Lauryn Hill Responds to Accusations of Music Theft, Band Member Mistreatment in Essay

Lauryn Hill has penned a lengthy response to claims that she “stole” the music for her landmark 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, as well as allegations of mistreatment toward her touring band.

The accusations come from Robert Glasper, a Grammy-winning jazz pianist and former collaborator of Hill’s. In an interview with a Houston radio station earlier this month, he claimed that Hill had a history of mistreating her live bands, including random firings and docking pay. He also claimed that the music for Miseducation was “stolen from [his] friends.”

Hill has responded in a lengthy essay on Medium in which she defends her actions. “You may be able to make suggestions, but you can’t write FOR me,” she writes. “I am the architect of my creative expression.”

She goes on to defend her treatment of live bands: “I may not have established the necessary boundaries and may have been more inviting than I should have been,” she writes in regard to her specific vision for how bands should sound. “In hindsight, I would have handled it differently for the removal of any confusion.”

She then explains her state of mind following the release of Miseducation: “I was looking to challenge myself artistically. I was also openly challenging music industry norms. I’d left ‘the machine.”

Read the whole essay via Hill’s tweet below.

I chose to wait until after the anniversary to post this. Thank you everyone for the Love! I’d like to clear a few things up.
-MLH

Full statement available here: https://t.co/kbtvoOWD2R

— Ms. Lauryn Hill (@MsLaurynHill) August 28, 2018