Ms. Lauryn Hill gets out of jail tomorrow, having served a three-month sentence for tax evasion, and to celebrate the event, she’s dropped a new single, “Consumerism.” It’s not clear whether she recorded this while on a five-minute sprint around the prison yard, but what the fuck? Slow it down girl. All we got out of this was a breathlessly bad imitation of Andre 3000 on the middle section of “Roses.”
Speaking of Outkast, that reminds us that Hill likely has the “Miss” tag all to herself since Miss Jackson split the industry earlier this year to become a Muslim and relocate to the Middle East (and yeah, Vanyaland knows “Ms. Jackson” ain’t about Janet, but it got us thinking).
Back to “Consumerism,” all we’re getting out of this is something about “corporate greed in Jesus’ name” and a drumbeat stuck on “egotism.” Whatever; Hill has long been batshit crazy, and why this couldn’t wait 24 hours to be released in a less rushed manner is beyond anyone’s comprehension.
In a statement, Hill says of the track, which is slated to appear on her upcoming full length Letters from Exile: “‘Consumerism’ is part of some material I was trying to finish before I had to come in. We did our best to eek out a mix via verbal and emailed direction, thanks to the crew of surrogate ears on the other side. Letters from Exile is material written from a certain space, in a certain place. I felt the need to discuss the underlying socio-political, cultural paradigm as I saw it. I haven’t been able to watch the news too much recently, so I’m not hip on everything going on. But inspiration of this sort is a kind of news in and of itself, and often times contains an urgency that precedes what happens. I couldn’t imagine it not being relevant. Messages like these I imagine find their audience, or their audience finds them, like water seeking its level.”
Everything is everything indeed.
Listen to “Consumerism” below…