DMX, Lauryn Hill, and the Year Hip - Yangzhou Wood Cutlery Inc.

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As part of our Hip-Hop 50 celebration, we’re turning the clock back 25 years to see how the genre was changed at the midpoint of its history by two individuals: DMX and Lauryn Hill. Make sure to check out all our Hip-Hop 50 content throughout the month, and snag some exclusive merch featuring our Hip-Hop 50 design at the Consequence Shop.

There are fulcrum points throughout history, moments upon which everything shifts. Hip-hop found itself pivoting upon such a point in the middle of 1997. Without exhausting already exhausted details, tragedy overshadowed the previous year and ’97’s early months. Losing Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. back-to-back changed the tenor as the media then — and even now — blamed their deaths on a coastal war.

Following their passing, the hardcore hip-hop albums that dominated cash registers in the early to mid-’90s just didn’t have the same impact. Artists, most notably Puff Daddy (now Diddy) and the rest of his Bad Boy Records crew, turned their pain into celebration. A genre and culture built on giving a voice to the voiceless now draped itself in opulence that only seemed accessible for those with a cheat code.

As John Norris noted in an MTV Rockumentary (yup, that was a thing), some felt the music lost its creative muscle during this time period. Producers sampled hit songs from previous decades for their own smash records, and lyrics leaned too much into decadence instead of the genre’s “Black CNN” roots. “Hip-hop had become overly aspirational and shiny, full of vivid technicolors,” said former Def Jam co-president Lyor Cohen in a FADER oral history.

Like most of us on the precipice of a quarter-life crisis, the music and the culture had a choice: continue down this path or reinvent itself.

When hip-hop turned 25 in 1998, that transformation came in the form of DMX, Lauryn Hill, and the shock waves felt from their seismic debut solo albums — two of the greatest rap albums of all time. Most rappers talk about changing the game; these two actually did.

One look at Billboard’s top rap singles from ’97 underscores with exclamation points the degree to which X and Hill would soon tilt the rap world on its axis:

“No Time” by Lil’ Kim, “Cold Rock a Party” by MC Lyte, “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” by Puff Daddy featuring Ma$e, “Hypnotize” by The Notorious B.I.G., “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans featuring 112, “Mo Money, Mo Problems” by The Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy and Ma$e, “Up Jumps Da Boogie” by Timbaland and Magoo featuring Missy Elliot and Aaliyah, “Feels So Good” by Ma$e, “Been Around the World” by Puff Daddy featuring The Notorious B.I.G. and Ma$e.

Besides the Diddy connective tissue, most of those songs cater to one human emotion. Taken individually, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with aspirational rap; we all need something to dream about, right? But the whole gets stale when any genre’s most dominant form consists of one flavor, and it communicates a clear message that the only path to success is through playing follow the leader. That DMX and Ms. Hill broke through in that climate says so much about their respective talents and the audience’s thirst for something different.

DMX represented mainstream rap’s antithesis at the time. Yes, he had the growl and the gruff voice, but it all started with the visuals. Hype Williams, the director responsible for the sort of lavish ’97 music videos that sometimes resembled big-budget blockbusters, scaled everything down for DMX’s “Get at Me Dog.” Timberland boots replaced designer sneakers, bandanas sat in the place of clean baseball caps, and the black and white aesthetic went hand-in-hand with the ethos X belted at the top of his lungs before the beat dropped: “Let’s take it back to the streets, motherfuckers!” It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, along with his second release that year, Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, restored rap music’s edge and balance to the culture.

At a time when everyone cared about their image, X proudly proclaimed, “Let my mans and them stay pretty, but I’m a stay shitty, cruddy.” His music stripped him naked and let the world see his imperfections, contradictions, bad habits, violent tendencies, and somewhat checkered past. The audience connected with him not despite all that but because of it. And if anyone asks JAY-Z, seeing that connection up close and personal on tour showed him it went deeper than rap when DMX performed “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem.”

“First the guys are going crazy, now the girls are going crazy,” JAY said in a 2021 interview. “And then he gets to the end, and he starts a prayer. And now they’re crying, the whole arena is crying.”

How do you compete with that? How does anyone compete with that? X created a pathway for a new generation of hardcore rappers who most certainly tried: Big Punisher, N.O.R.E., Ja Rule, Cam’Ron, Beanie Sigel, and even a revitalized JAY-Z, to name a few. They all succeeded in their own right and put their own spin on X’s blueprint.

But Lauryn Hill is the one person who truly matched what he brought to the table in 1998. Two years after unleashing the Grammy-nominated The Score on an unwitting public as part of Fugees, Hill released her solo project. Fugees captured lightning in a bottle and she somehow not only recaptured it by herself but rode it into a different stratosphere.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill didn’t fit the mold for any rapper at the time, much less hip-hop’s female contingent. It wasn’t raunchy like Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core or infatuated with mafia rules like Foxy Brown’s Ill Na Na, and was more revealing and spiritual than Missy Elliot’s Supa Dupa Fly. Like DMX, she presented her whole self and never tried fitting the mold that her peers established.

“She was a tomboy who could hang with the guys, but there was also this femininity about her,” said Rhapsody in 2018.

That’s not how hip-hop worked before Lauryn’s solo album. The genre was, and still largely is, a man’s world. And those men demanded that women pick a side: Lil’ Kim’s unabashed sexuality or MC Lyte’s roughneck mentality. Ms. Hill made a choice by not making a choice at all. “Lost Ones” showed aggression on par with the boys club, while songs like “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” shined a spotlight on her sexual nature. But she also spoke on social issues affecting her community, using “Doo Wop (That Thing)” as her bullhorn for any Black man or woman within earshot.

Oh, and to top it all off, she rapped and sang.

Hill inspired artists like Drake who honor their R&B influences equally, and pop stars like Lizzo. “That was something that didn’t happen at that time, period,” Lizzo told Billboard. “Normally you have other people signing the hooks… but Lauryn Hill was singing her own hooks and spitting intricate verses.”

Foxy featured Dru Hill or Blackstreet on her songs, while Kim’s first album rarely featured any singing. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill showcased the former Fugees member’s proficiency as an artist who raps just as well as she sings and knows the correct guitar string to capture any given emotion. If DMX’s albums reminded everyone what hip-hop was, L-Boogie’s project showed what it might become.

Hip-hop turned 25 in 1998 and rewrote its own rules. JAY-Z fashioned Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life closer to DMX than his previous album, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, which relied more on Bad Boy’s formula. Lo and behold, Vol. 2 became his highest-selling LP and made him a permanent pop culture fixture. The shiny suit he wore for the “Sunshine” video went out the window for baggy jeans, sneakers, and very understated jewelry.

Then, too, OutKast reinvented themselves again with Aquemini, incorporating more live instruments and making their sound “more experimental,” just like Ms. Hill. Like JAY and DMX, OutKast and L-Boogie are two sides of the same coin. They pushed the boundaries and opened up the playing field for someone like Juvenile, who put Cash Money Records on his back with an unconventional single, making them permanent residents at the big kids’ table.

DMX and Lauryn Hill became the straws that stirred hip-hop’s collective drink, with much more in common than one might see at first blush. They challenged mainstream hip-hop and, as a result, turned it into musical Baskin-Robins that year with something for everyone, no matter their palette.

At a time when keeping it real was the motto, no two people embodied those words better. And everyone in their orbit benefited from them crashing the party and speaking their truth.

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DMX, Lauryn Hill, and the Year Hip-Hop Changed Forever Marcus Shorter