Songoftheday 11/9/21 - I wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth, who won't accept deception instead of what is truth...

 

 

"Everything Is Everything" - Lauryn Hill

from the album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 3 

Today's song comes from Lauryn Hill, whose groundbreaking debut album The Miseducation of... had won her five Grammy Awards, and spun off a #1 pop hit with "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and a top-40 follow-up in "Ex-Factor" in the spring of 1999. Another track from the album, "Nothing Even Matters" with neo-soul king D'Angelo, got airplay to climb to #25 on Billboard magazine's R&B singles chart and "bubbled under" the crossover pop Hot 100 at #105. That song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Duo/Group R&B Vocal Performance, which Brandy & Monica took home for their unstoppable frenemy-anthem "The Boy Is Mine". The third retail single from the record would be my favorite of the entire album, "Everything Is Everything". Written by Hill with Johari Newton, the song starts out like a self-empowerment mantra, before Hill breaks into rhymes where she boasts, but does it without the chest-pumping normally set for those types of records, but rather literate analogies of her prowess and difference from the rest. A young John Legend (then John Stephens) plays piano, and the string section gives this record a bit of gravitas. The music video, one of the best I remember from that year, has the neat special effect of making New York City into a 12 inch vinyl record which rotates on as she and all of the city sing and carry out their lives...

"Everything Is Everything" became Lauryn's third, and so far most recent, top-40 pop hit in America in July of 1999. The song rose to #14 on Billboard's R&B chart, and #18 on their Rhythmic radio format list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Belgium (#13F), New Zealand (#15), and the UK (#20). At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Everything Is Everything" was nominated for Best Music Video, which was won by nu-metal band Korn for their "Freak On A Leash". 

Another cut from the album, "To Zion" featuring guitar legend Carlos Santana, popped on to the R&B Singles chart at #77. Later that year, Hill contributed a "posthumous duet" with the late reggae icon Bob Marley, a take on his "Turn Your Lights Down Low", for the soundtrack to the movie The Best Man. The resulting record was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals at the 2001 Grammys, which went to B.B. King and Dr. John for "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby". Hill also wrote "All I Can Say" for Mary J. Blige, which went to #44 on the Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Song, which was won by "No Scrubs" from TLC.

However, during this time, the pressures and demands of fame had overcome Hill to the point where she retreated to herself and new new children, the third being born my the new millenium. In 2001, she appeared on her second stint on MTV Unplugged (the first was with the Fugees), and the resulting album, MTV Unplugged 2.0, was released, and so far it's her last album. With thirteen new songs in a raw acoustic form, radio ignored the set, but still it managed to go to #3 for a week on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. One of the tracks, "Mystery Of Iniquity", was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance in 2003, which was won by Missy Elliott for "Scream aka Itchin'' (which I have no recollection of either). It became the foundation of Kanye West's first top ten pop hit "All Falls Down" a year later. 

Columbia Records had spent millions on the recording tools for Hill's proposed second studio album that never came to pass. She reunited briefly with the Fugees in the mid-naughties, going on tour and making a single, but her constant lateness and alleged hostility toward everyone caused the endeavor to be shuttled before any album would come from it. The same started happening when she tries to tour on her own, to the point where her problems way overshadowed any good news about her. In 2006, she did appear on John Legend's Get Lifted album on "So High", which nabbed a Grammy nom for Best R&B Duo/Group Vocal Performance, which Beyonce & Stevie Wonder won for their cover of "So Amazing". In 2010, a leaked song from her supposed second album, "Repercussions", spent a month on Billboard's R&B chart, peaking at #83. But it all came to a head when hundreds of thousands of back taxes had Hill in court more than on the stage. Sent to prison for three months and liable for fines for the tax affair, besides contributing six performances to the Nina Simone biopic What Happened, Miss Simone, her career has been in limbo in a manner not seen since the hey days of the 1960s (Moby Grape, anyone?).

(10/10)

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Here's Lauryn appearing live on Top of the Pops in England performing the song...

Next up, at the Soul Train Awards in 1999...

and finally, in concert at Coachella (along with "The Sweetest Thing") in 2011...

Up tomorrow: Julio's son gets dancing.