Fugees "The Score" [1996]

Not sure what apocalyptic non-event was making Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill so paranoid during the recording of Fugees' debut "The Score," but what it tells me is that some people just don't mix with heavy-duty weed, even black people with roots in the West Indies. Regardless, if it really causes Ms. Hill to "defecate on the microphone," please count me out. Even though "The Score" scored a hit with a boiler-room re-make of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly," this is still ultimately a hip-hop album, which is probably why Fugees are trying to gin-up all this talk about how dangerous everything is even though it's clear these are college grads, not street hoods. So they pop plenty of shit about the FBI, gangsters and Asian food, dropping names like Farrakhan as if Chuck D hadn't already backed far away from the edge by the mid-90s. In fact, probably on purpose "The Score" sounds like it was recorded in the basement of a campus building that had been hijacked by leftists with no clear demands, as if their SWAT-team execution that never materialized would have somehow turned them into martyrs, even though it wouldn't have because nobody cared. Both Wyclef and Hill managed to escape the imaginary bunker and went on to have solo success in the music biz before they both suffered embarrassing defeats, however. Just goes to show that people looking for trouble often find it; better to simply call "The Score" a couple of zeros and just leave it be.