Ms. Lauryn Hill at Madiba Harlem / My Image Studios on March 21

The iconic Ms. Lauryn Hill will hit up Madiba Harlem / My Image Studios for an intimate performance

In this day and age of the commonplace rapper, it’s difficult to remember a time when the femcee represented hip hop in its purest form.

Indeed, Lauryn Hill was one such artist. Starting her career as one-third of the influential Fugees, Lauryn released just one solo album — The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — but goddamn, did she make that solo album count.

And what’s amazing about the album is that, in its prime, in 1999, it wasn’t considered a proper hip hop album. Rather, it was considered more neo-soul.

Miseducation pushed out three successful singles: “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “Ex-Factor,” and “Everything is Everything.” Of the three, “Doo Wop” went all the way to number one, and was subsequently buoyed by nearly every Grammy that had been invented up until that point.

With these albums, this New Jersey native single-handedly put herself, and her unique blend of soul, R&B, and rap, onto the map and into the annals of music folklore.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6QKqFPRZSA]

So, what happened?

Well, let’s first remember the circumstances that led to the creation of the album in the first place: after she came off her successful tour with the Fugees to support their hit album, Hill met reggae scion Rohan Marley & became pregnant by him. (Wyclef would later claim, in his memoir, that there was a chance that the child Lauryn was carrying belonged to him, a claim that Lauryn vehemently denied.) Hill and Marley, the proprietor of the Marley Coffee Company who played football for the University of Miami alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, would later go on to have five children, in total, before ending their relationship for good in 2009. Marley also had two children from a previous marriage, and though the marriage was dissolved via divorce in 1996, the year Lauryn became pregnant with their first child, Zion David, Marley and Hill never legally married. In fact, they not only lived apart for most of their relationship, there were many times that Marley questioned the paternity of his children (sometimes on Twitter!).

Some industry insiders suggest that Hill’s tumultuous relationship with Marley was what ultimately lead her to go “off the rails,” suffering an extended breakdown that included erratic public appearances, countless cancelled concerts, and, ultimately, a three-month stint in prison for tax evasion in 2013.

Nevertheless, Hill is back and better than ever, and she’s playing a small, intimate concert over at Madiba Harlem. For $125 per person (same price all around, no VIP treatment. Which is exactly the way Ms. Hill, (as she’s being billed on the concert calendar — go ahead diva!) would want it), concert-goers can be reminded all about why we fell in love with our favorite Jersey girl back in the day.

This is how we win, whether or not we’re right within.

Who: Lauryn Hill
Where: Madiba Harlem @ My Image Studios — 46 West 116th Street, NYC
When: March 21, 2015 at 7pm
Price: $125 — click here to purchase your tickets.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1DzIvl26xI]