Word: albums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...best tracks, she pledges to remember her roots: "Way before the record deal/ The streets that nurtured Lauryn Hill/ Made sure that I'd never go too far." Hill isn't out to create bourgeois hip-hop lite; she constantly strives to connect her message to the street. The album veers from rapping to singing, from hip-hop to neosoul, from African-American argot to Jamaican patois. Part of the CD was recorded in Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, where reggae rebel Bob Marley recorded...
...album's central topic is love. Not the sappy sop of pop ditties, but a tough, confessional examination of relationships such as cultural critic Bell Hooks describes in her book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist/Thinking Black: "Love can be and is an important source of empowerment...to face the ways in which we dominate and are dominated... To change our actions, we need a mediating force to sustain us." Hill's songs try to be that mediating force. On Ex-Factor, she examines her own attraction to psychologically hurtful men. "Who I have to be/ To get some reciprocity?" she pleads...
...City's Herald Square, says Hill's CD is racking up heavy sales: "The people who are buying it are all ages, all backgrounds...but I've noticed a lot of adult, together women buying this CD. Lauryn Hill is their peer, and so they want to buy her album...
Right now she's making her chief impact with her music. Hill wrote and produced every song on her CD (except for two standards she covers). Her album also uses live instruments, giving it a fresh, personal feel. "People like Lauryn and Wyclef and Missy [Elliot] are making creative albums," says Funk Master Flex, a D.J. for New York City's Hot 97 radio station, whose own CD, The Mix Tape Volume III, is a Top 10 hit. "They're sending a signal to other artists: check yourselves, and step up your game...
...third album from the hip-hop-tinged metal band is silly, swaggering and obnoxious--and those are its virtues. Korn's music isn't subtle: the volume on each song, just as in This Is Spinal Tap, is usually turned up to 11, and too many of the songs are simply numbing sonic assaults. But a few tracks grind along successfully, most notably Children of the Korn, in which rapper Ice Cube makes an engaging appearance. And the band's goofy audacity and Zeitgeist-savvy sense of humor are, at points, captivating. It's hard to completely dislike...