Despite this failure to break into the mainstream, Ruffhouse Records threw the Fugees a sizable advance to take another stab. The group’s 1994 debut, Blunted on Reality, established their sample-heavy and politically charged aesthetic. The Fugees were formed from a high school connection between Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel, along with his cousin Wyclef Jean.
While the Roots, OutKast, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul (featuring the emergence of Mos Def) would all put out records in ‘96, it was The Score that kept alternative hip hop vital enough in the mainstream to allow its reemergence as a driving force in the 2000s. Meanwhile, the Fugees’ rebounded from their fizzle of a debut with a superlative sophomore album. Presidential candidates railed against it, with pressure building to the point that Time Warner dropped Death Row Records’ parent Interscope. But back in 1996, gangsta rap threatened to overtake the entire genre. And the President of the United States lists the Fugees’ “Ready or Not” as his favorite song. A cartoon band enjoyed their stint as alternative hip hop’s biggest group. Jay-Z has been tamed by Beyoncé and good living. High-minded rappers like Kanye West have risen to the top. But one is more likely to get this crew’s jokes.In the new millennium, gangsta rap has shriveled to a shell of its former self. Like Wu-Tang Clan, the Fugees view the world as their movie, complete with stunts and special effects. Without being sanctimonious, The Score paints the ghetto as a mythical landscape, one that can inspire pride as well as sorrow. The Fugees’ roots in reggae give them a solid base in song and a basic philosophy that’s richer than the money-or-nothing ethic that dulls much of rap these days. And “The Beast” reworks that tired cliché about New York as a many-legged monster into a cool dose of dread that could give Dr. “Manifest” imagines Judas Iscariot as a homeboy stuck between a promise and a threat. “Cowboys” rides the range with ghetto dudes who yodel as skillfully as they shoot. Meet the Beatle: A Guide to Ringo Starr's Solo Career in 20 Songsīut Neapolitan is also a term that can mean “new city.” The Fugees manifest that flavor in their portrait of the neighborhood as ever changing, slightly fantastic and brimming with inspiration. Beneath these reinventions cook rhythms that recall trip-hop’s origins in rap’s own outer encampments - the ground occupied by De La Soul (to whom the Fugees offer props) and the Jungle Brothers. The Marley ballad becomes a tribute to the trench towns of Brooklyn, N.Y., and New Jersey and the Flack song a comical boast about the crew’s skills. Not only do the Fugees dip into classics like “I Only Have Eyes for You,” they fully reshape Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” and Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” to accommodate their own stories. The group’s sampling style flows from a distinctive attitude toward cover versions. Hill, Clef and toasting rapper Pras converse in French, creole and English, proclaiming, insinuating and stretching meaning. Witticisms like singer and rapper Lauryn “L” Hill’s description of a mean lover - “He tried to burn me like a perm” - or rapper and guitarist Clef’s mix of sermonizing and wigging out between songs don’t so much lighten The Score’s mood as humanize it, lifting the Fugees out of the stereotypes they court and lending depth to their inner-city sketches. On its second album, the hip-hop threesome cops a grim veneer but escapes gangsta clichés by playing around with the formulas. The Fugees are a Neapolitan treat, sweet in three layers: rhyme, sample and groove.