The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is released

Why it matters

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out August 25, 1998, on Ruffhouse/Columbia. Lauryn was 23. The album sold 422,000 copies in its first week, which broke the first-week record for a female artist in any genre. It is one of the most commercially and critically successful debut albums in popular music history. The album won five Grammys in 1999, including Album of the Year, the first hip-hop record to ever win the top Grammy. "Doo Wop (That Thing)" was the lead single and went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Lost Ones," "Ex-Factor," "To Zion," "Everything Is Everything." Lauryn wrote and produced almost the entire album herself (with credit and ghostwriting controversies that have followed it for twenty-five years and the New Ark production team's lawsuit, which Hill settled). The Library of Congress added Miseducation to the National Recording Registry in 2015. The album sold twenty million copies worldwide. Lauryn has, famously, never made another studio album. You can listen to Miseducation and understand why she might not have. The bar she set was hers to clear.