Lauryn Hill made her premier Met Gala appearance on Monday, wearing a buttercup yellow suit with a dramatic high collar and a cape that swept across the floor.
The rapper and singer rose to fame in the late 90s following the release of her first album, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, which won her five Grammy awards. But just four years later, the pioneering hip-hop artist would nearly disappear from music altogether, making her debut at the Met Gala even more momentous.
The theme for the 2025 Met Gala was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” celebrating Black dandyism over 300 years. The annual fundraising event is hosted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and is often referred to as “fashion’s biggest night out”.
Hill attended the event alongside stars including Rihanna, Zendaya, Madonna, Spike Lee and many more.
Who is Lauryn Hill?
Born in 1975 in New Jersey, Lauryn Hill’s musical career peaked in the late 90s.
In 1996, her band The Fugees released a cover of Killing Me Softly, which, according to Rolling Stone, made Hill a star. “She was sex-symbol beautiful, and her music and public persona seemed politically savvy and spiritually aware.”
Two years later, Hill released her own album, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, which soared to number one on the Billboard 200 and broke the record for first-week sales by a female artist, with nearly 423,000 copies sold within seven days.
The following year, Hill became the first woman to win five Grammy Awards in one night. The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill became the first hip-hop album to win Album of the Year and was credited as helping to bring the genre to the mainstream.
But in 2002, following the release of her second solo album, MTV Unplugged: No. 2.0, Hill largely disappeared from the spotlight, apart from the occasional single or concert.
Why did Lauryn Hill stop making music?
There are a number of reasons why Hill may have retreated from the limelight. “I think Lauryn grew to despise who Lauryn Hill was,” a friend told Rolling Stone. “Not that she despised herself as a human being, but she despised the manufactured international-superstar magazine cover girl who wasn’t able to go out of the house looking a little tattered on a given day.”
According to the New York Post, speculation that Hill had lost the spark that had made a superstar began around three years after her epic Grammy night.
“She was written off [as having] lost her touch,” Kathy Iandoli, author of God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop, told the New York Post. “It turned into more of a smear campaign … People were saying stuff like, ‘Lauryn Hill looked homeless onstage.’ You can only criticize and poke at someone for so long. She’s a human being.”
In 1998, four musicians filed a lawsuit against Hill and her label, claiming that they deserved co-writing and co-production credits on the album. The lawsuit was settled out of court for a reported $5 million in 2001, an ordeal that was believed to have had a big emotional toll on Hill.
Did Lauryn Hill marry Bob Marley’s son?
At the same time, Hill was raising a family and navigating a turbulent relationship. Between the mid-1990s and the 2010s, she was in an on-and-off relationship with Rohan Marley (the son of reggae legend Bob Marley), who she had five children with.
“I think we forget Lauryn Hill was only 23 years old, and she was … pregnant with [second child] Selah, when the album was released,” Landoli told the New York Post. “It’s not the easiest space to be in. And [after] she swept the Grammys, there’s just tremendous pressure now to deliver again.”
In 2011, Hill and Marley broke up and Hill had a sixth child, Micah, with another man later that year (his identity is not known publicly). Two years later, Hill was sentenced to a three-month prison term and three months home confinement after failing to file tax returns between 2005 and 2007.
