Confessions of a Fanboy

I fell in love with Lauryn Hill in 1996 when I was a high school senior and I heard her cover (with the Fugees) of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly." Her voice was beautiful, the beat was solid, and the song had this sense of weight to it--some meaning that, whether or not I completely understood it or related to it and whether or not Lauryn or her co-Fugees had anything to do with the lyrics, made the song stick in my head and made me feel all tingly inside. Not long after that, the rapper Nas released "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" with L-Boogie singing the hook, and I was hooked.

I didn't buy the Fugees' album because it had explicit lyrics and I was even more opposed to listening to swearing in music then than I am now and I'd never heard of edited albums, but my freshman year in college I bought Wyclef Jean's The Carnival, which featured Lauryn on several songs. It's a fantastic album throughout, but for some reason when Lauryn's deep, earthy voice shows up toward the end of "Guantanamera," those tingles come back. Whether she's singing or rapping, her voice manages to exude this sense of power and wisdom that I really dig.

I was serving as a Mormon missionary when Lauryn's solo album dropped (and was apparently pretty darn successful in the States, winning several Grammys), and technically missionaries don't listen to popular music, but a fellow missionary who was even more in love with Lauryn than I was bought the CD and I snuck a listen or two. I didn't buy it when I got home because that same fellow missionary ended up being my roommate so I could listen to his, and soon after that I started dating Foxy J, who had her own copy of Miseducation. I won't say the prospect of adding the album to my collection through marriage was the only reason I proposed to Foxy, but I do remember feeling a whole new kind of tingles when I put in a tape of love songs she had made for me and the first one was L-Boogie's cover of Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You."

Having been in Spain and unaware of popular culture for a couple years, I was entirely unaware that Lauryn had disappeared from the spotlight until she made her comeback (sort of) with 2002's MTV Unplugged 2.0. I bought the Unplugged album as soon as I heard of it and was introduced to a new Lauryn Hill. A lot of fans of her earlier work complain that the Unplugged Lauryn, devoid of hip-hop beats and backup vocals or band, is monotonous and annoying. Her voice is scratchy, worn from a previous performance. She's not a great guitar player. And, worst of all, she seems to have gone crazy between '98 and '02. Her lyrics are more obscure than ever, preaching in complex metaphors about religious and social repression. A lot of fans were disappointed.

I'm still in love with her. I'm not crazy about her guitar-playing skills, and her voice, though still beautiful, manages to miss notes enough even to bother me (I don't think I'm tone-deaf, but I'm definitely tone-ignorant), but I love her words. Maybe it's that Ms. Hill's disillusionment with religious and social structures coincides more or less with mine. Maybe it's that I'm just as crazy as she is. Maybe I refuse to allow my goddess to fall from her pedestal. But when I listen to "I Get Out," even after hearing the song well over two or three hundred times, those tingles still creep up right around the first time she sings in the chorus, "Father free me from this bondage / Knowing my condition / Is the reason I must change." As you know if you've read my essay "Getting Out," the song is sort of my personal anthem. You're probably tired of hearing about it.

But I don't get tired. When Lauryn started doing concerts again last year, I spent hours downloading and listening to fuzzy, echo-y recordings of her singing the same songs I already own. When her first studio release in years, "The Passion," came out on one of the many soundtracks to Mel Gibson's religious blockbuster, I downloaded it and listened over and over even though it's not that great a song. When I read that she had reunited with fellow Fugees Wyclef and Pras for the first time in eight years for a surprise appearance at Dave Chappelle's Block Party, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities of a new Fugees album for days (okay, months. Okay, I still think about it all the time). Every time I hear a vague rumor about a supposed release date for Ms. Hill's long-awaited follow-up studio album, my heart starts beating faster. A few weeks ago John Legend released a remix of "So High" with Lauryn singing and rapping on it--it's better than "The Passion" but still not L's best--and I secretly listen to the song several times a day (usually when Foxy's not home, so as not to annoy her).

And I just spent nearly an hour writing this post (including the time looking for the perfect picture; I'm still not satisfied with the one I found).

Yes, I am obsessive. Yes, it's probably unhealthy. No, I don't want to change.