Lauryn Hill "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" [1998]

It used to be that soul music -- if it was possible to find something to like about it -- felt immediate, greasy sweat and all. But by the time Fugees refugee Lauryn Hill gets around to releasing her solo debut, "The Miseducation of...," things were much different -- meticulously fussed-over vocal overdubs in the late 90s now attempt to mask the boring, stoner-tempo ballads and raps as if piling up voices is going to somehow amplify the humanism of the tunes. Fucking wrong. Somewhere D'Angelo can be heard complaining how many times Lauryn Hill harmonizes with herself on this CD. Add to this the bush-league-caliber urban poetry slam vignettes -- a passing fad that didn't pass anywhere near quickly enough -- and the typical blunt-smoker's inability to end a song in a reasonable amount of time. Also, there are plenty of interviews with inner city public high school kids talking about "love" for some reason, even though they add no particular insight save for the fact I'm happy I didn't have to attend school there myself. This album is basically an overworked version of the bare-bones Fugees album from a couple years before; between Hill and former bandmate Wyclef Jean, they decided to branch out with solo albums like they're members of Kiss or something. Overly self-righteous and with more gross jazz-flute that ever necessary, it's clear after revisiting this album that Hill's "miseducation" mostly consisted of her being too baked during music class.