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Lauryn Hill plotting comeback

By | Published on Tuesday 29 June 2010

Lauryn Hill says she is ready to launch a comeback. The former Fugee, who enjoyed much commercial and critical success with her 1998 album ‘The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill’, has been generally out of the spotlight for over a decade now. Occasional reappearances as a solo artist, and alongside her former Fugee bandmates, often resulted in erratic behaviour, which led many, including the other Fugees, to believe Hill was in bad place mentally.

In a new interview with National Public Radio, Hill admits to having suffered emotional set backs after enjoying all that success in the late nineties, though adds that her self-enforced exile from planet pop for much of the last decade was partly so she could bring up her five children. On the former issue, Hill said: “The support system that I needed [back then] was not necessarily in place. There were things about myself, personal growth things, that I had to go through in order to feel like it was worth it”.

Hill suggests that her emotional stresses were mainly a result of her success in the pop world, and in part criticises the pop industry for not being able to support its stars if and when they struggle to cope mentally with their fame. She continues: “Oftentimes, the [music industry] machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds, [to deal with issues] that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society… And it’s important that people be given the time that they need to go through [those issues], to grow”.

But Hill stressed that there were various reasons for her withdrawal from the music world, including family commitments. She continued: “I don’t know if you know this, but I have five children. The youngest is two now, so she’s old enough that I can leave her for a period of time and know she’s going to be okay”. Looking forward, the former Fugee concluded: “I’m starting to get excited again. Believe it or not, I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first… And I think that can be infectious”.



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