The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Columbia Records heard an early version of this album and told Lauryn Hill it was coffee table music. She took the tapes and walked out. What she was sitting on turned out to be one of the most decorated debut albums in the history of recorded music, winning five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and setting a record at the time for the most nominations for a female artist in a single night.

Hill recorded parts of it at Bob Marley's former home at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, where she had settled after becoming romantically involved with his son Rohan. The house functioned as a museum when the sessions weren't running, and the engineers had to configure the recording setup so that everything could be restored to its museum state between sessions. Hill had insisted on complete creative control over the project despite pressure from the label to bring in outside producers, including early discussions with RZA of Wu-Tang Clan. She arranged and produced the whole thing herself, working across studios in New York, Miami, and Jamaica over nine months. On the day she began recording she ordered every instrument she had ever fallen in love with into the studio. Harps, strings, timpani drums, organs, clarinets. She wanted the human element to stay in.

A nineteen-year-old college student named John Legend drove a friend to Hill's house one afternoon, got invited inside, and ended up playing piano on "Everything Is Everything." The classroom sequences woven through the album were recorded with an eighth-grade teacher named Ras Baraka, who is now the mayor of Newark. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and has never stopped influencing the conversation about what a debut album can be.