The rest of the album just isn't at that level. This song features an Enya sample recently re-used, and almost ruined, by Mario Whinings. Fu-Gee-La is perhaps the best distillation of the Fugees sound, and Ready Or Not is simply one of the greatest hip-hop singles of all time. No Woman, No Cry, and Killing Me Softly are both accomplished covers of amazing songs, and I feel both stand up to the originals, by virtue of the guitars on the former and Lauryn Hill's fanastic singing voice on the latter.
#FUGEES THE SCORE ANALOG FULL#
The fact that Rolling Stone puts Lauryn Hill's solo debut a full 165 places higher on their Top 500 Albums Of All Time list should tell you that.Īs I mentioned in my review of Wyclef Jean's The Ecleftic yesterday, the singles from this album are all stone-cold classics. That's not to say it's a bad album, it's just that if we were to look exclusively at the quality of the music and the consistency of the album, this album is not the classic many people view it as. The impact it had dwarves the quality of the album. Timing was undoubtedly on The Fugee's side, as you'll realise when you listen to the album. In November of that year, following 2Pac's death and the horrid realisation that this feud had gone WAY too far, The Fugees released No Woman No Cry - a cover of a song by music's second most recognisable symbol of peace, Bob Marley. Killing Me Softly - the album's massive hit - wasn't released until June. However, it took a while to sow it's seeds. The album was first released in February of 1996. Many people - including all those indie kinds brought into hip-hop by De La Soul - thought the genre was degenerating, and might well be in danger of disappearing altogether under the weight of its own ego. Not to mention, he's not the only person who was welcome of the change.
Dre are the only other artists I can think of who have managed this), and he's still embracing this side of the genre on the hit's he still having. You can discard Will Smith's opinion based on your opinions of him, but the fact remains that he's one of only a handful of rap artists to have hit in three consecutive decades, not including remixes (LL Cool J and Dr. In 1996 indeed, ever since TuPac got out of jail and declared war on Biggy albums like De La Soul's 3 Feet High & Rising and Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory seemed light years away. Why? Because the scene became too dominated by violence and hatred. There were early hits like 'Parent's Just Don't Understand' and 'Boom, Shake The Room', then he gave up. However, there was a large period of time when Will Smith withdrew himself from the rap industry. Summertime is as good an example as any of this side of hip-hop. As much of a joke as many people see him as, Will Smith was part of hip-hop chill-out-and-party tradition when dueting with DJ Jazzy Jeff under the Fresh Prince alias. Later, NWA, Public Enemy, and Wu-Tang Clan dropped bombs on the scene, and introduced heavier music and heavier themes, and were accused of glorifying violence, but they didn't go around shooting each other (well, rarely, anyway). Grandmaster Flash gave us a social conscience in The Message and White Line (Don't Do It), and that was about as heavy as hip-hop got.
Sugarhill Gang gave us Rapper's Delight, the party classic.
Dre, and Warren G, or you liked Puff Daddy, Lil' Kim, and Mobb Deep. It filtered down through the other rappers at the time, too. There was no middle ground, and while people might have respected the skills of both coast's most talented and famous rappers, everybody had a favourite. 2Pac and Notorious BIG were engulfed in a massive feud that cast a shadow over the whole genre, and polarized it - suddenly, you were either West, or East. #477 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums Of All Time.