Give it up!!!!

I thought ya were gonna say Diamonds and Pearls cuz Jughead is awe-thumb

MinneapolisFunk said:

That's my shit man!! I slept on this album for a long time, that "killing me softly single" had me a little weary.

After I finally checked it, I was blown away. Lauryn was lyrically killin' Pras and Wyclef. Too bad their ego's got in the way of some potentially killer follow up releases.

okaypimpn said:

The greatest "cover album" of all time. all remakes!

A good hip hop album, but I wouldn't put it in the greatest of all time.....just my two cents.....

and true, L Boogies lyrics are on point

check her rhyme on manifest.....lord has em mercy

Fugee's is up there 4 sure



My choice would have to go to....




[This message was edited Mon Feb 23 19:31:09 2004 by dnaplaya]

Good one. But I would also go with:

<-----

If u can identify the avatar, u r a true hip-hop junkie.
[This message was edited Mon Feb 23 20:05:16 2004 by namepeace]

dnaplaya said:

That's much more like it. I didn't like the Fugees personally, but to each their own.

NOT even in the top 20...someone check his hip-hop pedigree!

Your probably a Nelly fan I'm sure!

call me unoriginal & old fashined if U want, but I'd still go for this one:

[This message was edited Tue Feb 24 3:27:37 2004 by TheRealFiness]

okaypimpn said:

you mean the biggest one day fly!



Fugees can't even stand in the shadow of this classic:


[This message was edited Tue Feb 24 3:28:48 2004 by abierman]

[This message was edited Tue Feb 24 3:29:12 2004 by abierman]

BEASTIE BOYS - PAULS BOUTIQUE

noepie said:

"Killing Me Softly" is the reason I bought this CD.Usually,I don't go crazy over remakes,but Lauryn takes this song and makes it her own.I knew she was on her way to superstardom when I first heard it.

sinisterpentatonic said:

Yes she was!!! I don't think I've EVER heard any MC (male or female) snap as hard as Lauryn did on that album!

DMSR said:

Clearly you've never heard this album.

I was thinking Paid in Full, or Three Feet High and Risin'!


[This message was edited Tue Feb 24 7:07:41 2004 by UptownDeb]

Dancelot said:

atcq - midnight marauders

or

snoop doggy dogg - doggystyle

or

notorious big - ready to die

or..




but i think it's atcq that gets my final vote.

DMSR said:

co-sign

abierman said:

I see we have another one who has obviously never heard this album! Way to go!!!

Summer 96,,,damn, that was a blast 4 new hip-hop music(All Eyes On Me, Ready To Die, The Score and even Aaliyah's "One In A Million").

Aight Tccd, you're gonna thank a sista 4 this:

Fugee fever. (interview with Lauryn Hill, Pras Michel and Wyclef Jean by Roberta Flack)(Interview)
Interview, May, 1996, by Roberta Flack

These happening hip-hoppers are settling scores and emptying record stores with their hit album, The Score. And their news-making cover of "Killing Me Softly With His Song" is a big part of the story. Here the Fugees are interviewed by singer, songwriter, teacher, radio host, and philanthropist Roberta Flack, whose legendary voice made the original a pop staple

Music may already be moving at an exhausting pace, but thanks to their megaselling second album, The Score (Ruffhouse/Columbia), the Fugees are toying with the time/space continuum in a way that is pushing hip-hop forward to the next level and the next century. Lauryn "L" Hill, Prakazrel "Pras" Michel, and Wyclef "Clef" Jean, are the "Refugees" who seem to have found a homeland at the top of the charts by translating their considerable lyrical brawn into complex, modern storyboards. Described by the New Jersey-based band as a high-concept sonic movie - a "hip-hop Tommy" - The Score also features one of the most exciting covers in years, a version of Roberta Flack's gorgeous landmark tune "Killing Me Softly With His Song." And part of The Score's scoring ability seems to lie in the deft choice of this poignant track. Since covers have become an art form all their own, we decided to ask originator and interpreter to get together and jump the gorge of time. Here, Flack herself, the singer whose own rendition of "Killing Me Softly" won three Grammy awards in 1974, caught up with two thirds of the Fugees, Lauryn and Clef, by telephone in New York City as the group was making frantic preparations to go on tour. Proving that common spirits are not bounded by age and place, this "chat room" swung.

ROBERTA FLACK: Well congratulations! [screams] The Score is, what, number three on the charts? I'm so happy for you!

LAURYN HILL: How'd you like the record?

RF: I love it.

WYCLEF JEAN: Thank you.

RF: The stuff I've read by folks who are writing, I'm not sure they know what they're saying, or why they're saying it, but I do agree that your music is different from what everybody else has done out here. And it's great because you're so young. Can I ask your ages?

LH: I'm twenty.

RF: [laughing] Oh, I hate you and I hate your age.

LH: Pras, who's not here right now, is twenty-three.

WJ: And I'm the old man. I'm twenty-six.

RF: You guys are gonna be so rich by the time you're thirty. [WJ laughs] So I have a million questions, and if any of them get boring, just say, "We don't want to answer that." 'Cause, as you know, interviewing is not my usual thing. I want to ask you about your first album, Blunted on Reality [1993].

LH: We were a lot younger when we did that album. It's basically our demo tape, you know? I was, like, sixteen and Clef was, like, twenty-one. We was babies. But, you know, when you're young and you wanna get on, you give up some of your creativity to the people who have the money to make things happen. So a lot of our sound was, in fact, intertwined with the sound of the production company. It wasn't necessarily us, raw.

RF: It's amazing how many different elements you have been able to include on this album, you know what I'm saying? I said, "O.K., I'm gonna write down all the names of the people they mention [in their rhymes]." I got Robert De Niro, blah, blah, blah, at the start. Then I got down to the song "The Beast," and you mentioned El-Hajj Malik EI-Shabazz [Malcolm X's adopted religious name] and Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. After that it was just going so fast, I said, "Lord, I can't do this. These kids are callin' names and making points." That's what's so exciting about it to me, that it is a groove. Let's just get this straight. It is a serious groove. There is no way that you could put the record on and not listen to what it is. But if it's an older person who doesn't dig what it is, they can still get into the groove. You know what I'm saying, Lauryn?

LH: That's positive. I think one of the most overwhelming things for us is when a lot of young kids come up to us and say, "We appreciate what you're doing." But what's really powerful is when a young person's parent comes up to us and says, "Hey, I appreciate what you're doing."

RF: I love it. The other thing that I find exciting about the lyrics is that you guys talk about your lyrical ability inside the tunes. When you finish this and you get too old and too tired to care about hip-hop, you should sit down and write books and make them other millions.

LH: Wow. Thank you.

RF: You're all geniuses, you can write. But another thing is in the performance. It sounds almost Improvisational, but I tried to find one spot where you sounded like somebody had to think about it. I didn't find one. Even when you say, "Year, right," you know, it's always in the right place. It's conversational. What gave you the idea for the concept of the album? The concept is very clear: It's like a movie, and you guys paint the picture with the performance and with the songwriting.

LH: Well, you know, it's hard in the industry when you're young and you have really solid ideas. From the time when Pras and I were still just a duo, we were clear on what we wanted to do, we just didn't have the finances and the ability to do it. Clef and Pras were raised in church [the two are cousins and both are sons of church officials], and that church upbringing is always musical. I was in a church, as well. I was always surrounded by music - like yours - so the ideas were already there. I came up with The Score because I thought it was powerful and metaphorical, and it was just right on target 'cause we had a couple of scores to settle, like why there were some inconsistencies between our first album [and] our remixed singles. The rap world would come to see our live shows, and they'd say, "What we see visually is not the same as the first album." So we had to settle that score. And then we had another score to settle [with] the media. A lot of times they try to take our music in another direction, and we write our music for young black people because that's who we are, that's the experience. And the media says, "Well this is alternative music because they play instruments and it's different." But it's not different. And it's almost an insult to hip-hoppers to say that.

RF: . . . to say that, you can't be musical, you can only do what everybody else has done before you.

LH: As if we're exceptions, and we're not exceptions. There are kids we know all over who are just like us. We have to represent on that level, so we're settling that score. And then there was the score for those people who immediately tried to disband the group, you know, the rumors -

RF: That you were going to go solo and all that.

LH: Exactly. And finally, there was just the score of addressing some of the issues of hip-hop. There are a lot of mythologies and fantasies going around right now. We've been trying to be so hardcore for so long that people are starting to believe a lot of this hype, and we just wanted to set it straight for the young people that that's all it really is - hype.

RF: I think it's you, Lauryn, who says in one of your songs something about adding "motherfuckers," so [laughs] -

LH: [laughs] Yeah, adding "motherfuckers" so you ignorant niggers hear me. But, you know, we only curse when it's appropriate.

RF: In one song, one of the fellas says, "If I could rule the world, everyone would have a gun. . ."

WJ: Yeah, that's me.

RF: Tell me what you mean, Wyclef.

WJ: Basically, in the ghetto that I'm from, if the police catch you with a gun, they arrest you. And then, if you walking down the street with your mother and somebody comes to mug you and you have a gun, and you happen to shoot him, when the police come, they puttin' you in jail. So what I'm saying is that I would give all the black kids a gun and show them how to use it appropriately for the right reasons.

RF: Do you think you could show kids and young black people in particular hew to do this? Do you think there are other weapons that kids can have that will make them just as strong? In a sense, aren't the weapons that you guys use just as powerful as guns?

WJ: What we come with is the lyrical gun. If you listen to that whole rhyme, I'm writing outside of the story, so it's a little abstract, but the moral of the story is, No matter how tough you are, at the end of it a lot of the hoods that are dying are real smart kids.

RF: Well it's good to hear you say that, but let me ask you this: Do you think that the average person, a young person your age, will listen to this record with that kind of deepness?

WJ: Yeah, I think so. Hip-hop is the only form of expression where, for example, I could say to everyone, "Meet me out on the block at six o'clock tonight and bring your gun," and everyone would listen through the lines and understand that I'm really saying, "Just meet me on the corner. We're gonna have a few drinks." Hip-hop's the only language that you can say that in.

RF: There's a big gap between the hip-hop community and the rest of the community, in terms of people who are over thirty-five or even over thirty not understanding. But don't you think it's important for everyone to embrace this art form as art?

LH: With all due respect, that's why we did songs like "Killing Me Softly" and "No Woman, No Cry" [a 1975 hit by Bob Marley and the Wailers]. The purpose behind covering them was, they had given us inspiration when we were younger.

RF: I love you for that, girl. My sister called me up and said, "Girl, have you done a remix of 'Killing Me Softly'?" I said, "I don't think so." So I went out and got The Score right away, and I said to myself, "That's so beautiful." When I originally got the song, it had already been recorded by a young girl named Lori Lieberman, and it was just a simple beautiful thing with a guitar. It sounded a lot like a folk-pop tune. But when I heard it, I heard my voice. All of the stuff I did to it, like the little oohs in the beginning, came while I was performing it live. I'm so happy that you chose that song.

LH: Is that how you started?

RF: You know, it was Clint Eastwood who really kicked it for me. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was on an album [First Take, 1969] for, like, three years, and then he put it in the movie Play Misty for Me [1972, directed by Eastwood - exposure from that movie gave Flack her first number one hit]. Your version of "Killing Me Softly" reminded me of that experience, because your album is such a movie. I felt that your putting the song right in the middle, after you had said a few other things, was so good. You guys really busted it.

LH: It's beautiful that people acknowledge what we do, but we just love being in the studio making music, and being onstage.

RF: So, how many albums have you sold?

WJ: This week is going to make it something like a million plus.

RF: [screams]

LH: Isn't that unbelievable? It's only been, what, three weeks?

RF: God is definitely moving, so take advantage of it. Let me ask you this: You know that song Prince wrote, "1999" [1982]? Do you think that when 1999 comes, you will still be doing hip-hop, or do you think that you will have changed?

LH: Well, we have this weird way of doing hip-hop. It's sort of all-inclusive. The song "Mista Mista" is a hip-hop folk song, know what I mean?

RF: I hear a lot of stuff in there, like an acoustic guitar. Is that someone really playing?

WJ: I'm the guitar player.

RF: Go 'head, you bad thing. You all are too good. You know what I want to do for the video [for "Killing Me Softly"], because you guys are in my family and I am in yours? I thought it would be nice if I was just looking, just standing somewhere looking on with a great smile.

LH: Thank you for the inspiration.

RF: Don't stop, don't look back. It's all yours. I love you.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

The Fugees "The Score?" That's one of the most over-hyped album ever! It was decent but I would not place it amongst one of the best. Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full" is a bonafied classic and I'd say a classic hip-hop LP that deserves a place in history is by far Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back."

Now that's a classic!

You people pay too much mind to the Roberta Flack cover, just 4get about it. If you paid attention to the lyrical structure and hear how the album vibes from a track to another you may get into it.

Like that interview stated, its like a movie, Fugees are the cating crew and screenplayers and there you have the movie=The Score.

Listen to "Cowboys" 4 example!

abierman said:

A Roller Skating Jam Called 'Saturdays' is my all time favourite Hip Hop track

namepeace said:

Digable Planets "Blowout Comb." HOT!

okaypimpn said:[quote]

Wouldn't the fugees be considered one of the greatest one hit wonders af all time!

One album and that's it!

That's why they can't be discussed as having one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time!

That was luck, a hail marry. Lauryn has skill, but she's not the only one on the album. Now you might say she's one of the greatest hip-hop artist of all time that we could debate, but not the score.