Lauryn Hill New Album: Singer Announces She Will Release First Album In 15 Years
Lauryn Hill announced on Friday that she will be releasing her first studio album in 15 years.
Hill's last album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill , was released in 1998. She was awarded 5 Grammy's in 1998 and became the first woman to collect so many trophies in one night. The revered album made Hill an icon. However, aside from 2002's MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, there has not been new music from the reclusive star. In a letter posted on her Tumblr, Hill told her fans that the drought was over.
Hill is set to launch a new record label in conjunction with Sony Worldwide Entertainment. It will help towards paying the $504,000 she owes immediately in taxes.
"I've remained silent, after an extensive healing process. This has been a 10+ year battle, for a long time played out behind closed doors, but now in front of the public eye," she said.
"This is an old conflict between art and commerce... free minds, and minds that are perhaps overly tethered to structure."
Hill continued on about the artistic struggle she has endured.
"This is about inequity, and the resulting disenfranchisement caused by it," she said.
" I've been fighting for existential and economic freedom, which means the freedom to create and live without someone threatening, controlling, and/or manipulating the art and the artist, by tying the purse strings."
Hill felt that she could now step back into the studio because she was out in a different phase in her life. She said her new deal with Sony gave her more latitude as an artist.
"It took years for me to get out of the 'parasitic' dynamic of my youth, and into a deal that better reflects my true contribution as an artist, and (purportedly) gives me the control necessary to create a paradigm suitable for my needs," Hill said.
"I have been working towards this for a long time, not just because of my current legal situation, but because I am an artist, I love to create, and I need the proper platform to do so."
Hill also wrote that she would continue to shed light on what artists have to face in the music industry. She said that there were volumes of what could be told.
"Only a completely complicated set of traps, manipulations, and inequitable business arrangements could put someone who has accomplished the things that I have, financially in need of anything," she said.
" I am one artist who finds value in openly discussing the dynamics within this industry that force artists to compromise or distort themselves and what they do, rather than allowing them to make the music that people need."
