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1. #FUGEES THE SCORE HOW TO REMAIN RESILIENT#
2. #FUGEES THE SCORE SERIES FROM THE#

Fugees The Score Series From The

The 1996 Rap Yearbook, a recurring series from The Ringer , will explore the landmark releases and moments from a quarter-century ago that redefined how we think of the genre. A seven-date North American run will kicks November 2nd at the United Center in Chicago and wrap November 28th at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C before making stops in L.A., Atlanta, No year in hip-hop history sticks out quite like 1996: It marked the height of the East Coast–West Coast feud, the debut of several artists who would rule the next few decades, and the last moment before battle lines between “mainstream” and “underground” were fully drawn. In a surprise announcement, The Fugees have announced an international tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their 1996 classic, The Score.

One notable thing about that track and the rest of their seminal second LP, The Score, was that it sounded old. From the opening notes of that song, which would become the anthem of the rest of my youth, I was convinced: This group is about to release classic art. It reminded me immediately of the journey that my own family had taken, having fled a dictatorship in Uganda in the 1970s to resettle in England. It is not often that you encounter music that you know will change the world, but when I first heard “Fu-Gee-La” by the Fugees—sitting in my bedroom at an English boarding school, a 16-year-old listening to late-night radio—I knew what was coming. All released albums that year and those particular albums rank among the best of all time and sure enough the Fugees were right there cementing The Score as one also.It’s the natural law that the refugees bring.”The Fugees - The Score (1996) 01.

Fugees The Score How To Remain Resilient

Such genius, I believed, could emerge only from a place of pain.One of my best friends at school didn’t know what was coming, maybe because the key theme at the heart of The Score—how to remain resilient, even as you are being violently displaced—was not a feature of his family’s history. This was the music, I thought, of people who had either seen or sustained major trauma. Even though the album contains several moments of lightness and outright hilarity, it had the overall air of a dignified and mournful retreat. This album sounded Old Testament old, as if it could have been the soundtrack for the Jews when they left Egypt, led by Moses and pursued by a vengeful Pharaoh.

It didn’t shy away from unsparing depictions of racism, violent crime, and extreme poverty, each of which was far from anything he or his family had experienced. This Fugees record, he said, was actually very dark. It was only after a few days of listening to the rest of the record that my friend came down the corridor and into my room, somewhat concerned. When my friend listened to the Fugees, he was first captured by the irresistible grooves of “Ready or Not” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” That’s not to say I was any smarter than my friend the Fugees had crafted a record from their studio in New Jersey that spoke to people from vastly different backgrounds. When I listened to Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras, I heard people who were talking about the often melancholic road to freedom.

As my friend retreated to his bedroom to change, the staff member offered her verdict on the civil rights activist. When I was 12, I was at a fairly conservative school where a Black friend was ordered to remove his Malcolm X T-shirt by a member of the staff. The Score is atmospheric, and that is why it mattered so much when it came out 25 years ago and still does today.The Score matters because there are places where the blatant political statement, extremely effective as it is, cannot go. Then there is the atmospheric, where the work creates an environment so beguiling that, at first, you don’t understand that you are being summoned to join some kind of revolution. If we are looking at the blatant statement, then we might consider something like Public Enemy, with their 1990 record “Fear of a Black Planet”—a work whose cry for liberation screamed from every verse, every visual.

That the Fugees managed to fight their way through that toxic fog, and to show the world that their style of hip-hop was commercially viable—it sold 22 million copies worldwide—is an understated part of their legacy.At the core of the Fugees’ resistance was their assertion that, contrary to most current and historical narratives, it was cool to be a refugee. So much of that period featured feuds that were aggressively stoked by outsiders, especially by media outlets seeking controversy: It is poignant to remember that, even at the height of the supposed Cold War between the East Coast and the West Coast, rappers from both of those areas hung out with each other—Pras, a friend of Tupac’s, was in touch with him shortly before the rapper was murdered. The Fugees disguised resistance as art, the same way that enslaved Africans once hid martial arts from their colonial masters by pretending that they were a dance.They needed this disguise all the more, particularly because—as historian and professor Tricia Rose has observed—this was an era when major radio stations and media outlets were aggressively promoting hip-hop that celebrated materialism, which generally made it harder for music with the content of The Score to cut through. However, if she had seen a T-shirt bearing the faces of the Fugees, she might not even have looked twice, even though their underlying message was just as radical as so many of Malcolm X’s speeches.

In other words, the Fugees were not “good immigrants.” Their work was a blend of heavenly melody and lethal wit. These were not the type of refugees who would arrive in a new country and live quietly and fearfully in their buildings, hoping that no one paid them too much attention. “I, refugee from Guantanamo Bay / Dance around the border, like I’m Cassius Clay,” raps Pras on “Ready or Not.” And this album did not portray images of gentle souls, either. In the most infamous case, a British tabloid referred to refugees as “cockroaches”—a description which drew a horrified rebuke from the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, who compared it to language used by the Nazis.The Score recast these people, the most disposable of all humans, as mythical figures.

Decades before the ubiquity of the MC who could also croon, she could channel the greatness of Nina Simone and Rakim in the same set. Hill’s masterful singing sent the Fugees into the stratosphere, allowing her group to soar beyond the reaches of rival rap crews who could not hit the same notes as she could. And what skills they had their lyrics blessed with the deceptive simplicity of Aesop’s Fables, and Lauryn’s flow so elegant that it was seemingly engineered by Mercedes-Benz.