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Miseducation is a musical education. The CD's songs range from the Jamaican patois-tinged rap of Lost Ones to the unexpected hip-hop harmonizing of Doo Wop. Hill proves herself a master of many genres, but she's no dabbler--what makes this album a wonder is how personally she takes everything. Hill's songs detail, painfully, intelligently, her problems with manipulative men, her childhood in New Jersey, her decision, as a young single mother, not to abort her baby boy. "Sometimes it's hard to really make any statements when you know that the industry caters to hit singles rather than to developing artists," says Hill. "[But] I definitely felt like I wanted to push the envelope of hip-hop. It was very important to me that the music be very raw...and there be a lot of live instrumentation."
Maxwell's nuanced new CD might not make as big a chart splash as Hill's, and it might be dismissed by some as overly subtle. However, the album's subdued tone shouldn't be misread as timidity. Maxwell wants to draw you in, cast a spell, and by singing in falsetto, by crooning and cooing, by whispering his way through songs, he forces listeners to really listen, to confront the emotions in his songs rather than avoid them through the cathartic escape hatch of volume. One song, the gorgeous, unhurried Submerge: Til We Become the Sun, is an abstractly worded ballad about two lovers flowing into each other and facing up to their deepest selves. "I think people are a lot smarter than they are credited for being," says Maxwell. "I like to challenge what some people think most people will accept and listen to, particularly African Americans and particularly in the R. and B. genre. To me, it's important to reflect the alternative."
D'Angelo too is looking for alternatives. His 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, sold more than a million copies; more recently he recorded a sultry, spacious duet with Hill, Nothing Even Matters, that will appear on her solo CD. He's now holed up in Electric Lady Studios (where Jimi Hendrix recorded) working on his own album. "I avoid the radio," says D'Angelo. "I want to take hip-hop and funk and make it new again. I want to take it back to basics. I'm tired of all the synthetic stuff."
In his search for a fresh sound, D'Angelo has recruited an eclectic crew of musicians to work on the new CD, including jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. "The mid-to-late '60s was the golden age of soul and funk," says D'Angelo. "It wasn't like now, where you have one producer working for a slew of artists, who all sound the same. Artists are no longer self-contained and are more prone to conform. In the '60s, people were defying what people expected. That's what's missing now."
No longer. Hill, D'Angelo and Maxwell are distinct performers, but they share a willingness to challenge musical orthodoxy. For too long, critics, taking the public with them, have looked to rock and gangsta rap to fill the pantheon of pop heroes. But there was a time when auteurs had soul, when Marvin was asking what's going on, when Stevie was singing songs in the key of life, when Aretha was demanding respect. This season, with the ascension of a new generation of neo-soul stars, the past may be present again, and, to paraphrase Fanon, the future may be opening up.
--With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York