The girl had a point, though. Hill is now basking in the glow of hip-hop superstardom. Her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill—a collection of edgy rap and mellifluous R&B songs that she wrote and produced—has sold 5 million copies since its August release. And, at the Grammys in February, she was the event's undisputed darling, picking up five trophies, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist. "Everything I've really wanted to do," says Hill, 23, "I've been able to do."
High on the list is parenthood. A mother of two—son Zion, 1, and daughter Selah Louise, 5 months—Hill insists on being a hands-on mom with the help of a nanny on the road. Last year, when she was pregnant with Selah, she conducted business as usual, working on her album as well as producing a track on Whitney Houston's latest album, with Zion in tow. "I didn't want to shut down completely because I was pregnant," says Hill, who is engaged to Rohan Marley, 26, the children's father and the son of the late reggae icon Bob Marley. "And I get this really strange pregnancy energy. Other people want to clean the house. I want to make beats and discuss tour plans."
Still, home is where Hill's heart is. She lives in South Orange with Marley and the kids in the same three-story house where she grew up. Her mother and father, Mai, a computer consultant, live nearby in a five-bedroom brick house that Hill bought for them in 1997. She also bought homes for her brother Malaney, 26, and her maternal grandmother. "Maybe someday soon, Ro and I will buy a home for ourselves," says Hill. "But I want to be in the same town."
That's where Hill began her love affair with music, singing in front of the bathroom mirror when she was a toddler. At age 8, she raided her mother's collection of vintage R&B records and discovered the likes of Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. "I grew up trying to be her," says Hill of Franklin, for whom she wrote and produced the 1998 hit single "A Rose Is Still a Rose."
But it was Whitney Houston whom Lauryn emulated doing karaoke at Six Flags Great Adventure park in Jackson, N.J. "That was my first studio," she says. "I would sing these songs, and they would influence me to write songs way too mature for a kid, like 'Baby, touch me and feel me.' My mother was like, 'Excuse me, what was that?' She had to censor the lyrics."
" Hill's talents flourished anyway, and her mother was soon chauffeuring her to acting auditions in Manhattan. At age 12, Hill made it onto It's Showtime at the Apollo's Amateur Night and got her first standing ovation after singing Smokey Robinson's "Who's Lovin' You." That year she formed the Fugees, a rap trio, with her Columbia High School classmate Prakazrel "Pras" Michel and his cousin Wyclef Jean.
By the time she graduated, in 1993, she was juggling track and cheerleading with acting roles on the daytime soap As the World Turns and in the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. "She would take a test, try out for a movie or a play, pass the test and get straight As in school," says her friend Miriam Farrakhan, 24, who now works as Hill's personal assistant. "I was like, 'How is this girl doing this?' "
Accepted by six colleges, Hill enrolled at New York City's Columbia University, where she studied history for a year before leaving to concentrate on her career with the Fugees, who had been signed by RuffHouse Records in 1993. Although their debut album, 1994's Blunted on Reality, flopped, the trio's 1996 effort The Score went on to sell 17 million copies worldwide, paving the way for Hill's solo success.
With the Fugees now on hiatus and her three-month tour of the United States and Japan just wrapped, Hill won't remain idle. She will be preparing for a European tour that begins in May, reading movie scripts and "running after children." It's that last endeavor, she says, that gives her pause. "I can't believe I said 'children.' "
Jeremy Helligar
Susan Houriet in New York City
- Contributors:
- Susan Houriet.
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