Biggie And Lauryn Could Have Saved Rap Music
A lot of the fantastic shit you’re about to read never happened, and that sucks. When Biggie was murdered on March 9, 1997, an unfortunate series of events was set off that has reached a pretty sad conclusion. In the aftermath of Big’s demise and Puffy’s uncomfortable assumption of the “Notorious” throne, Jay Z and Nas fought over who’d fill the King of New York’s shoes, neither of them true comparisons to Biggie Smalls. Without a true leader, no chain of command was set, and hip-hop’s birthplace fell from the height of rap music to its depths with immense repercussions.
Unlike the streamlined organization that was Bad Boy in 1996, neither Nas’ Firm or Bravehearts, nor Jay Z’s Roc-a-fella or a 1998-era Bad Boy could succeed without a conceptual framework, and New York-based associates The Lox, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Lil Kim, Dipset, Foxy Brown, and AZ all got lost in the shuffle. Like a ship without a rudder, New York rap lost itself, and we’re now in a place where, for all intents and purposes, Atlanta, Georgia is the new center of the rap industry.
Had Biggie lived to simply record just one song with Lauryn Hill, it’s possible that everything would have changed, and while significant, Atlanta would be sharing the rap throne with New York. Moreover, Puffy likely wouldn’t have become an artist and Jay Z might not have made a detour as a rapper before becoming a business mogul. Female emcees influenced by an even more transcendent pop star in Lauryn Hill would be more inclined to mirror her understated glamour — as compared to Kim and Foxy — instead of spending their entire careers playing a game of “titties versus ass,” akin to what Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea are doing at present. Can you imagine it?
The Introduction — June, 1998
The best time for this scenario to have occurred would have been in June 1998. The date is not arbitrary. Lauryn’s first duet as a solo artist with an emcee was famously with Nas for 1996's Top 100 Pop and Top 20 R&B and Rap Billboard chart single “If I Ruled The World.” While yes, the song was nominated for a Grammy for best Solo Rap Performance, it was merely a breakout situation for both artists. Insofar as a follow up, pairing the two together again could have yielded greater success, but Lauryn likely would have been the lead given Lauryn’s breakout success with Fugees single “Killing Me Softly” and word of her forthcoming 1998 debut solo album.
Female solo R&B leads as vocalists in that era were still the stuff of “sweet meets salty” Mariah Carey duets and not the “sweet and salty meets salty” work that would be lyrical assassin and sweet vocalist Hill melding with another equally razor sharp emcee. Lauryn carrying a song with sixteen bars from Nas tossed in might not seem amazing to a music fan in 2014, but two decades ago, it wasn’t exactly commonplace.
Why Should Biggie and Lauryn Have Happened?
Let’s presume that in June, 1998, Biggie had lived to tell the tale of his (what would’ve been) attempted shooting in March of 1997. Then fresh from what were enormous back-to-back album successes, he could have been considered the newest of rap-turned-mainstream pop stars. Life After Death was a (then rare for rap) Billboard Hot 200 Album chart number 0ne, and Puff Daddy and the Family’s No Way Out (which is for all intents and purposes a Biggie album) was another number one on the Billboard charts. As well, he would have likely had three number one Billboard singles between those two albums (“Hypnotize,” “Mo Money, Mo Problems” and “Sky’s The Limit” — which posthumously released peaked at twenty-six).
Biggie recording with Lauryn would have been the best move given that Lauryn had already recorded with a rapper before to some Billboard success. As well, had Lauryn considered this route, the Notorious B.I.G. was frankly the only artist with enough pull at the time in pop-rap that could’ve pulled a mainstream audience.
In June 1998, Lauryn Hill was putting the finishing touches on her August-released debut album, The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill, at Kingston, Jamaica’s legendary and Bob Marley-linked Tuff Gong Studios. The album was an incendiary firebrand of a recording, neo-soul tinged feminism standing up with a fist-raised in an industry-as-party overcrowded with dudes, blunts, and video vixens. The album is significant because it’s a rap album, with definite R&B singles, and the lone male voice on the album being that of D’Angelo for the ballad, “Nothing Even Matters.” The level of faith placed in a woman-as-rapper/artist on this album is still groundbreaking, even fifteen years later. It’s rap’s version of Aretha Franklin’s 1967 solo album I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You in that it’s honest, political, tough and yet, wholly female in perspective. However, imagine if, say, Biggie Smalls were in the unique and ironic position of joining another legendary male artist in being the cherry on top of the dessert-like listen that The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill truly is.
Bob Marley Would’ve Solved Everything
Though released in 1999, Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sessions included a cover/duet with Bob Marley called “Turn Your Lights Down Low.” It’s a note-perfect pop/soul torch song, between Lauryn and Bob sharing vocal duties and Lauryn dropping some incredibly beautiful bars at the end of the track. When “Turn Your Lights Down Low” was released in 1999, I was still in college and working as a college radio DJ at Providence College’s WDOM, 91.3 FM. Of course, 1999 also marked the release of Born Again, the Notorious B.I.G.’s album of posthumous productions culled together using previously unreleased vocals. As a fan of both Lauryn and Big, it occurred to me, even then, that a HUGE opportunity was missed to create magic on “Turn Your Lights Down Low;” Lauryn, Biggie and Bob on the same track just sounded like a recipe for a chart-topping single. However, for the heartbroken A&R man inside of me, it was never meant to be.
But, let’s imagine if something else had happened. Let’s imagine it being June of 1998, and a possibly slimmed down Biggie (hey, a near murder does things to a man!) at the height of pop success hopped on a plane with Puffy and say, producer extraordinaire Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie and headed to Jamaica to smoke some weed, drink some rum, work in the studio with Lauryn and come out with a classic.
The point can be made that the Notorious B.I.G. didn’t necessarily need Lauryn Hill. Biggie never released a pure duet as a single, and thus was different from Nas (who recorded with Lauryn) or the Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man (who recorded a cover of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1968 hit “You’re All I Need” with Mary J. Blige in 1995 and won a Grammy for best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group). However, in 1998 neither Biggie nor Lauryn would have been a Grammy winner, and the idea of pairing Big, Lauryn and Bob would have more than likely yielded the most incredible of musical honors. Biggie absolutely needed Lauryn, and Lauryn absolutely needed Biggie.
One could only imagine a recording session involving Puffy, D-Dot, Lauryn, the Marley family, and even say, junior songwriters on the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album like John Legend all being in the same place at the same time. It’s believable that sample-loving Puffy would have burst into tears and started dancing in the studio realizing that sampling Bob Marley was a possibility, and D-Dot would have been working with Julian Marley on re-arranging the track in order to fit the work likely being done in the song’s first sixteen bars by Biggie. As for artists Smalls and Hill, the lyric writing session would have been one of those moments that music fans lust over, like being in the room at Memphis’ Sun Studios in 1956 when Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash recorded the Million Dollar Quartet sessions. These two were lyricists at the height of their creativity at this point, writing lovelorn lyrics for a song aimed at pop supremacy. Pressure? Probably not. Joy? Absolutely.
The Hill/Smalls/Marley collaboration on “Turn Your Lights Down Low” could have easily replaced the cover of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” from the Conspiracy Theory film soundtrack that served as the bonus song on the album. The Valli cover was used as an album lead-in single in the summer of 1998, with “Lost Ones” hitting the airwaves at summer’s end as the official Miseduction lead single. There’re very few albums that have singles that are used as the artist’s re-introduction that hit number one. Had this hypothetical Bob Marley cover song replaced the Conspiracy Theory track, the incredible success of Lauryn Hill’s debut album could’ve ended up, well, more incredible.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sold 423,000 copies in its first week and over eight million copies in fiftenn years. It’s won a Grammy for Album of the Year and it’s one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time with three top 10 singles globally (“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You,” “Doo Wop,” and “Ex-Factor”). However, it’s 2014, and due to mismanagement, poor planning, and a myriad of unfortunate social and personal issues, Lauryn Hill is a shell of who she once was as an artist, and not just rap, but all of pop may be the worse for it. In fact, let’s take it one step further and think about what could’ve been had Lauryn’s Bad Boy affiliation achieved pop success and if Biggie still lived and recorded this Bob Marley cover song.
The Aftermath — Part One
History shows that the issue of Biggie and Lauryn recording “Turn Your Lights Down Low” and having it replace “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” could be one of urban pop music’s greatest first-world problems of all time.
Foremost, for being a single with minimal street buzz, the Frankie Valli cover did exactly what it was supposed to do for suburban listeners. On an album featuring a number of tremendous soul performances, the aforementioned then thirty-one-year old cover song was nominated for (but did not win) a Grammy for Best Female Pop Performance in 1998.
Of course, there’s also the issue of the Bob Marley “Turn Your Lights Down Low” cover upon which this article is based. It too was nominated for a Grammy three years later in 2001 for Best Pop Collaboration with vocals.
If wanting to consider something potentially amazing, flip around a few sentences in the above paragraphs, and you may have Lauryn adding two more Grammy awards to her collection. Let’s imagine Biggie, Lauryn and Bob’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low” nominated for Best Pop Collaboaration with vocals in 1998 up against the actual winner, John Lee Hooker’s duet with Van Morrison for “Don’t Look Back.” It’s a close call, but Ms. Hill certainly stood a chance.
Insofar as 2001? Lauryn’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” versus that year’s Best Female Pop Performance winner, Macy Gray’s “I Try,” would have been an amazing race to consider. Given Lauryn’s potential level of pop stardom at that point, had the earlier Biggie and Bob Marley duet been released, it’s possible that the contest would’ve actually been a no-brainer.
The Aftermath — Part Two
Let’s begin at an unusual place: Janelle Monae. The groundbreaking neo-soul vocalist has excited fans looking for classic soul values in the modern soul age in a manner not seen since, well, Lauryn Hill. Intriguingly, concerning Janelle, the artist responsible for executive producing and releasing all of her mainstream hits is none other than Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs of Bad Boy Records.
Imagine a world in which Puffy was releasing music from a financially stable and career-focused Lauryn Hill, as well as the comparatively up-and-coming Janelle Monae. Also, imagine the same world in which Biggie is still alive and well, and sitting on top of an empire where Jay Z is COO, and Lil Kim is assisting Nicki Minaj’s mainstream development, while Dame Dash manages Cam’ron, Jim Jones and Juelz Santana who are the ones responsible for putting on The A$AP Mob. As well, the Junior M.A.F.I.A, Ma$e and the Lox are there too, working with the likes of French Montana and Vado. Also, somewhere 50 Cent and Nas are either outliers doing their own thing, or yet more bosses under Biggie and Puffy’s incredible New York rap empire.
But this is not the case. Biggie’s dead. Puffy has his hands in everything, everywhere, and only has a piece of New York in his co-management of French Montana. Lauryn Hill is oftentimes construed by the media as being crazy, having gone to jail for owing the IRS a lot of money, and is a vastly different artist now than ever before. Jay Z is a mogul and one of the world’s most commercially bankable celebrities. Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj are releasing dis tracks going at each other. Dame Dash manages Cam’ron, and the Dipset have recorded new tracks together, but Dame may be in fact currently living on someone’s couch in Brooklyn. Lil Cease of the Junior M.A.F.I.A. now heads up the independently released “Mafia Dons” crew and Ma$e became a preacher only to end up returning to rap again after appearing at Drake’s OVO Fest in Toronto in 2013. The Lox are still heavy in the mixtape circuit, French Montana just broke up with Khloe Kardashian and Vado’s minor hit single “My Bae” has a video that features Renee Graziano from VH-1's “Mob Wives.” Nas has recovered quite well from his divorce from Kelis, and as far as 50, well, he sells energy shot beverages and recently challenged boxer Floyd Mayweather to read a page from Harry Potter out loud.
In retrospect, had Lauryn Hill and The Notorious B.I.G. recorded a cover version of Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low” in June of 1998, none of this would have likely ever happened. Heartbreaking, right?
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