- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1995
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Essential Cypress Hill · 1995
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- The Score (Expanded Edition) · 1996
- Blunted on Reality · 1994
Essential Albums
- When the New Jersey hip-hop trio Fugees regrouped to record their second album, they went underground—to the basement of Wyclef Jean's uncle, which was transformed into a recording studio and rechristened as the Booga Basement. The album that came out of that cellar, 1996's The Score, became one of the defining hip-hop albums of the '90s and launched Jean and his bandmates Lauryn Hill and Pras to stardom. The homespun hip-hop production on The Score gives it a vibe not unlike a lengthy listening session with friends, complete with running gags that bust up the room; its sample list includes hooks from classic soul sides and sound-system-worthy beats, as well as bits borrowed from Enya, Francisco Tárrega, and The Moody Blues. Its lyrics are pointed and political, while also being laced with wit: "How many mics do we rip on the daily?" Hill and Jean crow on "How Many Mics," the album's first proper song. (If you use the intricate, incisive rhymes the trio casts across The Score as a predictor, the answer is "a lot.") Fugees' take on the swaggering yet claustrophobic sonics of '90s East Coast hip-hop give The Score a charge that remains electric decades later, as the boastful "Fu-Gee-La" and the hazy title track prove. "Ready or Not," which flipped a late-'60s single by the Philly soul outfit The Delfonics into a rallying cry for Black music, and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," a boom-bap-propelled cover of the ode to musicians made famous by Roberta Flack in the early '70s, both defined late-'90s hip-hop and turned Hill into one of its biggest female stars. The former allowed her to show off her reference-packed, thoughtful MC skills, while the latter established her rich, confident alto as one of R&B's great voices. Hill's dual-threat presence, Jean's booming toasts, and Pras' knotty rhymes made Fugees a shining example of balance; The Score's sonic palette, which honored the New York area's then-burgeoning underground through precise use of massive hits and crate-dug gems, made the group's second album a key part of hip-hop's 1990s explosion.
Music Videos
- 2004
- 2004
- 2004
- 2004
- 2004
Artist Playlists
- The Fugees were one of the most commercially successful rap groups of the '90s.
Singles & EPs
Compilations
About Fugees
Though their heyday lasted for just five years and two albums, the Fugees were essentially a supergroup in reverse—a crew of crafty New Jersey MCs who, following their brief tenure together, would each go on to leave an indelible mark on the world of hip-hop. Debuting in the early ’90 as Tranzlator Crew, Lauryn Hill, her high-school friend Pras Michel, and his cousin Wyclef Jean eventually adopted the name Fugees, a shortened riff on “refugees” that nodded to the cousins’ shared Haitian-immigrant heritage. The trio’s simmering social conscience was on full display on 1994’s Blunted on Reality, which channeled the pugilistic spirit of East Coast contemporaries like Public Enemy and Onyx. However, the album’s acoustic-strummed outlier, “Vocab,” provided a glimpse of the Caribbean influences that would flourish on 1996’s The Score, whose Godfather-inspired cover art served as a Trojan Horse for a record that offered a soulful antidote to (and lyrical rebuke of) gangsta rap. With its heady fusion of boom-bap beats and chilled island vibes, The Score was the platform on which Hill emerged as the group’s undeniable star, alternating between swooning chorus hooks and take-no-prisoners rhymes atop an Enya sample on “Ready or Not,” and claiming the Roberta Flack classic “Killing Me Softly” as her own on a sitar-spun remake. A Grammy-winning, chart-topping, multi-plantium phenomenon, The Score was the Fugees’ first and only hit record before the group disbanded, with Hill releasing her feminist-rap masterpiece, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, in 1998, Pras dropping the pop-rap crossover smash “Ghetto Superstar” that same year, and the prolific Jean emerging as a figurehead for the globalized sound of rap in the 21st century. A brief reunion in 2005 yielded the atypically frantic single “Take It Easy,” but the Fugees will forever stand as a paragon of ‘90s rap at its most smooth and sophisticated.
- ORIGIN
- South Orange, NJ, United States
- FORMED
- 1992
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap