Latest news with #LaurynHill
Wales Online
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Cardiff music festival returns for 2025 as first details emerge
Cardiff music festival returns for 2025 as first details emerge After a successful first year, the festival will be back this autumn Venues across the city will be hosting performances in October (Image: Shared with Reach PLC ) A successful new music festival will be returning to Wales for its second year this autumn. The dates for the Cardiff Music City Festival 2025 have been officially announced as artists gear up to perform around the capital city. The pilot festival last year brought together a number of existing music and cultural events across the city, like the Swn and Llais festivals, and showcased other major acts and pop up events at venue across the city. As well as popular Wales-based musicians - promoters and immersive tech specialists will entertain audiences through urban soundscapes, inspiring talks, and industry sessions. Cardiff Council have officially announced that the Cardiff Music City Festival will take place from Friday, October 3 to Saturday, October 18 2025. Never miss a Cardiff story by signing up to our daily newsletter here Whilst the festival this year will only take place over 15 days rather than 24 days like last year, the programme is said to be jammed packed with unique performances. Cardiff Council have confirmed the inclusion of events such as Sŵn, Wales Millennium Centre's international arts weekend, Llais, and the Welsh Music Prize. LEMFRECK won the Welsh Music Prize 2024 for album Blood, Sweat & Fears at the Wales Millennium Centre (Image: Welsh Music Prize ) Article continues below The council said: "The 2025 festival programme promises to build on the success of last year's inaugural festival and keep pushing the boundaries of music innovation, performance and technology." In the festival's first year it saw thousands of people enjoy performances from artists Leftfield and Orbital and Ms. Lauryn Hill and The Fugees, legendary bass player Pino Palladino and shows from Mercury music prize winners English Teacher, post-punk outfit Squid and Welsh talent like Mace the Great, LEMFRECK and Sage Todz. Bilingual Welsh artist, Sage Todz performed as part of the festival last year (Image: Football Association of Wales ) When creating the festival, Cardiff Council had hopes that it will build a reputation similar to well-known European festivals like Sonar Barcelona and Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. With the city losing its nightlife venues, the Cardiff Music City Festival is a key initiative in the Cardiff Music Strategy which aims to protect, promote and develop the city's music sector. Cabinet member for culture, parks and events, Cllr Jennifer Burke, said: "Cardiff is such a vibrant city, full of music, artistic expression and innovation. Article continues below "The festival is an amazing opportunity to bring people together to celebrate that creativity and to showcase the city's diverse and exciting culture to a wider audience." Content cannot be displayed without consent
Black America Web
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
Lauryn Hill Visits Harvard To Talk Building Community Within Songwriting 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.'
Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE Fresh off her making her Met Gala debut, Lauryn Hill stuck around the East Coast to kick it with the youth. The singer made her way to Harvard, where she spoke on a panel. With two rare public-facing events back to back, she expressed that she hadn't done an interview in a while and hopes her contribution to the conversation isn't 'underwhelming.' Also rare is Hill releasing music, and she hasn't dropped an album since the highly regarded The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998. Still, so many years later, she offered the audience advice on her writing method and finding joy and inspiration in her surroundings. 'I find what I love, I find what I care about, and then I write about that. I have mind and motion and need. Combined. That's what I do, which I'm sure all of you are doing,' she said. She even boils it down to a few core principles of 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.' Beyond that, Hill says that before putting pen to paper, it is also essential to build a community around you that can help fuel your creative process and theirs. 'Curate a community, find a community. People who understand you. Who get you. Who can appreciate, who can reflect you. Who can resonate, so you're not in a vacuum. You can bounce ideas off of someone. They can also articulate appreciation. You can articulate appreciation back. I think these are very healthy and important things in the world.' This isn't the first time Hill has visited the revered campus; she reportedly went there in 2023 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill . At Monday night's Met Gala, Hill blurred gender formalwear norms with a Jude Dontoh-designed yellow suit with a train attached. She also worked with Ghanaian jewelry designer Emefa Cole to ensure she wore accessories that paid homage to Ghanaian royalty, staying true to the 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style' theme. Still, with all the flashing lights, she avoided interviews, only responding 'Everything' to one journalist who asked what Black style meant to her. SEE ALSO Lauryn Hill Visits Harvard To Talk Building Community Within Songwriting 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.' was originally published on
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ready or not, here she comes: Lauryn Hill's 20 best songs – ranked!
The closest their debut album Blunted on Reality came to a crossover hit, Nappy Heads is almost unrecognisable as the work of Fugees, who went on to sell millions of records. But it's an of-its-era joy nonetheless, with a boom-bap rhythm and horns sampled from jazzy 70s funk. More people should know Social Drugs – driven by acoustic guitar, it's what a studio album along the lines of Hill's MTV Unplugged performance might have sounded like. The fact that they don't is because she only released it on her website: for $15, fans could play the track three times only. To say Hill's attitude to releasing new material has been scattershot since the early 00s is an understatement: Black Rage, which reworks The Sound of Music classic My Favourite Things into an anguished response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, originally slipped out on the internet during a tour with Nas in 2012 before being released online in 2014. Now only available on YouTube, it's spare and fantastic. Often overlooked among The Score's plethora of hit singles, Zealots works on every level: its use of a sample from the Flamingos' doo-wop version of I Only Have Eyes For You is inspired, every verse is on point, and the moment Hill announces her arrival with a bold burst of singing is a thing of swaggering magnificence. The first sign that The Score was a quantum leap from Fugees' debut, Fu-Gee-La's beat was intended for Fat Joe before Wyclef Jean began rapping over it during studio downtime. The track's hard yet humid sound – making full use of what Rolling Stone called the 'sweet heat' of Hill's vocals – went on to define the album. Nostalgic light relief amid The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill's sagas of heartbreak and betrayal: the delightful Every Ghetto, Every City sets Hill's retelling of her childhood in New Jersey to a breezy clavinet-driven backing that sounds as if it could have fallen off one of Stevie Wonder's early 70s albums, but never feels like retro pastiche. A slow seller on release, lost among a glut of conscious rap, the album Blunted on Reality remains overlooked. If you want evidence that Fugees had something really special in Hill, check out Some Seek Stardom: it's more hyperactive than her familiar style, but her performance here is still wildly impressive. The original, on Blunted on Reality, is fine stuff, but the heavier beat of the remix foregrounds Hill's contributions to startling effect. Her opening verse, delivered in a flow audibly influenced by Jamaican reggae DJs, is a masterpiece of dextrous conscious rapping. Hill's MTV Unplugged album met with a mixed response on release, but its reputation has grown with time, particularly the nine-minute confessional I Gotta Find Peace of Mind: it's been sampled by A$AP Rocky, claimed as a pivotal influence by Doechii and Jorja Smith and even analysed by theologians. Ostensibly by the loose collective of which Fugees were a part, there's no doubt who the star of the show is: moreover, The Sweetest Thing's lovely melody and acoustic guitar-led arrangement signposted the direction of Hill's solo debut. If you want something less laid-back, Salaam Remi's funk-sample-driven remix is great too. Fugees' final hit – from the soundtrack of the 1996 Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings – feels forgotten nearly 30 years on, which is a shame. The backing extracts some brooding menace from Abba's The Name of the Game, while Hill's contributions leave you in no doubt about which member's solo career was going to soar. The jewel of Hill's MTV Unplugged performance, a ferocious spoken word/rap hybrid dealing with systemic racism that gained further attention when Kanye West attempted to sample the brief sung chorus on his massive-selling All Falls Down: Hill refused permission, so West had it re-recorded – to striking effect – by Syleena Johnson. Featuring a young and then-unknown John Legend on piano, Everything is Everything's irresistible string sample makes its lyrics about social injustice feel weirdly optimistic. The chorus is a killer, but don't overlook her rapping, which is smart and multilayered, the sound of Ms Hill going in hard. A guest appearance that has a genuinely transformative effect: between Hill's vocal, a snappy rap and a remix that strips the original – from 1977's Exodus – of all its instrumentation and shifts the rhythm towards hip-hop, it feels infinitely more like her work than that of Bob Marley. It's also gorgeous. Their straight cover of the old Roberta Flack track was the huge hit, but this remix – actually their first pass at the song – is the one to hear. Only the hook remains (with altered lyrics), with the rest given over to spectacular rap verses: less commercial, far more powerful. Lost Ones' all-out verbal assault on Hill's former bandmate and lover Wyclef Jean is all the more stinging because, for all its biblical imprecations, it never feels angry, just coldly contemptuous. It's the sound of a woman who's understandably aware that the music she's now making is so great, it's going to ensure she comes out on top. Yes, the interpolation from the Delfonics' soft-soul classic is a killer hook – and it's doubtless what made it a UK No 1 – but the real meat of Ready or Not is in the rhymes, most particularly Hill's braggadocious verse: 'While you imitating Al Capone / I'll be Nina Simone / and defecating on your microphone.' To Zion features a vocal so powerful and captivating that it completely overshadows guest Carlos Santana's elaborate guitar playing. It's the story of Hill's first pregnancy told in impassioned, authentically moving style: she dismissed advice to have an abortion from those worried about the impact it would have on her career. Subsequently sampled by Cardi B and Drake, and covered by Beyoncé, Ex-Factor uses lush and classy soul in the service of Miseducation's emotional nadir: a potent, heart-rending depiction of a toxic relationship that keeps flaring into life despite her best intentions. Its guitar solo-strafed climax is particularly magnificent. Over the last 20 years, Lauryn Hill's fans have endured a lot: tours cancelled without refunds, gigs that start hours late. That they keep the faith regardless is down to the fact she can still bring it – and to the sheer quality of her debut solo album. Its crowning glory, the party-starting but lyrically wary Doo-Wop (That Thing), is the sound of a woman who could apparently do it all – rap, sing, produce and write songs deeply rooted in Black music history that still sounded fresh and new, that made you dance and made you think at the same time. And, who knows? She may yet do it all again.
Washington Post
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Met Gala celebration of Black dandy fashion has a dark side
Singer André 3000 showed up with a grand piano strapped to his back, perhaps a reference to his carrying true music on his back for decades. But I have to say it was Black women who stunned the most at Monday's Met Gala, one of fashion's biggest nights of the year. Lupita Nyong'o brought out a light-blue suit with a flowing cape. A pregnant Rihanna showed off her baby bump in a formfitting skirt-suit with a cropped tuxedo jacket and dramatic wide-brimmed hat. Lauryn Hill, whose style has long been eclectic and androgynous, came through in a canary yellow suit with a power shoulder serving as a base for a large halo — looking like a dandy saint.
Vogue
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Architectural Necklines Made a Statement at the 2025 Met Gala
At the 2025 Met Gala celebrating the opening of 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,' the Costume Institute's latest exhibition, many guests were inspired by classic men's tailoring for their looks—especially the Zoot suit, with its extra wide shoulders and narrow torso. A few others seem to have taken the basic shape of the Zoot suit and exploded its possibilities in sartorial architectural marvels that really took to heart the Tailored for You dress code. From Lauryn Hill's coat that looked as if the singer was carrying her own sun with her, to Demi Moore's larger-than-life tie gown (it took me several hours to get that that's what it was and then I loved it), and Gabby Thomas and Myha'la Herrold's bodices circling their shoulders like the rings of Saturn; it all made for a pretty heavenly affair. Lauryn Hill Matt Crossick -
