Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hillis an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and actress. She is best known for being a member of the Fugees and for her critically acclaimed solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which won numerous awards, broke several sales records and was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest albums of all time...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionR&B Singer
Date of Birth26 May 1975
CityEast Orange, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
I'm in a very close-knit, very, very tight family. My grandmother had 13 kids, so we had a lot of family like 50, 60 grandchildren and we all lived in Jersey, relatively in the same area. So every time there was something, my entire family was there. And I just believed everybody's family was like that.
Love and this close-knit family structure really helped to give me the confidence. To know that you have family to go back to is a help. It doesn't always happen biologically. Sometimes God gives you family in other forms, but I was very blessed. I have a very strong biological family.
I try not to have a day pass where I don't read something from the Bible. It's like my sustenance to me.
If the entire week is a battlefield, reading the Bible is sort of like that parachute with the box of reserves that come in the middle of the war: food and water and the toothbrush and toilet paper.
I didn't have that intense ambition to be a musician or an actress. I just enjoyed it. And by enjoying it, because I loved it, it enabled me to get better at what I was doing, because there was a love behind it.
If you love something and if you're committed and diligent - the things happen!
I've leaned on God for so long. "Hey, God, you just gave me this gift, and I'm just going to go out there and sing." But I'm realizing how much larger and how expansive my gift becomes when I actually pay attention to it and try to practice and try to perfect it.
I don't listen to a lot of music at all. I think that's very bizarre too, because it was such a comfort zone for me. But I don't know if I had my fill, but I don't listen to a lot of music, because I'm creating it.
My whole life at a certain point was studio, hotel, stage, hotel, stage, studio, stage, hotel, studio, stage. I was expressing everything from my past, everything that I had experienced prior to that studio stage time, and it was like you have to go back to the well, in order to give someone something to drink. I felt like a cistern, dried up and like there was nothing more. And it was so beautiful.
I was very active. I was always all over the place trying to do a million things, just into this activity. If you asked me when I was 14 what I wanted to be: "Activist, first, is my occupation. I am an activist."
I know there are certain gifts that each of us have. The gifts you don't have to worry about so much, because God gave them to us. It's the living, it's the life, it's the now.
I think the work ethic that was established in my family was something very important. If you plant the seed, if you sow sparingly and reap sparingly. If you sow in abundance you'll reap in abundance.
With the things that I love, I tried to put a couple seeds, a bunch of seeds in the ground and see what sprung up. Sometimes it was acting and sometimes it was music. But whatever it was I continued to plant.
The honor to me has less to do with the award. To me that translates in the relationship that I have with the audience, and if my music is helpful to them, that's the award.