Apple Music x Lauryn Hill

I am excited to revisit a new development concerning a previous edition of Hypebeast.  Two weeks ago I wrote in Edition #36 “Locked-In Wegmans x Lauryn Hill” about hearing Lauryn Hill’s music upon entering a suburban Washington, D.C. Wegmans store and how it underlined Wegman's commitment to their target audience in a predominately Black upper-middle-class suburb.  Until that moment, I had never heard a Lauryn Hill song in a grocery store. 

Coincidentally at the same time I was publishing that edition, Apple Music named Lauryn Hill’s 1998 album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” the top album of Apple Music’s “100 best albums” list.  That is a huge honor.  An album that I remember dropping the same year my first child was born.  A time when my wife, infant daughter and I would spend time on weekends outside on our Connecticut home’s deck listening to “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”.  

This was also the same album I heard played heavily at a Lauryn Hill live concert in Cincinnati the day before the world shut down for COVID.  What stood out the most about that concert, other than the fear and pall of a pending pandemic over the audience, was seeing a caucasian woman across the aisle with an infant huddled in her arms swaying and singing to the music.  Bringing an infant to a loud concert is not something I would do, but I figured either her babysitter bailed or it was the Lauryn Hill effect.  Lauryn is as good live as she is on wax and digital streaming.  Here was a multicultural midwestern audience grooving and swaying to arguably one of the best albums of the past thirty years and what Apple Music has deemed best of all time.

Ironically, I learned of the Lauryn Hill honor this past weekend from my adult twenty-something-year-old children while sitting in a rental SUV in a CVS store parking lot on the border of Kansas and Missouri.  We were together for my mother’s 80th birthday in Kansas City, Missouri.  My kids are both fans of the album as well.  My kids' in-depth understanding of Lauryn’s music illustrates how Lauryn Hill has transcended generations.

While the Apple Top 100 Album list does not include any streaming figures, it was primarily based on an opinion survey created by Apple Music.  Apple also developed the list with assistance from existing “expert” music artists including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, and J. Balvin.

Apple Music’s list was not without controversy in setting off debates, but I would assume Apple knew that going in and controversy draws impressions and incremental music streaming.  I am sure Apple Music list will spawn many other copy-cats, but widely different lists from their competition and others.

Lauryn Hill’s response to her album’s placement at the top of the proverbial top album heap was a masterclass in emotional intelligence, “I appreciate the acknowledgment, I really do, but I’d be remiss not to also acknowledge all of the music and artists who informed and inspired me ... The leaders of community and movements that sparked me, the social dynamics and music scenes, both older and current at the time, that intrigued and inspired me to contribute."

The point of this edition was not necessarily to put Wegmans on a pedestal as seers as much as it is to point out the cultural relevance of what they were doing.  I am sure the Wegmans “muzak” playlist was carefully curated to appeal to the upper-middle-class Black consumers of Lanham, Maryland.  At least that is what I heard in the thirty minutes I shopped at the store.  

The point of this edition was to shed light on the cultural significance of Wegmans being in touch with their shoppers and how that ironically is playing back on a global level by yet another in-touch with their consumer company Apple.