I loved Lauryn Hill. Just going to throw that out there for starters.  Like, stan fan loved, like adored loved, like knew every bar she ever rapped loved, like owned the four foot tall “Ex-Factor” promotional poster loved. Every time she announced a comeback, it feels like someone was ripping out my heart, savaging it, then placing it back into my body. Painful. I feel that her current “comeback,” or rather her February 29th performance scheduled at DC’s Warner Theater may be a harbinger of something different, as popular music now needs Lauryn Hill as much as Lauryn Hill needs popular music.

L. Boogie has more creative talent in her pinkie finger than 100 musicians could use in ten lifetimes.  Joni Mitchell meeting Stevie Wonder with Rakim’s warrior heart and the passionate politics of Angela Davis, she was ill equipped for popular music in 1996. Back then, pop took rappers and made them charlatans, hard edges on polite radio fare, exclamation points raging where periods once ruled. Lauryn Hill’s message shined brighter than all the world’s shiny suits and bling bling combined. I sincerely feel that between heartbreak, having a family and popular culture wanting her to be a dolled-up cooing clone, rather the fight the machine, she quit it at her peak.

Lauryn Hill clearly stared the mainstream music industry in the face and called them the liars and pimps that they absolutely are. Nobody likes an unwilling whore, and she fell off precipitously, as life on the pop margins is like a million cloudy days blocking the sunshine of mainstream love. In retaliation she changed her times, and as a professional mother, let her rhymes raise her babies (all five of them), art influencing life.

In hip-hop now being fully mainstreamed, it’s big enough to support Lauryn Hill. Lauryn Hill has five children, reportedly lives with her mother, and just gave birth to a son at the end of July. Obviously, from a financial standpoint, Lauryn Hill is in need of hip-hop as well. If Jay and Bey are the new parents of the game, Lauryn is the grandmother, older, wiser, a memory of the legacy with the talent for timeless impact.

Let’s celebrate the Earth Mother of mainstream hip hop, and revel in the belief that this is the time and place where she is more important than ever.