You're alone in a dark room with the Queen of Hip-Hop. Back up. Rewind. There was light when you arrived; when you got here it was still before nightfall, and the New Jersey sky was the flat bluish-gray of an old fluorescent light. Riding in your car in the half-light, you came to a comfortable brick house on a comfortable, suburban, Truman Show-ish street; walking up, the door wasn't locked, it wasn't even closed, and it creaked open wider when you knocked. This ain't Compton, this ain't the Queensbridge projects, but this is where hip-hop lives in the 9-8: this is the home of Lauryn Hill, rapper/singer/actress, member of the rap trio the Fugees; the woman whose neosoul vocals took a hip-hop remake of Killing Me Softly to the top of the charts; the woman whose first solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, was released last week to wild acclaim. The streety hip-hop magazine the Source called Hill "the flyest MC ever." The not-at-all-streety New York Times called her "visionary."
So now you're sitting in the dark with the new Queen of Hip-Hop. You're in a windowed alcove just off the living room. Hill doesn't want to turn on the lights; she says she "doesn't want to spoil the mood." You can hear her one-year-old son Zion gurgling and making baby yelps in a nearby room. When you came in, you could see Hill's tummy bulge under her blue overalls--the 23-year-old mom has another baby due in October. Now you can't see anything. You can just hear her voice. Motherhood is on her mind. What kind of parent will she be? Hip-hop is on her mind. Does her work have social worth? It's all swirling in her thoughts in the dark.
"When I was a teenager, I used to be really critical when I'd think about how the civil rights movement went so far and basically stopped, and I'd think, 'Where did your fire go?'" she says. "Now I know what happened. Everyone had kids. And that's the challenge: maintaining that fire, knowing that the sacrifice is different now; it's not just you. But I'm a fighter, and I want my son to be a fighter. I want him to be comfortable, but I don't want to lose my fire and passion."
That's one reason people listen to hip-hop: they want that fire, that passion. And right now, to paraphrase hip-hop folkie Beck, rap is where it's at. In 1995 rap albums accounted for just 6.7% of all music sales; through the first half of this year that figure has risen to 10.3%. By contrast, over the same period, rock's market share fell, from 33.5% to 28%. In their new book It's Not Only Rock & Roll: Popular Music in the Lives of Adolescents (Hampton Press), Peter G. Christenson and Donald F. Roberts declare that today's rap defies its demographic stereotypes: research shows that 1) rap is about as popular in the suburbs as in the inner city; 2) it's as popular with girls as with boys; and 3) almost 75% of rap album sales are to whites.
Brian Turner, president of Priority Records, a hip-hop label whose roster includes Ice Cube, says hip-hop, once called a fad, is now an essential part of American culture. "The hip-hop industry, in general, is stronger than it's ever been, in terms of units sold, in terms of the number of releases," says Turner. "Rap has proved itself to be the rock 'n' roll of the '90s." And today's hot rockers--Beck, Korn, even, to a certain extent, Alanis Morissette--often draw on hip-hop rhythms and attitude.