Lauryn Hill begins three-month federal prison sentence for tax evasion

Why it matters

May 6, 2013. Lauryn Hill reported to the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut, to begin a three-month sentence for failing to file federal income tax returns for the years 2005, 2006, and 2007. She had pled guilty in 2012. She had paid the back taxes (roughly a million dollars) before sentencing. The judge gave her three months anyway. The sentence came fourteen years after The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill had made her the most successful female MC of her generation and the first hip-hop artist to win the Album of the Year Grammy. By 2013 she had not released a new studio album in fifteen years. The combination of those two facts (the catastrophic success of one record, the long withdrawal from making the next, the federal sentence) is a substantial part of why Lauryn Hill's biography has become one of the most-studied cautionary stories about commercial-rap fame. She served her sentence and was released October 4, 2013. She has continued touring and has continued not releasing a follow-up record. You can argue she has earned that choice. The argument is hers to make.