Fugees – The Score (Ltd Edn Orange Vinyl 2LP)

The Fugees’ breakout second and final album, The Score, propelled the hip-hop trio to worldwide superstar status and garnered a 1997 Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, Best R&B Performance for “Killing Me Softly” and a nomination for Album Of The Year. In addition to their runaway hip hop-stylized covers of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” and Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry,” the release is also home to the popular singles “Fu-Gee-La” with its Teena Marie “Ooh La La” chorus and the Delfonics-sampled “Ready or Not.” Wyclef, Pras and Lauryn Hill transcend hip hop cliches here by making musical variety, gender diverse points of view and a socially conscious message accessible, ultimately resulting in one of the most distinctive and best selling hip-hop albums of all-time. Hill herself described The Score as, “An audio film. It’s like how radio was back in the 1940s. It tells a story, and there are cuts and breaks in the music. It’s almost like a hip-hop version of ‘Tommy’, like what The Who did for rock music.”

LP2

1.  Red Intro

2.  How Many Mics

3.  Ready or Not

4.  Zealots

5.  Beast

6.  Fu-Gee-La

7.  Family Business

8.  Killing Me Softly

LP2

1.  The Score

2.  The Mask

3.  Cowboys

4.  No Woman, No Cry

5.  Manifest/Outro