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Ready or not, here she comes: Lauryn Hill’s 20 best songs – ranked!
Ahead of her 50th birthday this month, we rate the best tracks of the multi-hyphenate talent who, with Fugees and as a solo artist, blended soul, hip-hop and reggae with raw emotion and charisma
Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images Often overlooked among The Score’s plethora of hit singles, Zealots works on every level: its use of a sample from the Flamingos’ doo-wop version of I Only Have Eyes For You is inspired, every verse is on point, and the moment Hill announces her arrival with a bold burst of singing is a thing of swaggering magnificence. Hill’s MTV Unplugged album met with a mixed response on release, but its reputation has grown with time, particularly the nine-minute confessional I Gotta Find Peace of Mind: it’s been sampled by A$AP Rocky, claimed as a pivotal influence by Doechii and Jorja Smith and even analysed by theologians. Photograph: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP A guest appearance that has a genuinely transformative effect: between Hill’s vocal, a snappy rap and a remix that strips the original – from 1977’s Exodus – of all its instrumentation and shifts the rhythm towards hip-hop, it feels infinitely more like her work than that of Bob Marley.
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