Jesi Concepcion

Her Miseducation Led to My Education:
Thanks for Everything Ms. Lauryn Hill

There are pieces of music that as you grow older, the lessons found within them change and evolve with you. I was thirteen when I first heard Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor.” The track illustrates the pain and resentment which inevitably grows into the spaces of a push-and-pull relationship. “Ex-Factor” starts off slow and gentle. Layered in are flutters of piano keys and resounding drum beats. Hill creates a cadence to mirror the cycle of highs and lows in her relationship, and the melody rises and spills over with her. We find Hill at her breaking point, asking what it will take for her partner to show reciprocity. At the time, how heavy relationships can be wasn’t a weight I had learned to carry yet. But since then, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill has been on consistent rotation from the moment I picked up the album.

“Ex-Factor” has been sampled by Hip-Hop artists Drake and Cardi B. On Drake’s women-empowered anthem “Nice for What,” we hear the familiar Lauryn Hill chorus jump and jive to a New Orleans bounce. It’s a stark contrast to Cardi B’s use of the sampling on her track “Be Careful” in which she confronts a cheating partner. As she grapples with the sting of a lover gone astray, the track’s stylings are gentler than what we’re used to hearing from the rapper. She’s unguarded, but her fierceness is still present. At a first glance, these pairings might seem odd, but they are a testament to Hill’s imprint on Hip-Hop and R&B itself. An L.Boogie lyric is unmistakable: her voice contains soulful multitudes. Her skillset as an MC, with a delivery as precise as it is powerful, had her running circles around her contemporaries.

Two decades after the release of Miseducation, along with my own lessons on how equally frustrating and relenting love can be, I wandered into the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles. Random mementos from around the world filled the building: a melted cell phone discovered by a fighting couple’s landlord, a collection of mixtapes, an X-Files pin, exactly one thousand origami cranes swaying from the ceiling. Not all of the items were the result of a romantic breakup. Some mementos told stories about the loss of friendship. A Garfield plush toy smiles behind a glass case. The individual who donated it was cut off by the toy’s former owner, which was her daughter. What type of category a breakup falls under doesn’t matter. The devastation isn’t more or less painful than the other, it’s just different.

I walked over to a framed piece of white paper. The man on the receiving end of this note was an artist. His girlfriend, whom he shared a home with, would become restless when he’d work in the seperate room. One day, while he was painting, she slipped him this little piece of paper. A few years after they parted ways, he came across the paper again, and kept it in the change compartment of his car. The writing on the paper was so small, I had to lean in close to read it. “Pay attention to me” was scrawled in blue ink. This woman wanted what Hill had to exasperatingly ask from her own partner. She wanted the mutual giving and receiving of attention.

I wondered how long the artist kept the note in his car before he donated it to the museum. The fact he hung on to it after his partner left hinted at a certain amount of regret. I thought about the ways this woman might have tried to reconcile with not feeling as if she were enough. Wherever she is, I hope she never shrinks herself in order to be seen again.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a deeply personal album. Interludes of classroom conversations are blended in between several tracks. These tender discussions unfold over harmonies so warm, you’d swear the sun was beaming on your face as you sit at a school desk, with a pencil already in hand. Lauryn Hill is both the teacher and student here. Miseducation is an album one must listen to, from beginning to end, in order to fully appreciate it. She shares her wisdom about life, self, love, and everything she is still trying to figure out.

In one interlude, the teacher poses a question to the students: does music have any influence on the confusions of love? If music reflects the moment we’re currently in, specifically related to matters of the heart, it seems we’re in an era when catching feelings is avoided and the facade of caring less is a flex. Lauryn Hill would likely shake her head in disagreement at these notions.

The vulnerability Lauryn Hill displays on Miseducation may feel unfamiliar, and even bold, when listened in its entirety. The album was released before anyone had an Instagram, or tweeted into the universe, or knew what swiping right even meant. Social media has a way of making attention feel like currency, asking us to spend it on an excess amount of perfectly curated personas and images. It brings up the question, why is their hesitation to show up just as we are? It can be uncomfortable, letting someone see you as a whole, and not only the parts you deem attractive, or worthy of knowing. And this can even feel impossible when surface-level validation is an easier choice. But Hill doesn’t ask for perfection here, nor does she expect it from anyone else. It’s a simple sentiment: people shouldn’t get to enjoy your rhythm, if they won’t understand your blues.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill has brought me closer to other people, figuratively and literally. During my barista days, “Doo Wop (That Thing)” occasionally bumped through the speakers. My coworkers and I, a bunch of stressed and jittery college students hopped up on too much caffeine, would try to emulate and keep up with Hill’s rapid fire flows. The silver ladle used to scoop coffee beans turned into a microphone. At the discomfort of their eardrums, our Starbucks customers became the audience.

A boy I had a crush on used to keep the Miseducation CD in his car. I was eighteen at the time, an age which feels like you know everything, and everything is the end of the world. One night, during a drive home from our friend’s house, he played “Ex-Factor” and let out a small laugh. He explained the song reminded him of a past makeup-to-breakup cycle. He said it in the way that people do when they want to imply they were the injured party, but not exactly saying it outright. He parked in front of my house, and we just sat in that Silvia S14 until three in the morning, excitedly sharing our heartbreaks and whispering our secrets. Not that heartbreak is thrilling. But when another person recognizes your pain, and makes the space for it, a part of you is emancipated from the isolation that sadness creates. I like to believe that in moments like these, as small as they seem when we’re actually living in them, whatever pain we’re harboring gets lifted and set free. At it’s best, love is liberation.

However, when you’re in a building filled with literal fragments of grief, from connections that no longer exist, it’s easy to understand why sometimes we play our cards so close to the chest. Relationships, no matter their dynamic, can be brutal. But I didn’t come to this museum to discover anything I didn’t already know. I know exactly how long the sting of a lover gone astray can last, and even when that disappears, it doesn’t compare to the resentment which takes its place afterwards. I’ve learned how to give neutral answers to questions about my mother in order to keep the peace. Years of estrangement will teach you how to gracefully float in its gravity.

I won’t pretend like I have all the answers on how to navigate the complexities of relationships, or how to flawlessly love another person, whether it’s a friend, lover, sibling, parent, or yourself. My friend Bryan recently shared a piece of advice his father gave him: “don’t be on the defense and don’t play offense, just show up on the field.” It seems like sage advice, although simple and a bit vague, which is usually how dad’s impart their words of wisdom.

My hope is we handle others, and ourselves, with such intentional effort and care, so that we don’t find ourselves shrinking into the tiniest of words. It can feel like a lofty ask to be seen, perhaps even an ambitious one, especially during a time when social media elicits shorter attention spans, and quick validation overshadows genuine connection. And we can easily make excuses not to try, because it’s safer if we don’t. But the other side of reciprocity, if we are willing to participate in the patience and intimacy it requires, is redamancy: a love returned in full.

Jesi Concepcíon was born and raised in Okinawa, Japan. She lives in sunny Southern California, where you can probably find her writing, listening to Mariah Carey, or eating ice cream. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @jestoofresh