How Ms. Lauryn Hill Became One of 2018's Most Sampled Artists

According to one of our preferred sources:


"Ms. Lauryn Hill, as she’s now officially known, has famously released only one solo studio album, 1998’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. But artists including Kanye West, J. Cole, JAY-Z and DJ Khaled have kept her sound -- and that of her original group, the Fugees -- alive over the years by sampling her music in their own songs.

In 2018, as she celebrates the 20th anniversary of the album with a summer tour, a new generation of artists is making use of her iconic work.

“Nice for What” Samples “Ex-Factor”

As a solo artist, Drake regularly makes hit songs, but this track’s sinuous sample of Hill singing on her aching 1999 ballad unquestionably helped it secure the five nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that it has notched to date.





“Be Careful” Samples “Ex-Factor”

When the fun-loving Cardi B needed to show some heart, she channeled Hill in this song about infidelity, which hit No. 11 on the Hot 100. (“Be Careful” and “Ex-Factor” are rumored to take aim at, respectively, Cardi’s fiance, Offset, and Hill’s Fugees bandmate and onetime paramour, Wyclef Jean.)



King “Bad Boy Back” Samples The Fugees, “Fu-Gee-La”

King Combs' 90’s Baby mixtape follows in his father Sean Combs’ footsteps by sampling a Fugees classic. “Bad Boy Back” repurposes Hill’s melodic “Fu-Gee-La” hook into a silky backdrop for King’s swaggy raps aimed at restoring prominence to the house his dad built.



A$AP “Purity” featuring Frank Ocean Samples “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind”

For the closer to new album TESTING, A$AP Rocky revisits a deep live-album track: “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind.” The nine-minute original is a meditation on spiritual yearning; on his track, he confronts the curse of loved ones dying as his success grows.