This undergraduate university paper researched how black feminism and gender impacted hip-hop culture through the 1980s and 1990s. Centring black theorists, artists and perspectives is vital and doubles down on the importance of authenticity on which music subcultures themselves reside.
In 1998 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill made history — a debut record that claimed space in hip-hop culture for black feminism and remains significant today. Lauryn Hill’s lyrical themes broke the silence of black feminist issues in hip-hop and claimed unprecedented power and space.
Hill speaks truth to power with artistic integrity
Between 1996–1998 Hill was renowned as one of rap’s best emcees with the Fugees and signed to a major record label, Columbia. Pregnant at the time of creation, Miseducation’s liner notes mostly credit Hill with producing, writing and arranging the entire album — two years after the release of Miseducation, Hill and her management and label settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed amount with members of the Fugees and production team for unpaid royalties and contributions. (Critics and scholars have argued that in hindsight Hill was insistent upon having full credit because she’d been denied credit in the past for her work with the Fugees.)
In a 1999 Rollingstone interview Hill commented:
“I write songs that lyrically move me and have the integrity of reggae and the knock of hip-hop and the instrumentation of classic soul…a sound that’s raw.”
Hill was “self-actualizing before our eyes, proving at just twenty-two years old that she was a black magic woman capable of anything at a time when few believed female artists — especially those in the hip-hop world — could do anything and sell millions of records.” (Mayo, 2018, p. xii)
Mary J. Blige hailed the record as “one of the most incredible albums ever made” and the record influenced a generation of soul and…
