Lauryn Noelle Hill (born May 26, 1975) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. She is regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time, as well as one of the most influential musicians of her generation. Hill is credited for breaking barriers for female rappers, popularizing melodic rapping and for bringing hip hop and neo soul to popular music. She was the frontwoman of The Fugees and her 1998 solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is one of the best-selling albums of all time. Hill has won many accolades, including eight Grammy Awards, the most for a female rapper to this day.

Hill starred in the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). Afterwards, she released two albums as a member of The Fugees. Their album The Score (1996), received the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, for which she became the first woman to win the award. The album contained the hit single “Killing Me Softly”, with her on lead vocals. Hill then collaborated with Nas (“If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)”) and Aretha Franklin (“A Rose Is Still a Rose”). The band split in 1997, and soon after she began work on her solo album.

Her sole studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), launched atop the U.S. Billboard 200 with the highest first-week sales for a debut album by a woman in the 20th century. It included the songs “Ex-Factor” and “Lost Ones”. The lead single “Doo Wop (That Thing)” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and made her the first artist to have debuted at No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 with their first entries. She also was the first woman rapper to earn a No. 1 on each chart. At the 41st Grammy Awards, Hill set a record for the most nominations in one night for a woman, with ten. She won five awards including Album of the Year, and became the first hip hop act to win the award. The album was later selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

Hill then produced music for Santana and Mary J. Blige. Her new-material live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 (2002), was later certified platinum by the RIAA. Ultimately, Hill dropped out of the public eye, only periodically releasing singles. Billboard placed her seventh on their “10 Best Rappers of All Time” list (2015), with her being the sole woman on the list. She has also been ranked as one of the Greatest Singers of All Time by Consequence of Sound and Rolling Stone. Throughout her career, Hill has earned several Guinness World Records, which include being the first woman rapper to earn a Diamond-certification by RIAA. Hill was the first rapper to grace the cover of Time magazine. She has received the NAACP’s President’s Award for her humanitarian work, and was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.

Lauryn Noelle Hill was born on May 26, 1975, in East Orange, New Jersey. Her mother, Valerie Hill, was an English teacher and her father, Mal Hill, a computer and management consultant. She has one older brother named Malaney who was born in 1972. Her Baptist  family moved to New York for a short period before settling in South Orange, New Jersey.

Hill has said of her musically oriented family: “there were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played the piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded by music.” Her father sang in local nightclubs and at weddings. While growing up, Hill frequently listened to Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight; years later she recalled playing Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On repeatedly until she fell asleep to it.

In middle school, Lauryn Hill performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a basketball game. Due to its popularity, subsequent games featured a recording of her rendition. In 1988, Hill appeared as an Amateur Night contestant on It’s Showtime at the Apollo. She sang her version of the Smokey Robinson track “Who’s Lovin’ You”, garnering an initially harsh reaction from the crowd. She persevered through the performance.

Hill attended Columbia High School, where she was a member of the track team, cheerleading squad  and was a classmate of actor Zach Braff. She also took violin lessons, went to dance class, and founded the school’s gospel choir. Academically, she took advanced placement classes and received primarily ‘A’ grades. School officials recognized her as a leader among the student body. Later recalling her education, Hill commented, “I had a love for—I don’t know if it was necessarily for academics, more than it just was for achieving, period. If it was academics, if it was sports, if it was music, if it was dance, whatever it was, I was always driven to do a lot in whatever field or whatever area I was focusing on at the moment.”

While a freshman in high school, through mutual friends, Prakazrel “Pras” Michel approached Hill about a music group he was creating. Hill and Pras began under the name Translator Crew. They came up with this name because they wanted to rhyme in different languages. Another female vocalist was soon replaced by Michel’s cousin, multi-instrumentalist Wyclef Jean. The group began performing in local showcases and high school talent shows. Hill was initially only a singer, but then learned to rap too; instead of modeling herself on female rappers like Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte, she preferred male rappers like Ice Cube and developed her flow from listening to them. Hill later said, “I remember doing my homework in the bathroom stalls of hip-hop clubs.”