Who Killed Hip-Hop?

In 2009, Joe Budden released a song in three parts titled Who Killed Hip-Hop?  In the song he mentioned a number of culprits such as T-Pain with auto-tune, Master P with the ugly album covers or when we first heard Mims.  I’m not sure of what the reason is, but I’ve decided to start a series where every now and then, I’ll focus on someone or something that killed hip-hop.  Sometimes I’ll be serious and sometimes I’ll say it in jest, but you know the saying, “Many a true word is spoken in jest”.  So, without further ado, the first person to ruin hip-hop is:

Rohan Marley

Obtained from http://cdn.urbanislandz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/rohan-marley-and-lauryn-hill-pic.jpg

In the summer of 1996, Rohan Marley met a young woman by the name of Lauryn Hill.  Lauryn was the member of a hip-hop group named the Fugees who had released their second album, The Score in February of 1996 (the same day as 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me coincidentally).  The album was a commercial success selling 6 million albums and winning a Grammy for Rap Album of the Year.  Lauryn Hill was the obvious star of the group.  She could rap and sing and she gained respect from hip-hop fans for her lyrical prowess.  Lauryn Hill was not only respected as a female lyricist, but as a lyricist period regardless of gender and it appeared she was destined for greatness.  Young Rohan and Lauryn would fall in love and exchange love faces and make a baby whose name would be Zion.

In 1998, Lauryn would release her critically acclaimed solo debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.  The album would go on to sell 18 millions worldwide and she won 5 Grammy Awards including Album of the Year.  Although she sung on a majority of the album, many still felt that she was a hip-hop artist.  This album was supposed to be the beginning of Lauryn’s reign.  She was poised to not only be the best female emcee of all-time, but one of the greatest emcees of all-time regardless of gender, but then…life would strike.

Now, I’m not going to act like an expert on what happened with Lauryn after the release of her first album.  There’ll be links at the end of this blog to her Wikipedia page and you’re welcome to read those for further insight.  All I know is that Lauryn was apparently madly in love with Rohan Marley and they started making more kids and by 2001 she was pregnant with her third child and performed a taping for MTV Unplugged that was later released in 2002.  I saw this Unplugged performance and I have no idea what I was watching.  It was like watching the beginnings of a breakdown.  She didn’t perform any of her previous songs.  It was a performance of only new material and she was playing the guitar and it was obvious that she still needed to take lessons.  I felt like I was watching a car accident and I couldn’t turn away from it.

Since her Unplugged appearance, Lauryn has been out of the public spotlight for most of the past decade.  She’s popped up a few times.  There was the short-lived Fugees reunion that resulted in an appearance in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, the appearances in court for tax evasion and I believe she’s shown up for a few concerts such as some tour dates for the Rock the Bells series a few years ago.  Besides that, Lauryn has been absent from public view and for me, the only reason I can come up with is that she fell in love and decided to start a family. 

Obtained from http://marchingcentral.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/lauryn.jpg?w=585

I know it’s selfish of me to be mad at Lauryn Hill for wanting to start a family.  She doesn’t owe a thing to anybody including me, but she could’ve been one of the best.  Lauryn could have paved the way for female emcees to be respected as lyricists.  Instead, we got the likes of Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and Trina to be the mainstream representatives of female emcees in hip-hop.  I can’t help but feel that if Lauryn hadn’t feel in love with Rohan and had reached her full potential, she could’ve have changed the way that female emcees are viewed.  Female emcees such as Rah Digga, Bahamadia or Jean Grae might’ve gotten more respect from the masses because Lauryn Hill would’ve paved the way for fans to respect females as lyricists. 

So that’s why I blame Rohan Marley for killing hip-hop.  He could’ve got with any other woman and made her fall in love and go crazy.  Why did he have to choose Lauryn Hill?  What did hip-hop ever do to him that he had to make our shining star go crazy?  Why Rohan?  Why?