also a song on the love Joan soundtrack called the sweetest thing, which is like the refugee can't present Lauren Hill.

57:23.385 --> 57:26.310
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's definitely making moves.

57:28.054 --> 57:35.528
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know, everybody assumes that she was going to go solo at some point.

57:36.267 --> 57:50.169
[SPEAKER_00]: At what point does can't take my eyes off you come out because I know it's for the conspiracy theory because it's on as like a hidden track at the end of miseducation.

57:50.189 --> 57:54.917
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to kind of wait a couple of minutes on the last track and then you'll hear that.

57:54.897 --> 58:03.896
[SPEAKER_00]: but that was also another thing of what you're saying is she's covering like an old song with a hip hop and R&B spin to it.

58:04.497 --> 58:08.525
[SPEAKER_00]: But that had to be kind of in the mix before the solo album was dropping.

58:08.585 --> 58:09.126
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing.

58:09.507 --> 58:09.727
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

58:09.868 --> 58:13.395
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the movie I'm looking now, the movie came out in 1997.

58:14.489 --> 58:22.421
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I think it's I don't remember if the song is in the movie itself, but again, I'm, you know, I mean, I've never seen the movie.

58:22.441 --> 58:27.789
[SPEAKER_01]: It's either in the movie itself or it is like in the end credits or something like that.

58:27.809 --> 58:33.358
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I was going to say is I was working at Blockbuster and we would play that movie.

58:34.435 --> 58:36.698
[SPEAKER_00]: just the credits so that we could hear that.

58:36.718 --> 58:38.301
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the hunt that's funny.

58:38.902 --> 58:41.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it's like, it was kind of like a hidden thing.

58:41.526 --> 58:46.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, you're not, you know, how come nobody knows about this song kind of thing.

58:46.914 --> 58:47.935
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

58:47.955 --> 58:48.256
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

58:48.356 --> 58:53.844
[SPEAKER_00]: So now the, the album, her recording, miseducation, Lauren Hill.

58:54.806 --> 58:58.992
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, a lot of white cliff stuff in this album.

59:00.625 --> 59:14.481
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, lost ones, acts back after, like, I wonder if, you know, whicluff is saying, she couldn't be his muse.

59:14.521 --> 59:17.368
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, he was clearly,

59:17.348 --> 59:21.754
[SPEAKER_00]: like on her mind in the creation of this album on a lot of these songs.

59:21.874 --> 59:29.785
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also other stuff about record labels and you know just the industry and unfairness and different stuff.

59:29.805 --> 59:36.393
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's he's clearly like she circled a bunch of things and she put the bullseye on this dude when she was making this album.

59:37.214 --> 59:37.635
[SPEAKER_01]: Which

59:38.813 --> 59:42.345
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if anybody really knew what was going down during that time.

59:42.405 --> 59:44.432
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, okay, well, she's pissed off at somebody.

59:44.452 --> 59:46.358
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very like autobiographical record.

59:46.378 --> 59:49.488
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's clearly speaking from things that happened in her life.

59:50.150 --> 59:50.933
[SPEAKER_01]: I...

59:51.132 --> 01:00:10.912
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't recall being aware of exactly who she was talking to or talking about, um, but, you know, obviously in retrospect, you realize that so many of these songs are about her relationship with with why Clevver and there's probably some songs in there about her relationship with Rowan Marley as well.

01:00:11.233 --> 01:00:12.534
[SPEAKER_01]: Who, by the way, was also married.

01:00:12.934 --> 01:00:14.656
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:00:14.676 --> 01:00:15.517
[SPEAKER_00]: She had a tight man.

01:00:16.098 --> 01:00:19.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly.

01:00:20.326 --> 01:00:46.907
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the songs on this album featuring Carlos Santana is about her son, Zion, and the song is about how she was pressured to have an abortion that having a child at the beginning of this bubbling career would derail possible superstardom, which is an interesting thing to think

01:00:49.233 --> 01:00:54.687
[SPEAKER_00]: the superstar to Masspeck for her, it happened, but it was so limited.

01:00:54.707 --> 01:00:59.239
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that it was because of the child.

01:00:59.300 --> 01:01:01.686
[SPEAKER_00]: It was because of other things going on in her life.

01:01:02.308 --> 01:01:04.373
[SPEAKER_00]: But if that was the fear,

01:01:04.640 --> 01:01:14.294
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like, you know, it actually happened, but maybe for a different reason, but the super startup aspect for Lauren, you know, was only for a short time.

01:01:14.955 --> 01:01:33.482
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sure that somebody, whether it be somebody at the label, somebody in her family, you know, somebody in her management team, whatever was kind of like, look, do you think now is the right time to have a baby because your your star is on the

01:01:34.660 --> 01:01:42.190
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to kill your career, but your priorities are going to shift.

01:01:43.925 --> 01:01:45.667
[SPEAKER_01]: So it wouldn't surprise me.

01:01:45.687 --> 01:01:47.990
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know how the music business works.

01:01:48.050 --> 01:02:03.448
[SPEAKER_01]: I guarantee that somebody somewhere said that, which I think they would say to any, unfortunately, say to any female celebrity who's kind of on the rise, and essentially going to have to take a break in her career to have a child.

01:02:05.791 --> 01:02:08.734
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the end of the day, obviously, that's your decision.

01:02:09.828 --> 01:02:18.437
[SPEAKER_01]: you're going to do what you want to do and she went where her heart and so care and it had no negative bearing on her career at all.

01:02:19.244 --> 01:02:34.440
[SPEAKER_00]: the other part of this is and this is where we're doing a show based on albums of our youth 1998's a little bit different from the perspective of she's on married.

01:02:35.522 --> 01:02:38.565
[SPEAKER_00]: She's had now two affairs with married dudes.

01:02:39.165 --> 01:02:40.267
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nobody knew her then.

01:02:40.447 --> 01:02:46.213
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, but if she does become Michael Jackson,

01:02:46.801 --> 01:02:49.545
[SPEAKER_00]: People are writing that story and blowing that story up.

01:02:49.565 --> 01:03:15.964
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sure that was also part of the fear and do we take a chance with her, knowing that there's some skeletons, but at the same time, those skeletons are very unfair from a gender perspective because history of rock and roll has these dudes, we've been traveling and having kids and it doesn't affect them in any way.

01:03:17.243 --> 01:03:26.058
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, misogyny at its finest, but, you know, unfortunately in situations like that, men and women are often looked at differently.

01:03:27.100 --> 01:03:29.023
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you classify this album?

01:03:29.224 --> 01:03:30.145
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it R&B?

01:03:30.486 --> 01:03:31.347
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it hip hop?

01:03:31.868 --> 01:03:36.917
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it that term that I'm still not sure I like Neo-Soul?

01:03:36.957 --> 01:03:40.122
[SPEAKER_00]: Neo-Soul is so wack.

01:03:40.142 --> 01:03:42.306
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's such

01:03:43.552 --> 01:03:44.714
[SPEAKER_01]: weird marketing term.

01:03:45.115 --> 01:03:46.377
[SPEAKER_01]: It splits it, right?

01:03:46.978 --> 01:03:52.508
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, to me, it is more of an R&B album because Lauren actually does not wrap a whole lot on the record.

01:03:52.528 --> 01:03:54.772
[SPEAKER_01]: She wraps on like three songs, four songs, something like that.

01:03:56.695 --> 01:04:00.582
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a hip hop informed R&B album.

01:04:01.793 --> 01:04:02.634
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a soul.

01:04:02.694 --> 01:04:12.202
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and I don't even know if we have to classify it smooth out on the R&B to pop feel appeal, it's so I mean, you know, they weren't wrong.

01:04:12.622 --> 01:04:14.103
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's soul music.

01:04:14.884 --> 01:04:15.084
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

01:04:15.565 --> 01:04:16.185
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:04:16.205 --> 01:04:17.046
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm I'm with you on that.

01:04:17.366 --> 01:04:18.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:04:18.607 --> 01:04:18.807
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:04:18.847 --> 01:04:20.569
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does it's album come together.

01:04:20.689 --> 01:04:25.053
[SPEAKER_00]: She's recording it from around September of 97 to June of 98.

01:04:25.273 --> 01:04:31.598
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a group of collaborators called the new arc team.

01:04:32.270 --> 01:04:53.282
[SPEAKER_00]: and their a group of relatively unknown musicians who help her with her vision, they helped her a lot in sort of putting the thing together and coming up with arrangements and instruments and the reason why the new arc team is very important to this album.

01:04:53.262 --> 01:05:04.885
[SPEAKER_00]: is because Lauren, according to them, did not credit them enough on the album and they actually sue her and they settled.

01:05:05.025 --> 01:05:13.161
[SPEAKER_00]: The case, a few years later, Lauren's, if you look at the album credits, it's kind of like the Lauren Hill show.

01:05:13.141 --> 01:05:21.211
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, uh, we did a little bit more than this, and in some cases, maybe more than she did, which was the argument, which I don't know how to verify it.

01:05:21.231 --> 01:05:22.592
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't buy that.

01:05:22.692 --> 01:05:26.297
[SPEAKER_01]: That miseducation of Lauren Hills sounds like a Lauren Hill record.

01:05:26.397 --> 01:05:28.599
[SPEAKER_01]: But it sounds like a record that Lauren Hill would make.

01:05:29.340 --> 01:05:37.410
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, nobody knows the entire truth of what happened except the people that were in the studio making the music.

01:05:38.723 --> 01:05:49.541
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm looking at my copy, and on the back cover, does say written produced in a range by Lauren Hill, with like a few exceptions, other people who, you know, gave input.

01:05:50.042 --> 01:05:55.652
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know, again, like if you're not in the room, you can't really say who did what?

01:05:56.333 --> 01:06:02.603
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that anybody from that team has really like blown up in their own way, bigger than Lauren Hill did.

01:06:02.623 --> 01:06:03.685
[SPEAKER_01]: And when,

01:06:04.070 --> 01:06:16.594
[SPEAKER_01]: you know I do feel like the person who contributes the most ends up benefiting the most from it so it's still like a Lauren Hill record yeah they uh what did they settle for five million if I remember correctly yeah I think you're right

01:06:17.738 --> 01:06:20.784
[SPEAKER_00]: So John Legend makes this commercial debut on this album.

01:06:21.005 --> 01:06:21.526
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes indeed.

01:06:21.887 --> 01:06:24.793
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything plays the piano and everything is everything.

01:06:24.913 --> 01:06:29.683
[SPEAKER_00]: We mentioned DeAngelo on this song.

01:06:29.704 --> 01:06:34.554
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you hear this as a tribute to Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell?

01:06:35.716 --> 01:06:36.979
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not really.

01:06:38.258 --> 01:06:47.521
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are songs on their album that sound more directly like other songs, but to me that song nothing even matters is just like it's a slow jam.

01:06:47.822 --> 01:06:48.624
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

01:06:48.644 --> 01:06:53.837
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the it's the quiet storm record off that album.

01:06:54.678 --> 01:07:04.993
[SPEAKER_01]: car as I mentioned, Carlos Santana on two Zion and I don't know Lauren gets enough credit for the same way like run DMC is responsible for aerosmiths comeback.

01:07:05.013 --> 01:07:13.446
[SPEAKER_01]: Lauren Hill is responsible for Santana's comeback because next year super natural comes out and it's like the biggest album.

01:07:13.426 --> 01:07:14.267
[SPEAKER_01]: in the world.

01:07:15.008 --> 01:07:22.655
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think two Zion is kind of what set the, you know, what provided like the runway.

01:07:23.396 --> 01:07:24.497
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know who put them together?

01:07:24.537 --> 01:07:30.162
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think she reached out to Carlos Santana, just having been a fan.

01:07:30.562 --> 01:07:31.543
[SPEAKER_01]: It's flipping genius.

01:07:33.345 --> 01:07:34.086
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

01:07:34.106 --> 01:07:34.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man.

01:07:35.547 --> 01:07:38.690
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, universal critical claim.

01:07:38.730 --> 01:07:40.632
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure there was a

01:07:40.831 --> 01:08:08.847
[SPEAKER_01]: I much more beloved album critically at that point, yeah, I don't remember seeing and I'm sure there were negative reviews, but I don't remember seeing a negative review about this thing across the board it was hip hop critics aren't be critics rock critics young people old people it was just one of those universal records that had like appeal to every audience possible.

01:08:09.620 --> 01:08:16.393
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked at number 10 on their 500 greatest albums of all time list.

01:08:17.896 --> 01:08:18.537
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty wild.

01:08:18.837 --> 01:08:19.679
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's pretty wild.

01:08:21.382 --> 01:08:32.303
[SPEAKER_00]: First week, it did a 422,000 copies broke the record for the highest first week sale by a female artist at the time.

01:08:33.194 --> 01:08:36.226
[SPEAKER_00]: It chopped it chopped it topped the chart.

01:08:36.587 --> 01:08:42.630
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I got chopped from by the top chart for four weeks at number one

01:08:43.353 --> 01:09:10.761
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... she was the first female rapper to achieve diamond status ten million records or more so i think she is to this day the only female rapper to uh... achieve diamond status out on an album trump loving niki manaj not doing ten nah bummer for niki yeah uh... and then worldwide it's done over twenty million copies

01:09:12.125 --> 01:09:19.818
[SPEAKER_00]: So the singles do up that thing becomes Hills first and only solo number one single on the hot 100.

01:09:21.020 --> 01:09:22.202
[SPEAKER_00]: X factor gets to 21.

01:09:22.843 --> 01:09:29.053
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is everything gets to 35 and the lost ones gets to 27.

01:09:31.092 --> 01:09:34.278
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that may be mostly off the airplane.

01:09:34.298 --> 01:09:37.324
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it, do you remember, if it was, and last one was never out as a single.

01:09:37.344 --> 01:09:37.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah.

01:09:38.346 --> 01:09:39.348
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's based on airplane.

01:09:39.688 --> 01:09:40.129
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:09:40.149 --> 01:09:43.175
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and then the 1999 Grammys.

01:09:43.195 --> 01:09:45.039
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 nominations.

01:09:45.319 --> 01:09:49.928
[SPEAKER_00]: The first woman in Grammys history to receive 10 nominations in a single year.

01:09:50.650 --> 01:10:05.563
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets five wins, album of the year, best new artist, best R&B, best R&B song for a do-up, best R&B vocal performance for do-up, also nominated for record and song, but does not win those.

01:10:05.783 --> 01:10:08.389
[SPEAKER_00]: So this thing is just crushing.

01:10:08.555 --> 01:10:13.923
[SPEAKER_01]: And a record to win album with you, only two hip-hop albums in history have won the album of the year Grammy.

01:10:14.684 --> 01:10:15.365
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, what's the other one?

01:10:16.126 --> 01:10:17.007
[SPEAKER_00]: Speak a box of love below.

01:10:17.448 --> 01:10:20.172
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's right, which is only a couple years later, right?

01:10:20.192 --> 01:10:21.033
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 2003.

01:10:21.454 --> 01:10:21.674
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:10:22.375 --> 01:10:31.168
[SPEAKER_00]: So, at this point in the Lauren Hill history, you're thinking like, sky is the limit.

01:10:31.208 --> 01:10:35.415
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we have like a hip hop Whitney Houston non-stop green lights, right?

01:10:35.435 --> 01:10:37.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Green lights, straight down.

01:10:37.124 --> 01:10:38.987
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it just doesn't happen.

01:10:39.047 --> 01:10:44.815
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would really like the the hard part about Lauren is because of things that have happened in her life.

01:10:44.875 --> 01:10:54.227
[SPEAKER_00]: She's become really private and she doesn't really do do much in doing the interviews, you know, if she does she seems irritated.

01:10:54.247 --> 01:11:00.516
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't really know the story, but I would, you know, one day I would love to hear.

01:11:00.496 --> 01:11:26.048
[SPEAKER_00]: Aversion of what happened, you know, like I'm sure there was some mental illness stuff going on that, you know, we, we've heard about there was a tax thing that had happened for just didn't pay her taxes and I remember she wrote like this thing about why she didn't do it like, you know, she gave her reasons and was just like this was why didn't do it and then she had to spend a few months in jail herself.

01:11:27.817 --> 01:11:41.266
[SPEAKER_00]: The, yeah, just the idea that this person who was kind of like about to become the biggest star in in music and was at that point or it was going to launch in a different stratosphere.

01:11:41.326 --> 01:11:42.228
[SPEAKER_00]: It just didn't happen.

01:11:42.288 --> 01:11:44.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like one of those what ifs in music history.

01:11:45.350 --> 01:11:49.723
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know if you watched the, um, the sliced don't document me from earlier this year.

01:11:49.743 --> 01:11:50.405
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not.

01:11:50.425 --> 01:11:51.006
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a question.

01:11:51.026 --> 01:11:51.568
[SPEAKER_00]: Love one, right?

01:11:51.648 --> 01:11:51.969
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:11:51.989 --> 01:11:52.551
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

01:11:52.571 --> 01:11:55.680
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and the subtitle of it is the burden of black genius.

01:11:56.703 --> 01:11:58.448
[SPEAKER_01]: And you look.

01:11:59.626 --> 01:12:12.523
[SPEAKER_01]: throughout history, particularly in the last like 30 to 35 years, there are these artists in hip hop, mostly R&B that blow up and then just vanish.

01:12:12.543 --> 01:12:16.688
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you look at DeAngelo and how long it took between each of his three albums.

01:12:17.169 --> 01:12:20.934
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at Lauren Hill, you look at Max well and how long he takes to make records.

01:12:21.334 --> 01:12:22.596
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at

01:12:24.145 --> 01:12:39.368
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, any Eric of I do who I think has made an album in like 15 years, just all of these people who make an album like blow up and they're like, whoa, wait a minute, and then it kind of gets to be a lot.

01:12:39.568 --> 01:12:40.709
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're pressure man.

01:12:40.790 --> 01:12:41.991
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, retreat a little bit.

01:12:42.392 --> 01:12:43.774
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think some of it.

01:12:44.530 --> 01:12:49.678
[SPEAKER_01]: is because, you know, Paul McCartney can make an album and he's representing Paul McCartney.

01:12:50.038 --> 01:12:51.040
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

01:12:51.060 --> 01:12:53.383
[SPEAKER_01]: Lauren Hill makes an album and she's representing black women.

01:12:55.526 --> 01:12:57.709
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, which is really unfair.

01:12:58.611 --> 01:13:01.996
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I think that's part of it.

01:13:02.517 --> 01:13:10.268
[SPEAKER_01]: I think having to face up to the success of miseducational Lauren Hill and replicate it,

01:13:11.176 --> 01:13:18.108
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can accept that challenge or you can reject that challenge and I think ultimately she rejected that challenge.

01:13:19.010 --> 01:13:28.526
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, this is a great point because if you're goal when you produce an album, you know, whatever your goal is, some people is just like, I've been wanting to do this for my whole life.

01:13:29.788 --> 01:13:33.775
[SPEAKER_00]: If her goal was, I just want to produce the best album.

01:13:35.037 --> 01:13:40.442
[SPEAKER_00]: I can or the best album of the year or the best album in R&B and hip-hop in a long time.

01:13:41.063 --> 01:13:41.923
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.

01:13:42.144 --> 01:13:45.186
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, you can only go down from there.

01:13:45.507 --> 01:13:45.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

01:13:45.787 --> 01:13:46.007
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:13:46.347 --> 01:13:48.950
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't, and maybe from a realistic standpoint, she looked then.

01:13:48.970 --> 01:13:55.256
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, I got too much too fast.

01:13:55.416 --> 01:13:57.818
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what do I do?

01:13:58.338 --> 01:14:03.323
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the interesting part, which is why a Lauren Hill album today,

01:14:03.910 --> 01:14:05.532
[SPEAKER_00]: She would get a lot of flack for it.

01:14:06.613 --> 01:14:15.362
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would be so interested because her first album spans about the first 23 years of her life.

01:14:16.483 --> 01:14:19.886
[SPEAKER_00]: She has lived longer since then.

01:14:20.307 --> 01:14:22.569
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's got so much more to say now.

01:14:23.450 --> 01:14:25.752
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wouldn't be the giant commercial success.

01:14:26.233 --> 01:14:30.677
[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't be the album that everybody who loved miseducation would get.

01:14:30.657 --> 01:14:38.446
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to hear it because I want to hear what she has to say from the standpoint of 23 to 50.

01:14:38.686 --> 01:14:39.728
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I want to hear.

01:14:40.429 --> 01:14:42.891
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think she'd have really important things to say.

01:14:42.911 --> 01:14:46.376
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she pops up on somebody else's record every now and then.

01:14:46.496 --> 01:14:48.618
[SPEAKER_01]: Like most recently, I think she's on a nas album.

01:14:49.699 --> 01:14:51.161
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's spit and bars.

01:14:51.201 --> 01:14:58.690
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, also we have not yet talked about the fact that

01:14:59.851 --> 01:15:03.056
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a very small body of work.

01:15:03.076 --> 01:15:04.278
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, who would you put in there?

01:15:04.859 --> 01:15:07.885
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's Lauren, it's Latifa, MCLite.

01:15:07.905 --> 01:15:12.552
[SPEAKER_01]: MCLite, and then things kind of like fall apart.

01:15:12.572 --> 01:15:14.095
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty quickly.

01:15:14.115 --> 01:15:15.397
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm on my girl, Mooney Love.

01:15:16.279 --> 01:15:17.120
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Mooney Love is open.

01:15:17.180 --> 01:15:21.808
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, Mooney Love just put out an album about a month ago that's very good.

01:15:22.210 --> 01:15:30.482
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I think any conversation, you know, there's people now who love Nikki and Cardi and they would not be, they would not register with me.

01:15:30.502 --> 01:15:35.108
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Nikki has actually, I think Nikki is quite talented, but just talent, right?

01:15:35.909 --> 01:15:37.992
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, it's like Lauren, Lighten, Latifa.

01:15:38.373 --> 01:15:40.776
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I actually like,

01:15:40.756 --> 01:15:51.787
[SPEAKER_00]: some of Cardi B's music and some of her songs because they're kind of fun and gives you that like party vibe, but I also wouldn't consider her to be like this tremendous rapper.

01:15:51.887 --> 01:15:53.969
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Cardi B is not an MC's MC.

01:15:54.209 --> 01:15:55.831
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

01:15:56.252 --> 01:16:10.746
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can learn Hill in a cipher with, you know, Nas or Blackthlaw to somebody else and you would just get jewels.

01:16:11.333 --> 01:16:13.217
[SPEAKER_00]: which is a giant song.

01:16:14.299 --> 01:16:25.022
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when it came out like to see both people at the same level.

01:16:25.103 --> 01:16:29.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Nause is like the wonder king of all rappers, right?

01:16:29.208 --> 01:16:35.555
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like this guy who is like, comes as a very young man and he's like, already one of the best guys you've ever heard.

01:16:36.095 --> 01:16:41.421
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for Lauren to be on that level, on that song, it was incredible.

01:16:41.601 --> 01:16:44.785
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're like, it's also a way to pull Nause into the mainstream.

01:16:45.045 --> 01:16:49.390
[SPEAKER_01]: I think because Nause, if you were a hip hop head,

01:16:50.551 --> 01:16:56.577
[SPEAKER_01]: Nas was amazing, but the average person listening to the radio had no idea who were what Nas was.

01:16:57.177 --> 01:17:01.221
[SPEAKER_01]: So putting Lauren on the record, who was, this is summer of 96.

01:17:01.301 --> 01:17:03.543
[SPEAKER_01]: So killing me softly is everywhere.

01:17:03.563 --> 01:17:06.626
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't even knew your voice on the record to help to blow Nas up.

01:17:06.646 --> 01:17:10.110
[SPEAKER_01]: So when his second album came out, it turned Nas into a superstar.

01:17:10.150 --> 01:17:18.938
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think Lauren Hill has a little bit of, can take some credit for commercially bringing Nas to the next level in his career.

01:17:19.053 --> 01:17:23.660
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to save this for when we get to our questions, but I'll say it now because of my experience.

01:17:23.680 --> 01:17:26.223
[SPEAKER_00]: But have you seen Lauren and live?

01:17:26.604 --> 01:17:26.944
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not.

01:17:27.705 --> 01:17:32.833
[SPEAKER_01]: I have had the opportunity on a couple of occasions or been offered the opportunity and been like, I don't know.

01:17:32.853 --> 01:17:34.996
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't want to wait a few hours for her to capture.

01:17:35.016 --> 01:17:35.657
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, it's funny.

01:17:36.057 --> 01:17:38.841
[SPEAKER_01]: I was supposed to go to the newspaper block party.

01:17:39.342 --> 01:17:39.843
[SPEAKER_01]: No way.

01:17:40.163 --> 01:17:42.386
[SPEAKER_01]: And it rained that morning so I didn't get on a bus.

01:17:42.406 --> 01:17:43.047
[SPEAKER_01]: Damn.

01:17:44.149 --> 01:17:44.690
[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy.

01:17:45.030 --> 01:17:46.252
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

01:17:46.272 --> 01:17:47.794
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen her once.

01:17:48.567 --> 01:17:55.050
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... maybe twice actually now that i think of it i may have seen her twice but the one the memorable one

01:17:55.503 --> 01:18:01.268
[SPEAKER_00]: is her nause at the Billy Graham in San Francisco, I think.

01:18:01.749 --> 01:18:04.091
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was, it was more set up like a club.

01:18:04.111 --> 01:18:05.012
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there were no seats.

01:18:05.112 --> 01:18:06.453
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we were all just standing.

01:18:06.513 --> 01:18:14.401
[SPEAKER_00]: And so nause goes first, you know, where I'll make in the jokes about whether Lauren's even going to be here, like everybody else, right?

01:18:15.702 --> 01:18:20.227
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, he's just, he's the set up man for her.

01:18:20.707 --> 01:18:20.907
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

01:18:21.508 --> 01:18:23.890
[SPEAKER_00]: And to

01:18:24.882 --> 01:18:28.773
[SPEAKER_00]: I used the word weird for that unplugged thing.

01:18:29.515 --> 01:18:39.685
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of weird too, but it was because she had like backgrounds, she had like a choir behind her.

01:18:40.137 --> 01:18:50.468
[SPEAKER_00]: and as she was singing and rapping, she was directing the choir as if she was like directing a symphony in some way.

01:18:51.589 --> 01:18:57.736
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lauren is I'm gonna guess that Lauren is a little type A.

01:18:58.877 --> 01:19:03.422
[SPEAKER_00]: She's very she's very forceful.

01:19:03.862 --> 01:19:08.507
[SPEAKER_00]: These people were singing their ass off and she was like

01:19:09.888 --> 01:19:36.486
[SPEAKER_00]: giving them direction verbally in front of this audience about no we got to do this one again like wait until I say go and then she would and then they had to stop when she wanted it was wild yeah but I've heard I've heard similar stories from people who have presentably saw shows on that tour and so it comes off a little bit as like

01:19:36.466 --> 01:19:38.048
[SPEAKER_00]: she must be like a mean person.

01:19:39.149 --> 01:19:59.730
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, I also took it as she's a perfectionist and she probably has some anxiety around expectation of what she is supposed to sound like and in 209, I probably, this concert I probably saw in like 2015 or something.

01:20:00.130 --> 01:20:03.013
[SPEAKER_00]: But imagine in 2025,

01:20:03.753 --> 01:20:06.076
[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't have the voice that she had in 2023.

01:20:06.356 --> 01:20:08.599
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a little raspier, right?

01:20:08.719 --> 01:20:14.727
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be just, she's been on Earth much longer.

01:20:14.787 --> 01:20:17.590
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's talked a lot and she's sung a lot more.

01:20:17.871 --> 01:20:19.112
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to be a little bit more strain.

01:20:20.214 --> 01:20:28.724
[SPEAKER_00]: And I imagine that as part of it, it's just there's this anxiety to be the Lauren Hill of 1998, every time you go out there.

01:20:29.165 --> 01:20:32.629
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not, people are going to judge you for it.

01:20:32.845 --> 01:20:38.291
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, hey, I'm, you know, at that time, she was probably 40, but now it's like I'm 50 years old now.

01:20:38.331 --> 01:20:40.694
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I'm not going to sound like I did in 1998.

01:20:41.855 --> 01:20:56.012
[SPEAKER_00]: And so from that perspective, I also had so much respect for what she did, because I was like, she wants this to be the best possible thing, not only for the audience, but for her, like it has to live up to her level.

01:20:56.232 --> 01:21:01.198
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, so the other thing we were worrying about or not worrying, we were kind of wondering is like,

01:21:01.752 --> 01:21:11.724
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, do they do if I were the world and they saved it until the very end and so they did it to send off, but I was worried I was like, oh, man, they're not doing it.

01:21:11.744 --> 01:21:14.948
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not doing it and then they did it at the very end.

01:21:14.988 --> 01:21:16.790
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was great to see that part of it.

01:21:16.831 --> 01:21:23.298
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, I respect the fact that Lauren Hill, like it's a double-edged sword, right?

01:21:23.679 --> 01:21:26.983
[SPEAKER_01]: Lauren Hill clearly has a very high opinion of herself.

01:21:27.689 --> 01:21:37.345
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that benefits you in some ways and I think that can take away from you in some ways and it's like

01:21:40.210 --> 01:21:43.654
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a certain point when you're getting high off your own supply.

01:21:43.694 --> 01:21:52.164
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't necessarily know that from like, from an integrity standpoint, from moral standpoint, that that's like the best way to be.

01:21:53.205 --> 01:21:55.768
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, like you want to have a high opinion of yourself.

01:21:56.209 --> 01:22:06.100
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I am sure that over the past 35 years, thousands and thousands of people have blown smoke up Lauren Hill's ass.

01:22:07.193 --> 01:22:12.121
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I don't think you get through that much.

01:22:15.266 --> 01:22:17.750
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, people in without like some kind of damage.

01:22:18.271 --> 01:22:21.316
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and again, let's go back to the gender inequality here.

01:22:22.117 --> 01:22:24.081
[SPEAKER_00]: Kobe Bryant called it momma mentality.

01:22:24.201 --> 01:22:25.283
[SPEAKER_00]: People gave him a pass.

01:22:26.424 --> 01:22:28.728
[SPEAKER_00]: Lauren is doing a version of momma mentality.

01:22:28.748 --> 01:22:30.351
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's getting a little flag for it.

01:22:30.371 --> 01:22:31.733
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, you know,

01:22:32.827 --> 01:22:43.163
[SPEAKER_01]: There's definitely a racialized and gender-based swing to how people view this in a lot of cases.

01:22:45.687 --> 01:22:53.439
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I personally have not going to see Lauren and or any of the Fuji shows just because I think I'll be a little bit disappointed.

01:22:54.400 --> 01:22:56.944
[SPEAKER_01]: And be I just,

01:22:58.291 --> 01:23:04.347
[SPEAKER_01]: knowing about the late news, knowing about the self-righteousness, like all that stuff, just, I'm like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna put myself through that.

01:23:04.848 --> 01:23:05.429
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what?

01:23:05.510 --> 01:23:09.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, what you don't want to do, is you don't want to ruin

01:23:10.930 --> 01:23:39.385
[SPEAKER_00]: your perspective of the music every time miseducational or in hill comes on you don't want your brain to go to oh my god she showed up two hours late and she cut the set off early because of x1 you just you're like I just want to listen to miseducation right exactly keep those memories safe in my head all right here are the questions here now some of these questions that i'm gonna ask micr just unanswerable so we're just kind of like thank you for your

01:23:40.293 --> 01:23:41.856
[SPEAKER_00]: So the score comes out.

01:23:41.956 --> 01:23:43.378
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back to 1996.

01:23:43.399 --> 01:23:44.801
[SPEAKER_00]: The score comes out giant hit.

01:23:45.582 --> 01:23:51.293
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the idea was, hey guys, let's withhold these solo albums.

01:23:52.134 --> 01:23:57.223
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna get right back into the studio and we're gonna make the follow-up to the score.

01:23:58.025 --> 01:24:03.955
[SPEAKER_00]: Wycliffe, pros, Lauren, like, we're in, but we're doing our solo stuff after this third album.

01:24:04.458 --> 01:24:08.743
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that third album sound to you in your mind?

01:24:08.983 --> 01:24:32.710
[SPEAKER_00]: What is happening in music in 97 and 98 that would have changed what they could have done because to me as I sort of thought through this topic, the money move is to focus way more heavily on Lauren but at the same time knowing Wycliffe, he would probably want to get his own shine

01:24:33.280 --> 01:24:38.509
[SPEAKER_00]: and it would, I don't know that the dynamics would have worked quite as well.

01:24:39.070 --> 01:24:46.183
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there's any world in which a third album came out just because the personal dynamic was so weird already.

01:24:48.006 --> 01:24:51.772
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's some stuff that indicates what another album would have sounded like.

01:24:51.792 --> 01:24:56.200
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they did that one song with a tripod

01:24:56.180 --> 01:24:57.021
[SPEAKER_00]: we're going to get to that.

01:24:57.602 --> 01:25:04.051
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, they, they did the love one love Jones song, uh, Lawrence on like three tracks on carnival.

01:25:04.632 --> 01:25:06.414
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, good powder, which I really like.

01:25:06.434 --> 01:25:08.737
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, gun powder, uh, Guantana meta.

01:25:09.458 --> 01:25:11.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think there's maybe like one or two other songs.

01:25:11.942 --> 01:25:18.390
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so, I think a third Fuji's album would have just sounded like this score two point.

01:25:18.410 --> 01:25:21.715
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like I feel like they would have kind of kept that formula.

01:25:22.589 --> 01:25:27.255
[SPEAKER_00]: But I said, rumble and jungle, we'll actually get to it in our top five.

01:25:27.275 --> 01:25:31.000
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a secret review for the top five, because I'm throwing that in my top five.

01:25:32.141 --> 01:25:32.762
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:25:32.822 --> 01:25:37.408
[SPEAKER_00]: So now we kind of talked about this already.

01:25:37.448 --> 01:25:41.914
[SPEAKER_00]: And you mentioned the influences and kind of the

01:25:42.502 --> 01:25:42.983
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

01:25:43.043 --> 01:25:49.272
[SPEAKER_00]: Because blended sounds like blended does, and the score sounds like this incredible just difference.

01:25:50.033 --> 01:25:59.448
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, when when I asked you this, it was the roots thing, the thing that you were thinking of, like, because I'd ask you this a couple of weeks ago and say, like, why the two are reality sounds different.

01:25:59.728 --> 01:26:00.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:26:00.309 --> 01:26:00.770
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:26:00.850 --> 01:26:00.950
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

01:26:00.970 --> 01:26:04.395
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, as soon as you asked that question, the quest love story popped into my head.

01:26:05.256 --> 01:26:05.517
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:26:05.557 --> 01:26:09.623
[SPEAKER_00]: How many foodies related albums do you want on vinyl?

01:26:10.565 --> 01:26:13.171
[SPEAKER_00]: to just the one in the right behind you.

01:26:13.331 --> 01:26:16.297
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a score and a misledication.

01:26:16.317 --> 01:26:19.584
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is my answer as well.

01:26:19.624 --> 01:26:21.448
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I own the carnival on.

01:26:21.468 --> 01:26:23.312
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think carnival is available on vinyl.

01:26:23.452 --> 01:26:26.078
[SPEAKER_01]: If it was, I would probably consider buying it.

01:26:26.539 --> 01:26:26.779
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:26:27.200 --> 01:26:29.485
[SPEAKER_01]: I re-bought it on CD not too long ago, actually.

01:26:30.764 --> 01:26:34.090
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, um, this is a good album.

01:26:34.731 --> 01:26:38.598
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it's really good.

01:26:38.618 --> 01:26:45.812
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this, this one is, uh, this one is, is not too hard to think about, uh, what did your favorite song on misjudicational orn Hill?

01:26:47.174 --> 01:26:49.017
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that is really hard.

01:26:49.037 --> 01:26:50.460
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, maybe it is hard.

01:26:51.217 --> 01:26:58.704
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite song is probably lost ones, just because I think like she can't know what the eye of the tiger and she just drops bars.

01:26:59.065 --> 01:27:00.406
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's it's crazy.

01:27:01.967 --> 01:27:03.569
[SPEAKER_01]: That song just goes super hard.

01:27:04.130 --> 01:27:09.935
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can feel the passion that she's rapping with.

01:27:11.937 --> 01:27:15.180
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna go with X factor as my favorite song.

01:27:16.622 --> 01:27:20.025
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to shout out for giving me father,

01:27:20.647 --> 01:27:31.550
[SPEAKER_00]: because I was listening to forgive me father the other day and I found it kind of amazing because this is one of the songs that she actually does rap on.

01:27:32.692 --> 01:27:36.580
[SPEAKER_00]: So she goes hard on this song.

01:27:36.830 --> 01:27:43.778
[SPEAKER_00]: but then she kind of cushions that by singing this angelic chorus.

01:27:44.419 --> 01:27:51.767
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you hear what the chorus is about, the chorus is just as hard as the lines that she's wrapping.

01:27:51.847 --> 01:27:53.889
[SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, I'll just give you a couple of lines here.

01:27:54.430 --> 01:28:05.082
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the lines that she's wrapping is, and when I let go my voice echoes through the ghetto, sick of men trying to pull strings.

01:28:05.062 --> 01:28:05.703
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:28:05.723 --> 01:28:10.708
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the chorus, which she sing, like, again, she sings it like so beautifully.

01:28:10.728 --> 01:28:19.736
[SPEAKER_00]: The chorus is like cannon able, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas, backstabbers do this.

01:28:19.756 --> 01:28:26.143
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, lost one and for good them father are probably directed towards the same person or I'm going to guess.

01:28:26.623 --> 01:28:27.104
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to guess.

01:28:27.564 --> 01:28:32.689
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just found that like there's a sense of like she's going hard.

01:28:32.669 --> 01:28:46.127
[SPEAKER_00]: But she's cushioning that with this amazing chorus, but if you listen to the chorus, the chorus is just as biting and as just as hard and there's like a brilliance in that there's a brilliance in putting that thing together the way that she did.

01:28:46.648 --> 01:28:59.385
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was I was talking to my friend Jason Green like a week ago and Jason is a well known writer used to be editor at pitchfork just wonderful person great.

01:28:59.365 --> 01:29:02.769
[SPEAKER_01]: source of musical knowledge and we're talking about this album because I knew we were going to record this.

01:29:03.650 --> 01:29:16.303
[SPEAKER_01]: And he talks a little bit or we talk a little bit about every ghetto every city and one thing he had mentioned that I don't know if I even picked up on is that it's basically a rewrite of I wish by Stevie Wonder.

01:29:17.384 --> 01:29:19.706
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds very similar for sure.

01:29:20.527 --> 01:29:21.989
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:29:22.169 --> 01:29:25.052
[SPEAKER_00]: The well when that so when that album came out.

01:29:25.353 --> 01:29:26.715
[SPEAKER_00]: And I heard that song.

01:29:27.216 --> 01:29:31.984
[SPEAKER_00]: My original thought was, she was listening to Stevie before she put things together.

01:29:32.285 --> 01:29:32.626
[SPEAKER_00]: I show.

01:29:32.826 --> 01:29:33.687
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

01:29:34.128 --> 01:29:35.991
[SPEAKER_00]: No, yeah, it's great.

01:29:36.011 --> 01:29:40.159
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also probably part of the reason why I like that song so much.

01:29:40.179 --> 01:29:43.244
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the video, which the world is kind of a turntable on the video.

01:29:43.665 --> 01:29:45.127
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, that's the everything is everything.

01:29:45.227 --> 01:29:50.136
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right, right.

01:29:50.156 --> 01:29:50.837
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:29:52.100 --> 01:29:54.384
[SPEAKER_00]: What is we brought this up recently?

01:29:55.005 --> 01:30:03.038
[SPEAKER_00]: The no-skips rating, meaning the higher the no-skips rating is the less you skip.

01:30:03.058 --> 01:30:05.923
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this album has two no-skips ratings.

01:30:06.324 --> 01:30:10.210
[SPEAKER_00]: One with the interludes and one without them.

01:30:10.932 --> 01:30:16.619
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to just take all the interludes off the album, and if we did that, it would be a nine.

01:30:16.719 --> 01:30:17.920
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a nine.

01:30:17.980 --> 01:30:34.700
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a nine or a 10, and there's a couple of songs where depending on the moment or the day, I may not be feeling it, I don't know if I get all the way through to tell him if I'm playing it just because of the way that they put the hidden tracks in.

01:30:35.100 --> 01:30:35.320
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

01:30:35.701 --> 01:30:37.663
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the hidden tracks are not on the vinyl either.

01:30:37.943 --> 01:30:39.285
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they're not.

01:30:39.265 --> 01:30:40.547
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, no.

01:30:40.567 --> 01:30:42.510
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, actually it's funny.

01:30:42.571 --> 01:30:47.639
[SPEAKER_01]: The last song, which is a title track is probably the one track that I skipped when I was a kid.

01:30:47.719 --> 01:30:49.242
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably the worst song in the album.

01:30:49.262 --> 01:30:49.462
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

01:30:49.482 --> 01:30:58.497
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's long and it's kind of slow when she's overseeing and she's kind of like not my gem, but yeah, I mean, that album is pretty close to perfect.

01:30:58.617 --> 01:30:59.899
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's a nine out of ten.

01:30:59.959 --> 01:31:03.906
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the skits or interludes are hard, man.

01:31:03.886 --> 01:31:17.946
[SPEAKER_01]: Even listening to it in 1998, I was like, this, these feel kind of unnecessary and I get that they're kind of advancing the narrative arc of the album, but now it's just like, oh, these are a little cringe.

01:31:18.314 --> 01:31:48.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I do laugh though when the guys like tell me a song about love and then the kid is like brings up some Kirk Franklin song and then he starts singing it and then the little girl start laughing like that stuff is kind of cute, but there are too many of them if you had one and they'd be fine like if you lead off the album with it and then maybe you close the album with it, it's fine, but there's like six or seven of them in there.

01:31:49.263 --> 01:31:55.910
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's no mad rapper, but even like the score has skits all through it.

01:31:55.930 --> 01:32:04.620
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of which are actually hold up really badly, but, you know, wrap records aren't be records all have skits at this point.

01:32:04.640 --> 01:32:06.342
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of hard for the course.

01:32:07.223 --> 01:32:07.564
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:32:09.426 --> 01:32:16.614
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you turn the Fuji's drama and the Ascent of Lauren Hill into a movie?

01:32:16.914 --> 01:32:17.835
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell you.

01:32:18.170 --> 01:32:18.711
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.

01:32:19.031 --> 01:32:19.472
[SPEAKER_01]: I would watch.

01:32:19.492 --> 01:32:22.515
[SPEAKER_01]: I would watch a Fuji's documentary or a biopic.

01:32:23.056 --> 01:32:24.097
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, not a biopic.

01:32:24.197 --> 01:32:25.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Documentary.

01:32:25.579 --> 01:32:31.847
[SPEAKER_00]: If the biopics are what they what they've been, which is the worst one to me was two pox allies on me.

01:32:33.749 --> 01:32:38.795
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what the thing that I hate is when in these biopics is when they like redo the music videos.

01:32:39.536 --> 01:32:41.979
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I didn't know what this music video up and back.

01:32:42.019 --> 01:32:42.620
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to see it.

01:32:42.640 --> 01:32:44.222
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to be a documentary.

01:32:44.242 --> 01:32:47.586
[SPEAKER_01]: And fun fact, all allies on me and the score came out on the same day.

01:32:47.718 --> 01:32:48.901
[SPEAKER_00]: that is a great fact.

01:32:50.284 --> 01:32:51.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Fantastic fact, by the way.

01:32:53.270 --> 01:32:53.591
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:32:55.075 --> 01:32:56.518
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a new game for us.

01:32:56.859 --> 01:32:59.164
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, boy, called Rock with it.

01:32:59.585 --> 01:33:00.647
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop with it.

01:33:01.268 --> 01:33:17.346
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if this song comes on, you know, you're just doing a shuffle or something or you're listening to the radio or whatever, this song comes on, are you letting it play all the way through from beginning to end or at some point, are you just fast forwarding it or skipping it.

01:33:17.486 --> 01:33:22.592
[SPEAKER_00]: So rock with it means you're staying with it, stop with it means not I can't do this.

01:33:22.632 --> 01:33:24.174
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to go to something else.

01:33:24.574 --> 01:33:27.057
[SPEAKER_00]: First song, ghetto superstar.

01:33:29.112 --> 01:33:29.793
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to rock with it.

01:33:30.675 --> 01:33:38.629
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to stop with it unless when I first hear it, it's the ODB stuff.

01:33:38.649 --> 01:33:39.410
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm going to hang.

01:33:39.771 --> 01:33:49.428
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's pros, like the beginning of the song, I'm probably not going to stay the whole time, but if I get to the, but if I hear it when the ODB part comes out, I'm staying with it for the rest of the song.

01:33:49.809 --> 01:33:52.133
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, gone to November.

01:33:55.201 --> 01:34:19.622
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, I'm a stop with it, um, the original version I don't particularly care for and then the remix has a certain person on it that we mentioned earlier that I no longer listen to so, um, stopping with it in both cases, I'm going to rock with it, the original version, because this is a version of Wycliffe that I actually find kind of charming.

01:34:21.172 --> 01:34:32.059
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, I like the idea where he's just like, you know what, I'm this traveling musician, I'm Bob Dylan, like that's who I'm that I kind of enjoy that about him.

01:34:32.461 --> 01:34:36.146
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the actual hip-hop part of him that I don't really like as much.

01:34:36.266 --> 01:34:37.107
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the music.

01:34:37.147 --> 01:34:42.594
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when he sees himself as a little bit more of a musician than like a rapper, I like that version of Y-Cleft Better.

01:34:43.235 --> 01:34:43.855
[SPEAKER_00]: Closer to Y-Cleft.

01:34:44.076 --> 01:34:47.941
[SPEAKER_01]: But the pointyness to Y-Cleft, that's actually kind of charming.

01:34:48.581 --> 01:34:51.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we're going to get to one of those corny songs in a second.

01:34:51.846 --> 01:34:53.347
[SPEAKER_00]: I only have six for you, by the way.

01:34:53.387 --> 01:34:53.748
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry.

01:34:53.808 --> 01:34:54.509
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

01:34:54.529 --> 01:34:57.753
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are Y-Cleft, though, just because I find his catalog so interesting.

01:34:58.033 --> 01:34:58.354
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

01:34:58.774 --> 01:34:58.975
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

01:34:58.995 --> 01:35:00.156
[SPEAKER_01]: The Nappyheads remix.

01:35:00.963 --> 01:35:01.564
[SPEAKER_01]: some rock with it.

01:35:01.744 --> 01:35:02.726
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that song.

01:35:02.746 --> 01:35:03.608
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna rock with it too.

01:35:03.628 --> 01:35:05.571
[SPEAKER_00]: 9-1-1.

01:35:06.473 --> 01:35:08.096
[SPEAKER_00]: Why Cliff and Mary J. Blige?

01:35:12.103 --> 01:35:14.207
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of those dependent on mood kind of things.

01:35:14.508 --> 01:35:16.852
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say more often than that, I'll probably stop with it.

01:35:16.952 --> 01:35:19.577
[SPEAKER_01]: I love Mary J. I don't need to hear why Cliff sing it.

01:35:21.300 --> 01:35:22.903
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when he's like,

01:35:23.221 --> 01:35:30.421
[SPEAKER_00]: Feel my body getting cold, what is he doing in that song?

01:35:30.742 --> 01:35:34.733
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I kudos to him for not using technology to like

01:35:36.063 --> 01:35:39.007
[SPEAKER_01]: But Mary's awesome on that.

01:35:39.127 --> 01:36:02.256
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's an off of me dog, but he's like, it's almost like, um, you know, okay, like, in one sense, you put one of the best singers on the album because you're on the song because you want the song to be good, but when you yourself go, you know what, I'm going to try and sing with her like, what are you doing dude of all the people to try and sing with?

01:36:03.468 --> 01:36:12.196
[SPEAKER_00]: You ain't going toe to toe from what I mean, like, let's say for instance, let's say instead of Mary J. Blige, you put Maya on that song.

01:36:12.636 --> 01:36:20.484
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have the same heft to it, but why Cliff is also not completely knocked off his key story at the same time.

01:36:20.824 --> 01:36:21.024
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

01:36:21.545 --> 01:36:32.715
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a that's a hard game to play man because the reason that song is as good as it is is because of Mary J.

01:36:33.303 --> 01:36:37.732
[SPEAKER_00]: Wycliffe and Claudette Ortiz, two wrongs.

01:36:38.674 --> 01:36:39.375
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna stop with it.

01:36:39.976 --> 01:36:44.165
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually didn't really like that song very much then, so I'm okay skipping it now.

01:36:45.608 --> 01:36:47.271
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm probably with you, though.

01:36:48.714 --> 01:36:51.700
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the idea of Claudette Ortiz.

01:36:52.540 --> 01:37:07.292
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, like she should have been something and I feel like she was just with the wrong people I mean city high was basically just like foodies two point right and the idea that

01:37:08.453 --> 01:37:11.199
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever, I mean, there's a story there, I'm sure.

01:37:11.720 --> 01:37:25.568
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, very similar to the Fuji's actually, I think one of the members of C. High passed away recently and went through the internet kind of looking at stuff and Claude that was messing around with one of the dudes and it was very similar to the Fuji story.

01:37:25.987 --> 01:37:30.313
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, hips don't lie, it's stop with it.

01:37:30.354 --> 01:37:32.116
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an automatic fit.

01:37:32.136 --> 01:37:33.518
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you not like that song at all?

01:37:34.099 --> 01:37:38.325
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what if you take out the part where Wycliffe just keeps going?

01:37:38.466 --> 01:37:41.851
[SPEAKER_00]: Chuck Hirsch, you're a Kira.

01:37:41.871 --> 01:37:45.576
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I don't, how did that song become as popular as it ended up becoming?

01:37:45.636 --> 01:37:46.117
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't get it.

01:37:46.578 --> 01:37:49.362
[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing about that song is,

01:37:49.747 --> 01:37:56.263
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the same song as white clef and cladette Ortiz on the dirty dancing.

01:37:56.944 --> 01:38:03.520
[SPEAKER_00]: Havana night soundtrack or something, but there's a song called Dance Like This with white clef and cladette Ortiz.

01:38:03.803 --> 01:38:05.145
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the same song.

01:38:05.245 --> 01:38:05.526
[SPEAKER_00]: Same song.

01:38:05.766 --> 01:38:06.547
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's funny.

01:38:07.368 --> 01:38:08.250
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's funny.

01:38:08.450 --> 01:38:10.693
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I do not like that song.

01:38:10.713 --> 01:38:14.839
[SPEAKER_00]: Hips don't lie as hard because it was just so overplay.

01:38:14.899 --> 01:38:21.829
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it comes on the radio and I will get a kick out of just trying to find the Wycliffe parts of Shakira Shakira and Laugh.

01:38:21.930 --> 01:38:24.433
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I do with a lot of Wycliffe songs as Laugh.

01:38:24.754 --> 01:38:26.897
[SPEAKER_01]: If it comes on into wedding, I will dance to it.

01:38:27.458 --> 01:38:32.545
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hips don't lie is not in my Apple Music Library at the moment.

01:38:33.554 --> 01:38:34.935
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, man, I think we've got through this.

01:38:35.716 --> 01:38:35.816
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

01:38:36.477 --> 01:38:38.880
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, it's a great record.

01:38:38.900 --> 01:38:39.901
[SPEAKER_01]: Period, point blank.

01:38:40.902 --> 01:38:44.786
[SPEAKER_00]: Great time in my music listening.

01:38:46.968 --> 01:38:56.838
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of like this star who, if we would have been able to put money on Lauren becoming whatever, we would have put money on her.

01:38:56.999 --> 01:38:57.920
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, yes, it's an happen.

01:38:58.440 --> 01:39:03.105
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I have owned that album in all three formats.

01:39:03.406 --> 01:39:09.450
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you were you stayed a cassette guy for a long time because I was po.

01:39:12.248 --> 01:39:15.212
[SPEAKER_01]: In seven ninety nine is a lot cheaper than eleven ninety nine.

01:39:15.232 --> 01:39:21.259
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is very much so Do they still make cassettes for some albums?

01:39:21.279 --> 01:39:24.543
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean cassettes kind of made a combat It's funny.

01:39:24.583 --> 01:39:34.135
[SPEAKER_01]: I was at a friend's place last night and he has like the whole rack system with the cassette player And I was a dude like this is crazy Had a little collection of cassettes.

01:39:34.296 --> 01:39:34.956
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like okay.

01:39:34.976 --> 01:39:37.800
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll mess around with you cassette player a little bit But you go

01:39:37.780 --> 01:39:46.097
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, there's a reason those things didn't last as cassettes were poorly made cassettes players, uh, you know, to get your tape tangled up.

01:39:47.139 --> 01:39:49.103
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a much digital audio tape, man.

01:39:49.665 --> 01:39:50.486
[SPEAKER_01]: I never had dats.

01:39:50.707 --> 01:39:53.713
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, went from, uh,

01:39:54.740 --> 01:40:03.431
[SPEAKER_01]: vinyl to cassette to CD had a little mini disc flirtation and then you know the problem with the mini disc was the mini disc players.

01:40:04.713 --> 01:40:09.780
[SPEAKER_00]: They used so much juice that you could not keep a charge very long.

01:40:09.800 --> 01:40:19.352
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that was really a problem because I loved my Sony mini disc, but I take it to school and halfway into listen to one album's thing would die out.

01:40:19.372 --> 01:40:23.818
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the reason that I got into

01:40:23.798 --> 01:40:28.257
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's my fault.

01:40:28.574 --> 01:40:36.541
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yeah, that's what when I was working for the radio station, we were we were moving over to debts from real to reals to debt.

01:40:36.561 --> 01:40:36.962
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

01:40:36.982 --> 01:40:37.222
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

01:40:37.662 --> 01:40:38.023
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

01:40:38.163 --> 01:40:38.884
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is it.

01:40:39.044 --> 01:40:44.729
[SPEAKER_00]: The next time you hear us will be also food use related because we're going to have our.

01:40:45.970 --> 01:40:50.414
[SPEAKER_00]: Our top five episode or a shorter podcast, not as deep dive.

01:40:50.454 --> 01:40:57.501
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just a little fun thing.