Beenie Man Calls This Lauryn Hill Classic His All Time Favorite Song
King of the Dancehall Beenie Man recently revealed his all-time favorite song, which is found on one of hip hop’s most iconic debuts.
As a recent guest on Yendi Phillip’s Odyssey With Yendi, the veteran delved into his career highs and lows, but declined to name any faves from his own impressive catalog. “I’m still collaborating,” Beenie Man said when Phillips asked his preference from his long list of collabs with the likes of Akon, Nicki Minaj, and Doug E. Fresh.
He did, however, use the opportunity to list the features on his upcoming 19th studio album Simma — Sean Paul, Shaggy, and Major Lazer among the enviable assists.
“Mi like work wid Janet Jackson cause she’s a beautiful woman. Mi like work wid Mya cause she’s a great, great girl, but we still making collaborations,” he said.
The Grammy winner responded similarly when Yendi asked his favorite song he’d ever recorded overall. “Mi still ah mek song so mi don’t really have a favorite song,” Beenie quipped. Me will tell yuh when mi mek it,” he promised.
There’s one track in particular though that’s close to the Doctor’s heart. “Lauryn Hill.. Zion”, he said quickly when Yendi asked his favorite song by any other artist.
The guitar-led ode to motherhood appears on Hill’s critically acclaimed, multiple award-winning and singular studio project The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
The World Dance deejay has long been a fan of and frequent collaborator on the American urban music scene. The chorus of his crossover smash Who Am I (Sim Simma) is borrowed from Missy Elliot’s The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), and it’s hardly surprising that he holds the inimitable Lauryn Hill in such high regard.
To Zion is Lauryn Hill’s 1998 ballad to her first baby boy, Zion Marley, Bob Marley‘s grandson who’s now 21 and a father himself. The honest, heart-rending track details the genuine joy she felt as a 22-year-old mom-to-be, despite the disapproval of those around her.
“Woe this crazy circumstance, I knew his life deserved a chance/ But everybody told me to be smart/ ‘Look at your career’ they said, Lauryn, baby use your head/ But instead I chose to use my heart/ Now the joy of my world is in Zion,” she sings on the track.
Zion is the son of Jamaican entrepreneur Rohan Marley and the eldest of five children between Hill and Marley. Hill’s pregnancy, as well as other trials and upheavals at the time (The Fugees disbandment, being blacklisted by estranged ex Wyclef Jean, legal woes about writing credits) led to the creation of the iconic solo album that nabbed ten Grammy nominations, winning five awards, and which was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In an interview with Ebony in 1998, Hill revealed how her creative process and ultimately the passionate, timeless fervor of Miseducation was fueled by her pregnancy with Zion.
“When some women are pregnant, their hair and nails grow, but for me, it was my mind and ability to create. I had the desire to write in a capacity that I hadn’t done in a while. I don’t know if it’s a hormonal or emotional thing… I was very in touch with my feelings. Every time I got hurt, every time I was disappointed, every time I learned, I just wrote a song,” Hill said.
Beenie Man would go on to collaborate with Hill’s former boyfriend and bandmate Wyclef Jean on his Grammy Award-winning project, Art & Life, in 2000. By that time, Hill’s opus had earned her a Time magazine cover story (the first hip hop artist to do so) in which she was lauded for her role in taking hip hop music into mainstream terrain.
The album’s overwhelming success continues 23 years later — the same age Hill was when Zion was born. In 2021, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was certified Diamond by the RIAA for estimated sales of 10 million copies in the US, according to NME.
Interestingly, it seems the feat was forecast by another hip hop great, Kanye West (who sampled Beenie Man’s Memories (Stop Live Inna De Past) on his Yeezus album.)
“Lauryn Hill say her heart was in Zion / I wish her heart still was in rhymin’ / ‘Cause who the kids gon’ listen to, huh?” Kanye rhymed in his verse, giving a fitting nod to the weight of Hill’s legacy from her single vivid masterpiece.