Fugees — The Score
Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras turned a 1973 soul classic into a hip-hop anthem and reminded the world that cover songs could dominate the charts. The Fugees' second album was one of the best-selling hip-hop albums ever — and also, mysteriously, their last.
Released in February 1996, The Score marked the peak of the Fugees' run. The trio — Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras Michel — built their sound on clever sampling, Caribbean-inflected production, and a blend of English and Haitian Creole that felt genuinely novel in mid-'90s hip-hop. The album's monster hit was 'Killing Me Softly,' a reinterpretation of Roberta Flack's 1973 soul standard, transformed into a show-stopping rap centerpiece. It became inescapable and helped The Score reach the kind of commercial heights rarely seen in hip-hop at the time.
Other standouts like 'Ready or Not' and 'Fu-Gee-La' gave the album replay value well beyond the hit. The album's success opened doors and raised expectations. But The Fugees would never release another studio album together — a pattern that made them feel even more specific to that moment. Lauryn Hill's solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, followed in 1998 and cemented her as one of the decade's most important voices, while the group's chemistry remained a singular artifact of mid-'90s hip-hop.
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