Lauryn Hill: "Lose Myself"

Back in the day, the Beat King and I used to run another blog about rap stars that fell off. Clearly, one of the main contenders was Lauryn Hill - and we linked to a great story in Rolling Stone about how L-Boogie lost her goddamn mind, which can you find here. Among other things, Lauryn started playing the guitar - which is always a sign that something is wrong where rappers are concerned.

It's pretty interesting to note, because if you look through any late 90s magazines and such, you will see Lauryn being held up as a the future of hip hop music. She could sing, rap, produce...the whole deal, and her Miseducation album won a ton of awards and still stands as a masterpiece, despite having possibly the worst skits ever. Of course, it turned out that Lauryn wasn't exactly the sole musical genius she would have had us believe - and a lot of that album was blessed by collaborators. Including John Legend when he was doing his 10 year stint as the world's greatest backing artist.

The reason I'm putting all this down, of course, is that Lauryn Hill has surfaced with a new track, called Lose Myself, which may or may not be an ironic title. Man, first D'Angelo comes back, and now this. I'm not sure I can handle the excitement.