In the summer of 1996, two things were inescapable: The Fugees’ take on ‘Killing Me Softly’ from their second album ‘The Score’, and a belief that the English national team could win a major tournament. While the latter belief has vanished and not troubled the population since, the impact of ‘The Score’ remains with us to this day.
‘The Score’ is very much an album that has to be put in context to understand why it left such a mark not just on hip-hop but on popular music as a whole. By the time of its release in early 1996, hip-hop had descended into an ugly feud polarised between East and West coast, personified by the escalating hatred thrown back and forth from Biggie Smalls to Tupac Shakur. The ground-breaking hip-hop of albums by the likes of De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest had been replaced by all together darker themes. The scene was collapsing in on itself whilst also trying to resist the demonisation it faced from horrified parents and politicians. It needed something from the middle ground, not polluted by the East/West coast rap wars to lead it into new territory, and that album was ‘The Score’.
Recorded in five months in 1995 in Wyclef Jean’s uncle’s basement, otherwise known as the Booga Basement, ‘The Score’ was an album showing a different version of the inner city experience across an exceptionally unified narrative. Lauryn Hill, who emerged from the album as one of the great female performers of the modern era, said: “It’s an audio film. It’s almost like a hip-hop version of ‘Tommy’ like what The Who did for rock music.”
Along with this appreciation for grandiose rock story-telling, Hill, Jean and Pras Michel drew influence from far and wide including Bob Marley, Santana, vintage soul and world music, and came out with an album that sounded unlike anything else at the time. This isn’t to say that every song on ‘The Score’ is a stone cold classic, but at its best this is an album that laid down templates.
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‘Fu-Gee-La’ is one of the great hip-hop tracks of all time, a pulsating piece of ensemble rapping, ‘Ready Or Not’ remains as spine-tingling and shadowy as it ever did, and then of course there are the covers, ‘Killing Me Softly’ and ‘No Woman, No Cry’, which stand up to and reinvent the originals – no mean feat to be sure. Of course, when a track as graceful and sophisticated as ‘How Many Mics’ is dropped at the very beginning of an album it is perhaps safe to assume that what will follow will be rather special.
By the end of the 1996 Tupac was dead, Biggie was soon to follow and The Fugees were the biggest stars on planet pop thanks to ‘The Score’. They themselves were soon to implode in acrimony, and while Lauryn Hill was to record an album to arguably surpass ‘The Score’ with ‘The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill’ before descending into deep personal problems, they would never hit such heights again. However, what they had done with ‘The Score’ was show hip-hop that there was a way out of the mire it had led itself into. Hip-hop could have died with Tupac and Biggie, but ‘The Score’ was in fact its rebirth.
Words by Karl O’Keeffe
The Fugees – ‘The Score’
Producers: The Fugees, Jerry Duplessis, Salaam Remi, John Forté, Shawn King, Diamond D
Musicians: Wyclef Jean – vocals, guitar, Lauryn Hill – vocals, arranger, Pras Michel – vocals, Sly Dunbar – drums, Robbie Shakespeare – bass, DJ Red Alert/Omega/Pacewon/Rah Digga/Akon – vocals
Tracklist
1. ‘Red Intro’
2. ‘How Many Mics’
3. ‘Ready Or Not’
4. ‘Zealots’
5. ‘The Beast’
6. ‘Fu-gee-la’
7. ‘Family Business’
8. ‘Killing Me Softly’
9. ‘The Score’
10. ‘The Mask’
11. ‘Cowboys’
12. ‘No Woman, No Cry’
13. ‘Manifest/Outro’
14. ‘Fu-gee-la (Refugee Camp Remix)’
15. ‘Fu-gee-la (Sly And Robbie Remix)’
16. ‘Mista Mista’
17. ‘Fu-gee-la (Refugee Camp Global Remix)’
1996: In the news
– The deep blue computer beats chess champion Gary Kasparov
– Sixteen children killed in Dunblane massacre
– IRA bomb in Manchester injures over two hundred
– Oasis play Knebworth
– Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald dies
1996: The albums
Underworld – ‘Second toughest in the infants’
Shed Seven – ‘A maximum high’
Rage Against The Machine – ‘Evil Empire’
Beck – ‘Odelay’
The Lemonheads – ‘Car button cloth’
