you know why we feel like we have to exist in caricature and non-reality and some might argue you know well that's Show Business honey and I go with you right that's why I'm having such a hard time defining what I do who I am and what I am because it feels a little uncomfortable to put it on [Music] in 1987 a 13 year old Lauren Hill took the stage at the Apollo Theater for amateur night so let's bring out our next contestant gives a nice Apollo welcome to Lauren Hill Lauren was an immensely talented and musically precocious child making her first television appearance in probably the most high stakes and vicious stage in all of entertainment [Music] foreign [Music] theater is an innately black space and embodies the beauty and amazing things intrinsic to the Black American Experience along with some of black cultures in my opinion most toxic Traditions specifically the long-standing investment that black people have in the concept of tough love see black in America is to be born with a Target on you this is bad enough as it is but to be black and gifted or talented means that said Target gets bigger and brighter the greater your gift and the greater your success in using that gift the more people will take shots at that Target black children in particular with Talent carry a unique burden and often whole communities come together to do their best to Shepherd a talented and gifted child into a world that will likely seek to destroy them or at a minimum seek to exploit them for Generations one strategy that has always been used for these hyper talented children was an emphasis on tough love meaning the enacting of cruel and harsh practices towards these children with the goal of toughening them up as they incubate in our communities so that when they get out into the real world aka the white world that the inevitable toxicity of that space won't destroy them outright there's a lot to unpack about this practice as on one end it's hard to say outright that it's not an effective strategy in some ways it's hard to find a black success story in the last 50 years that doesn't evoke the value of tough love from the Williams sisters to Kendrick Lamar to Denzel Washington however sometimes I think we forget that those are the success stories and that we don't always hear these stories of how tough love didn't really help a child's outcome instead you'll hear phrases like most black children's first Bullies Are are their parents it's likely that those stories were tough love didn't work don't ever get told because those children aren't successful regardless of your opinion on tough love the Apollo Theater is tough love personified and it was relentless towards those who dared seek its approval to those who have the it factor to make it the Apollo Theater served as confirmation that they had What It Takes Legends such as the Jackson 5 Billie Holiday The Isley Brothers Jimi Hendrix all got their start on that stage and rocketed into success but other would-be Legends such as Luther Vandross Jamie Foxx and James Brown weren't so lucky the complex thing about tough love is that theoretically deep down it is still love and its harshness draws the receiver of said love closer to both the distributor of that tough love but also their ultimate goal of success but that's only if tough love actually works as design what if tough love Is Just trauma weave mythologize as useful what if it doesn't help in the long run and only conditions people to be used to abuse and degradation as a product of surviving especially black children surviving blackness in America one of the most talented kids make it regardless and those who are a little less talented or a little less resilient are worn down to the point where they don't even try regardless of their talent when Lauryn Hill took the stage at only 13 this precocious shy beautiful child came face to face with that famously harsh audience dressed in her best it's clear she was nervous and the crowd saw it too [Music] almost immediately they begin to lay into her with no care but if you listen close you can hear that the booze contain that supposed tough love if I analyze this moment you might almost look at the booze as an attempt to see if Lauren was for real because of performance while a little shaky wasn't so bad the crowd was testing her resilience trying to see if she would fold under the pressure or rise to the occasion you even hear one person yell for her to get closer to the mic to project better after surviving the initial Onslaught You could argue that it worked Lauren gains her confidence and finishes the performance with the help of the crowd clapping to the beat to Keep Her On Track and rewarding her perseverance with a round of applause [Music] [Applause] she had survived the Apollo stage but at what cost she reportedly broke down in tears backstage which would be expected for a child facing that much pressure scrutiny and vitriol from my perspective the mystery that is the legacy of Lauren Hill lies in how you interpret this moment was this an early lesson of how to preserve through adversity that Lauren maybe just stopped holding going to later in life leading to her erratic Behavior questionable life choices and constant gaslighting over a fan base or was this Lauren seeing early on that stardom and all its punishing and dehumanizing elements is maybe not worth it and that she's better off protecting her energy and keeping her distance did tough love make Lauren or break Lauren but before I attempt to answer this question first a word from our sponsor what's going on y'all I am here once again to talk to you about curiosity stream but don't skip especially if you've heard this 100 times before I want to try something a little different to explain why you should take advantage of the deal that I'm about to present to you normally when talking about curiosity stream I would bring up the fact that it has thousands of documentaries that are independent 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to say thank you to nebula and curiosity stream for supporting this video and now back to the video as usual I am not going to give you a full-on biography here you can find a lot of those on YouTube I'll link one in particular that I thought was useful that I use to help kind of fill out some parts of the video but for those two young or just unaware Lauren is one of the most intriguing complex and in many ways controversial music figures of my generation if not all time in her early 20s she was one third of the legendary hip-hop group The Fugees legendary in part because of their one undeniably classic album and the fact that she was in their group after that she dropped her solo debut and became the biggest star in the world and then mostly disappeared from public eye however the impact she made just off of those two records was so significant that she has inspired an entire generation of fans and artists especially black women in hip-hop and R B to the point that her decades-long run of erratic Behavior has received minimal criticism and scrutiny by comparison to her peers and if she announced a tour tomorrow it would sell out immediately [Music] Lauren was born to a relatively normal household in East Orange New Jersey she grew up with her mother and father in the home surrounded by music and with a relatively no indication of significant negative events she was at most just a hyper-talented black child which can be its own form of trouble growing up but more than anything I think it was just her being a girl trying to survive in a male-dominated space where she was better than most any man she might encounter but we'll come back to that Lauren's experience on the Apollo was the first of many opportunities that she encountered early on including a recurring spot on daytime soap operas and a few other appearances before her biggest star turn alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Sister Act Two yo can we hurry this up some of us got things to do I'm saying goodness are you Rita Watson yeah that's me and I'm sorry I don't have any cute stories or antidotes to tell you which is where a 12 year old FD signifier first fell in love with her and that quite likely shaped my taste in women for the rest of my life it's not something I'm necessarily proud of when I look back at every girl I've had a crush on or dated since middle school I may have had a type in between these minor opportunities Lauren made a name for herself and attracted the attention of one per Castro Samuel Michelle AKA prizewell or prize at Columbia High School in New Jersey and they formed a musical group that later would include Wyclef Jean story is you know I'm saying he's like the big man you know what I'm saying in the high school he wanted to put two cute girls in a group behind them you know what I'm saying so he could look like the man the player of the high school this group went through a lot of changes and names and would eventually be known as the Fuji born was only supposed to sing initially which I imagine couldn't have lasted for long once her Talent was noticeable Wycliffe was no such either as performer and general charismatic presence on their records and price was kind of the weakest link but like he had to add something he seemed to be the Mastermind behind their sound in business sense so I'm sure there's something in there somewhere what's curious about this early era of the Fugees with all of these people being so young is how much attention and if I'm honest condescension that Lauren seemed to receive from seemingly everyone involved with the group according to what I found it seemed like Lauren took on the little sister role among the men and as well as their management Wycliffe even claims that he taught Lauren how to rap it seems absurd in retrospect but I think it actually makes a lot of sense as I mentioned in the Nicki Minaj video hip hop at this time period was very much a boys club and pretty much has always been the late 80s in particular up to the mid 90s was the Heyday of gangster rap across the board whether it was cool G Rap Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan in the Northeast the Ghetto Boys Big Mike eight ball MJG in the South or Ice Cube Dr Dre or DJ Quick and the West Coast now there were always not so gangster acts active in hip-hop such as Arrest development P.M Dawn and common but they're very much apart from the gangster rap that was beginning to control hip-hop via the corporate interest that were starting to invest in the art form and the Fugees when they came out were very much apart from that as well and when they had their debut album in 1994 that was actually recorded in 1992 it already felt extremely dated women in hip-hop were still in a phase where black femininity was mostly hidden under a lot of baggy clothes while this worked for women such as Queen Latifah MC light and the Lady of Rage to limited success the petite and soft-spoken Lauren despite her booming raspy vocals and deep voice I imagine just didn't seem like it was going to work on the grand scale and let's also recognize that hill was only 19 years old when blunting on reality and the Fuji's first failed album dropped which means she was only 17 when she started recording it she was a baby only a few years removed from being booed on the Apollo stage despite a few really good songs that were hit off of their first album blunted on reality the album flopped and the group flounder seemingly being over before they started less than two years later their second album The Score will be released their first single Fuji lot was an instant classic showcasing the true Talent of the trio and their ability to intertwine Caribbean sounds that were not really in style in hip-hop then along with amazing Melodies and Lauren's powerful enthralling voice combined with wyclef's infectious energy broke it into the top 40. this was already an accomplishment that nothing awful blunted on reality managed to do despite a few of those tracks still holding up to this day that said while I love fujila then and now I barely remember listening to it when it first came out or it being when I was truly introduced to the Fugees because a few months after that their second single would drop and it was pretty much a shift in the culture [Music] singing my life with his word [Music] killing me softly with his song Killing Me Softly with his song down in my whole life with his worth Killing Me Softly with his songs [Music] I was maybe 13 14 when this song came out and when I tell you the world seemed to stop when this song emerged in a way that I don't remember it just I can't describe it I'm sure there are similar songs for other people at different points in time maybe it was I don't know Master of Puppets or Rolling in the Deep or something else that kind of shifted culture but for folks like me the summer of 1996 belonged to Killing Me Softly I must have heard this song A hundred thousand times in just a few months I was in love with this song and had to make multiple dubs of it because the tape kept getting messed up if you don't know what a dub is see back in my day foreign copy of the music but it was the best the best you could get at the time but despite the fact that the whole album was amazing what people remember is that career defining moment in Killing Me Softly from Lauren Hill and immediately they began to clamor for her to go solo and let's also recognize that on the actual record she wasn't just the best singer and the only singer for the most part she was also the best Lyricist Lauren Hill was better than most male rappers in Hip Hop at the time but and this is indicative of maybe one of Lauren's flaws like going forward she didn't really want to go solo she kind of wanted to keep that team together or at least was invested in the idea of deferring and keeping with the men around people try to tell me to you know to do a solo album and that really wasn't where my head was and I didn't think that just because um people dug what I did you know what I'm saying that that meant that I had to leave my my crew you know I mean I was real happy in Fuji land you know what I'm saying so it was like there was really no need for me to bounce and you know I wasn't even ready to do anything solo at that point I was on a whole other level in someplace else she agreed to go solo but in her solo project it seemed like she really wanted prize and Wyclef to work with her and initially Wyclef said no Wyclef and Lauren had secretly been dating for years but buried in their relationship was clearly some type of artistic rivalry of source [Music] and when Wyclef did eventually agree to help her make the album he said that he was executive producing it in an interview and something in that triggered the competitive spirit and Lauren where she now said you know what I'm gonna do this completely on my own and cut him off all together there's no indication that there was ever physical or emotional abuse from Wycliffe but it's clear their relationship was volatile and toxic and eventually say that some of this probably lied in wycliffe's ego Wyclef is a unique and unsung figure in hip-hop lore he was a showman and a braggart who really wanted the spotlight and wanted to be big wanted to be seen on a worldwide musical scale not just a rapper but like you know kind of how I think we imagine Khan right now in 1997 he released his solo album the carnival a record that I'd say is an unsung classic way back in 97 why Club was blending sounds and rhythms from the Caribbean pulling in reggae what we would maybe call afrobeat now singing in Native French if you like burner boy or little Sims I think you should revisit this album to see that Wyclef was giving you the same energy 25 years ago in a time where gangster rap and then shining suit rap dominated the airwaves and the culture Wycliffe was giving us a whole different type of energy before we even realized that that was what we wanted but most people only remember him as the dude Lauren Hill was talking about on Lost Ones it's funny how money changes situation just communicationally the complications [Music] imagine that being grouped with the most talented and awesome force in music couldn't have been good for him or their relationship and while Wyclef was doing his best and giving us good music I'm sure that by the time Lauren's album came out he had to have felt invisible because it wasn't just that the spotlight was on Lauren Lauren was literally the light itself in 1998 Lauryn Hill dropped the miseducation of Lauryn Hill and somehow managed to stop the world in his tracks again but this time it wasn't just one song it was the entire album I could gush forever about the greatness of this album literally every song is good most of the songs are outright classic lost one still holds up that thing still holds up nothing even matters if like the mythological nature and concept of black love could be personified in a song it would be that song it was a culture shifting moment in music I've seen more than a few hot takes and criticisms of this album as preachy and maybe even hold up a Jace which is somewhat fair but also kind of a lazy uncritical criticism of Lord there are more than a few lyrics and elements of that album that pushed out today might get Lauren dragged on Twitter because by today's standards they would come off as conservative and maybe a little bit regressive around gender and their role of women and how women should act Etc and considering the complexity of Lauren's personal life at the time it's reasonable to look at some of her preachness as also hypocritical however we're not really thinking about the fact that this is a different time and that Lauren is of that relatively conservative generation of genexers and older black people who saw and experienced the world quite differently than how a lot of black folks perceive and experience the world now older black genexers say like an ice cube who are in their 50s now would have been teens and young adults during that crack era and younger gen xers like Lauren Hill would have been children so they saw firsthand how crime and addiction ravaged communities and without the benefit of systemic analyzes that are now the norm for explaining and understanding these issues they relied on what they had access to and looked too tough love as a solution for addressing the issues that black people face Lauren who again was only 21 when she was working on this album was trying to do what she thought she could to change the trajectory of black people it was the message she felt she had to offer the world and if you pay attention to her music her interviews her award speeches Etc then you see that was one of her fundamental drives as an artist she was trying to change the world and she was trying to do it in her early 20s and I defy any of you to stand by the way you thought and talked about the world when you were 21 22 years old I am so happy I did not have Twitter at that time so what today seems preachy was low-key inspiring 25 years ago there's a reason why we still love Lauren I'm specifically speaking speaking of you guys up there there's absolutely nothing that I'm doing that y'all can't do every single one of you I'm 23 years old and I'm I'm just I'm just a kid you know what I mean I'm a child in this there's so many great people who came before me who have put their hearts and their souls on the line for music I'm just one person you know what I mean God has given me the opportunity and I'm so thankful but just know that we all have the potential to do anything and whatever and again when coming from such a young voice you really need to give her more grace than that and Carly appreciate all you want the album was not just a masterpiece but made her a Phenom worldwide I think it's lost really how unique this moment was in American Media this was a time before Tick Tock or Instagram where there wasn't a 24-hour media cycle there weren't 500 different social media networks you couldn't go viral to speed up the process of becoming a star yet in a very short time Lauren Hill was everything everywhere all at once like right now Beyonce is by far the biggest pop star in the world right but recognize that Beyonce built up to that position over the course of a decade by the time Beyonce became Beyonce she was on her fifth album she was a seasoned vet in Show Business she was married she had a solid team around her and she was a mother and 30 years old imagine if Beyonce was expected to be the Beyonce we know today when she was 23. imagine how it must have felt for a 23 year old very private and very flawed and very complex Lauren to emerge on the scene and immediately have the whole world announced in unison we love you and we want more her face graced every magazine cover her voice played on every radio station and she had attained a level of influence in stardom only a few black people had ever had and very few that were women and almost none that looked and talked like her it should not be lost that Lauryn Hill was a dark-skinned unambiguously black woman who was not showing off her body and had 4C natural hair that at the time were in the form of free-form locks she did not look like the standard of beauty even for black people in an era where most black women in the media eye looked like this let alone the for the time very radical and revolutionary ways in which she spoke about black issues in black people Lauren was talking in a way that like today the type of stuff I sometimes talk about in my content definitely keeps certain sponsors from gracing my screen but at the time Lauren was doing that and still being the biggest star in the world and it's clear that that pressure was overwhelming and corrosive to her while she baxed in her success for a little while behind the scenes it's clear especially in retrospect that things weren't going well for Lauren and the attention and realities of being a star wore her down like they've worn down many black musicians before and after her and it's at this point where the stories takes a turn and what you believe or think about Lawrence problems is usually based in two narratives that start at this point narrative one which is the most popular narrative is that Lauryn Hill maybe developed some mental health issues or just herself maybe was crippled by anxiety or just the toxic nature of her relationships or maybe her own like bad behavior has kept her from making good music and really participating in the Legacy that she was creating the other narrative is that maybe after getting a taste of what super stardom was and having the perspective of other black musicians that went through the same thing she decided to divest from the thing all together exiting the stage and only entering into public life when necessary or unavoidable to figure out which of these narratives is more accurate we have to start addressing the unflattering reality of Lauren's relationship with several men and that something about Lauren's ways kept space for men men who were far from maybe like future but also not necessarily A Russell Wilson type of guy Wyclef her first Paramore was married during parts of their relationship and as I said later their love was highly toxic so at some point she began to date Damian Marley One of Bob Marley's many children and reportedly wasn't smitting with him initially but she was pushed towards him by many of her peers with the hope that it would permanently separate her from Wycliffe but she dated both of them at the same time while they also dated other people it's very for thinking for the time she eventually got pregnant while in the middle of this love triangle and their stories that she wanted the child to be Wyclef but it wasn't she welcomed her first child Zion to Damian Marley in 1997. who by the way was married to another woman at the time Lauren and Damien actually lived apart for large parts of their 10-year relationship and had five children together and though Lauren referred to him as her husband they were never actually officially married further in a bit of a surprise to me because I hadn't heard about this she also had a relationship of some sort with a spiritual advisor known only as brother Anthony who was described as a cult leader by other men in Lawrence Camp including Wyclef Damian Marley and prize it's unknown but somewhat insinuated that this was also a romantic relationship but I I don't know that for sure I can't find many details on it I have no idea who this brother Anthony person is finally when Lauren had her sixth child in 2011 during her a pregnancy her and Damian Marley separated this time for good many accused Damien of abandoning Lauren and his child but eventually it was clarified by Lauren that this sixth child was not his and to date the identity of this child's father is publicly unknown I think it's lazy to attribute all of Lawrence problems to the trials and tribulations of the men in her life though I think more accurately you could say that Lauren struggles with feeling content and at peace with herself informed the difficulties she had with men but even this is very much a hypothetical projection on my end Lauren since the moment she finished her album promotion circuit for miseducation has been intensely private and greatly avoided the spotlight so we don't know much about what went on in these relationships we do judge how it looks and even by the most Progressive relationship standards it doesn't look all that good the Judgment that Lauren had for being a single mother and having a messy love life where she messed around with married men brought criticism especially in the face of her relatively preachy and quasi-religious rhetoric that was in her music and all of her public statements and I'm sure to some level this criticism affected her though she didn't show it often in public but to me this is just the salacious part of Lauren's issues to me the real toxic relationship that Lauren had was her relationship to Art itself purposeful about it and the same thing with the miseducation so for me making music is a labor of love and there also has to be an enormous amount of Love involved in what I'm doing and a purpose when I say transition and healing I don't necessarily know that the success itself but I think how the success affects people you know I think that people react to money power Fame differently and uh it can be very dangerous and for me because my peace of mind my sanctity you know what I did with the things that I did they came from a very spiritual place so my environment had to be even more pure and Sanctified than the average persons you know which when you're sort of in Lion's Den you know seems extreme Lauren never really recovered from the disappointment and the artistic nature of the miseducation of Lauren Hill not really changing the world like I imagine she wanted to let alone the commercial and economic and social Fallout that album gave to her after the hype from miseducation died down it seemed that Lauren was fully away from Wyclef and had just had her second child with Damian Marley and things were already starting to get weird there was a clamor for the follow-up to miseducation there were cries for the next Fuji's album she was getting acting opportunities that she turned down and while she did find time to work with other artists she seemed to like really want out of the spotlight she felt like within the fame and success that her art was compromised by Commerce and capitalism art and commerce how did the two you know the relationship has always been art does its thing here you go Commerce you know but now Commerce wants to control art which it ceases to be our neighborhood that's Commerce don't control art and in that her very core was compromised this sent her on a dark Journey she seemingly Dove deeper into spirituality seeking peace but wasn't finding it which is probably where she met the dude that people describe as a cult leader this along with being still so young and in the spotlight and the continued instability of her love life and being a young mother it was a lot further she was sued by bandmates who she collaborated with for the miseducation of Lauryn Hill the story was that she went into the creation of it trying to not include all the economic and monetary elements and just saying look we're family let's make great music which they did however those bandmates Loki didn't get what they should have gotten out of that album and they sued her when the album became a huge hit the members of the band were unsatisfied with their cut and so they sued for money that they from my perspective were old the courts also seemed to agree and Lauren eventually settled out of court for millions of dollars these experiences of seeing how celebrity and money and economics could mutilate the artistic process seemed to deeply damage Lauren's love from making music and maybe even Lauren's love for herself all of this culminated three years later in the Beautiful Disaster that was Lauren Hill's MTV Unplugged in 2001. MTV Unplugged was kind of this gimmicky thing that would happen back in my day where big musicians would do small room acoustic concerts it was cool for the most part think the tiny desk concerts that we sometimes have today however Lauren's date with unplug which was her first major appearance outside of an award show and years was different it was different one because it was her finally giving her self back to the world again and after leaving it thirsty for more all those years and two because it was a full set of brand new mostly unfinished unrecorded and underdeveloped songs and I don't care what anybody says the [ __ ] was pretty bad it's an interesting artifact from like an artistic experience perspective because it gives this like raw window into the struggles to come for Lauryn Hill the first song Mr intentional could be about one of the many men in her life about them gaslighting her about their relationship and his ability to be with her is it a song about Wyclef or Damien or art itself rarely can you get such raw engagement with any person let alone a Phenom who was so private like Lauryn Hill but the actual music the performance it was like a bad poetry Lounge performance for the most part the songs all sounded the same there were numerous flubs Lauren is no her when it comes to the guitar are further if you had any annoyance with how preachy miseducation Lauren Hill was unplug was going to make your eyes roll as Lauren embodied all of the memes and stereotypes we have now of the sage burning chakra lining Crystal charging brouhouya I apologize I'm saying that wrong which is people doing magic with a K all those women on Tick Tock Lauren Hill is their inspiration and was channeling their spirit in this performance she had song titles like Adam lives in theory and Old Jerusalem and the Mystery of inequity and the Conquering lion it was kind of cringe only the most devout-lorn lovers are unwilling to admit this there were some valuable gems and moments in here it's still Lauren Hill right but it's best looked at as an experience as opposed to an actual album or music fit for a commercial release and to be fair to Lauren I think that's how she saw it it was only released a year later by her label because she hadn't made any new music and they wanted to cash in on her as much as they could before they probably saw her eventually getting into the space that she's gotten into but there is a key moment in this mess of a show that is truly telling and indicative of what we didn't understand at the time with Lauren during a song amply titled Peace of Mind Lauren starts the song which is later in this set with her trademark vibrant beautiful smile performing for us singing lyrics of one-sided love and Devotion to a man who isn't meeting her energy but around halfway through the song she breaks down in a raw moment of vulnerability whatever it was that made her write this song was still weighing heavily on her and she can't hide it from the world anymore foreign she followed this song up with one of the many interludes in this album that borders on being rambly and within it she doesn't reveal what brought her to tears in that moment but she does say this at a certain point and I'm just glad that I you know I don't have to slave anymore you know because I music was my love and because of everything I thought had to accompany my music it became my burden it just got stolen from me I said what is this how does this thing I love so much so easily and so quickly turn into something I loathe and hate to me this is the best takeaway to explain what happens to Lauren Hill for the next two decades of her career something about her life her experiences or the industry itself made her hate music made her hate her art the gift that she had for the world that she was so passionate about was now a curse whatever that thing was she couldn't get over it and it was affecting her when I think about Lauren her having been sued by people she created art with her having been undermined and looked down upon by other artists that she was better than her struggling to have a private life that wasn't going to be perfect and appropriate in so many people's eyes and having to face constant scrutiny for that in the public and of course like the constant media saturation of her face I get how all of that can make her look at that sense of just wanting to create like yeah now I don't feel like doing that anymore so for the next 20 years Laura will become known more for erratic Behavior than music especially new music which she would pretty much never produce Lauren would do performances where she would constantly either no show or show up incredibly late but to the point where you'll wonder why anyone would buy tickets to one of her concerts at all she would reconnect and then break up again with her Fuji's band mates she got into tons of legal trouble including tax evasion charges that caused her to have to spend three months in prison a story went viral some years ago with her daughter who was now an adult sharing out she was a harsh disciplinarian in that her siblings would often endure what bordered on abuse from Lord many might refer to it as tough love and Lauren released a statement addressing it owning to the hurt she calls and the growth that she still endured most recently Lauren popped up on one of NASA's recent albums a collaborator that she's worked with before her first appearance in new music in years dropping a verse that a lot of fans were super excited for but for me this was Loki the last straw I'm saving souls and y'all complaining about my lateness now it's illegal for someone to walk in greatness this verse to me felt like gaslighting I I got to talk about Kanye West again Kanye and Lauren have similar experiences with breaking down under the public eye I think it's important to point out that Lawrence who my knowledge has never spoken publicly about mental illness although people have accused her of being unwell at times and to her credit through her statements over the years while sometimes she can be a little odd and so serious they've never been as ridiculous and rambly and offensive as what we've gotten from Kanye however unlike Kanye who again is not mentally well Lauren has never apologized for her behavior or like given you know I'm sorry you felt that way type apologies in fact I think it's fair to say that Lauren doesn't think she owes anyone an apology for protecting her energy and standing on her Square the point that I'm making why am I late today [Music] this is not robotic this is a commodity of the Soul or the emotions in some ways I respect that hell it's a stance I've taken a few times and it's not like Kanye's apologies mean a whole lot but it's still I fell away specifically I fell away because of what came across in this verse because like Lauren doesn't owe anybody an explanation or an apology I'll hold that but like this verse she says stuff like now it's illegal for someone to walk in greatness they want the same sh but they don't take risks or if I'm a messenger you block me then you block the message and it's like when I See lyrics like I'm saving souls and you're complaining about my lateness I get kind of annoyed because it's one thing to stand on your square and require people to meet you where you are because you don't plan on moving and that's your authentic walking Journey you want to create healthy boundaries around yourself and especially your children in relationships cool it's another thing to like not want to be held accountable for the consequences of such Integrity it's another thing to sell tickets to a show that you've agreed to perform at and then not perform or perform poorly or show up hours late over and over and over again well of course I don't think this verse is truly emblematic of everything that Lauren is right now or that she's been through it's just as a fan it was like a weird slap in the face like we aren't adults now that haven't watched her struggle to get herself together for the last 20 years it's one thing to be preaching when you're a 23 year old Phenom giving the world your heart and your art hoping to Aspire change while you make efforts to change yourself it's another thing to be 45 years old being preachy after a lifetime of personal struggles to come back talking about saving Souls when all of us the fans who started with you we've moved the [ __ ] on and we're really just watching you struggle hoping that you find a way to save your own soul and let's keep it a buck it's beautiful how much we love Lauren right but similar to Kanye it feels like she's gotten away with abusing that love for a while now it's hard to ascertain what is real and what is just rumor but there's stories about her business ethics being low-key trash we still don't know why she owed the IRS over a million dollars and refuse to pay like I get that in principle but not in going to jail principle there have been countless stories of Lauren being belligerent and abusive to her band and requiring them to sign paperwork giving her soul credit and ownership of the music she's on and while Lauren has been open about struggling to find peace of mind there's an element to how she comes across in public that's giving toxic Neil Soul chick Vibes like some may not understand but as an old Millennial whose taste in women was greatly shaped by Lauryn Hill I've had my fair share of encounters with ladies who try to hide their toxicity and spiritual Parables about the Zodiac and the universe there's nothing like explaining to a woman your needs in a relationship and having them tell you that what you really need to do is drink more alkaline water and vibrate at a higher frequency Lauren just ain't here for us like that she is her own person she's a private citizen at this point and clamoring for her love is like us running up to a random stranger asking for them to entertain us we need to take the hint we keep loving Lauren like she's still the young woman that gave us that classic but she's a private person who doesn't want to deal with us and doesn't think she owes us anything to explain this change some of y'all might think I'm being too harsh here and you may be right in a way it's just me offering a bit of tough love in the end I don't know what to make of Lauren Hill and her Legacy she's still young and still could very much have excellent music ahead of her or at least a few more rounds of Performing and performing at a high level which she is still very much capable of but unselfishly I personally don't want that what I want for Lauren is what I want for myself and most people healthiness and wholeness and if she can't get that and make art at the same time I don't want her art it's hard not to fantasize about a timeline where Lauryn Hill maintains her relevance and dominance where her image and art can influence a generation of Millennials and Z's I can't help but think about what it would have meant to black people and especially black women who have had Lauren continue her career and become an icon of not just music but fashion and Progressive thought Lauren was again rocking natural hair 10 years before those tutorials were hitting YouTube Lauren was presenting pro-black ethos in public 20 years before that became a branding strategy it is conservative by our standards today yes but surely there was room for growth all of us have grown in that time period before preparing for this video I hadn't listened to miseducation in probably a decade because when Lauren started to really like struggle and it became clear we may never get the Lauryn Hill career we dreamed about as fans I processed that by just leaving her music in the pockets of of my memories then when I went back and listened and all those emotions kept running back it was a Bittersweet thing there's a joy in my memories of being there in the moment being a teenager debating and pontificating on the concept of love with my peers and Friends spurred on by the emotions that Lauren made me feel even though I didn't know [ __ ] about how love actually worked at the time but that sensation of being seen by her art in a way that a lot of black art at the time didn't the shared love for her in this record that bonded me with many peers and friends to this day selfishly I wished I'd have gotten more I wished I'd have been able to see what Legacy she could have given us these past 25 years like can you imagine what we have today if we kept Lauren Hill knowing how amazing and special that moment was it hurts to think it may never happen again that the love we had for Lauren wasn't enough to keep her going to love us back but when I think about it I guess that's just tough in front of the people in the Grammy show with the next dress on let me just praise your name but that's not being used sometimes in order to be used you always have to be humiliated be humiliated sometimes you have to be kicked and beaten and in that situation the person who's kicking and beating he's feeling more pain than you are you know love is an incredible thing and we don't know love like we should we always talk about I have unconditional love unconditional love is we don't even know it because if a person stops stimulating us we stop loving them you're not interesting to talk to them anymore goodbye but that real love that love that sometimes is difficult difficult to have that's that love that's all I got for today y'all please support curiosity stream you're probably going to want to have it for my next video because I don't know how that's going to get across the sensors please support me on patreon so I can keep making content like this that is very much loving deep dives into things that speak to me spiritually and like artistically as opposed to specifically just you know you know anyway that's all I got for today y'all peace [Music] foreign [Music] 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