Thirty Years On: How The Score Found Its Second Home in London

Through the early to mid-90s, America was on one of its many cultural hate trains. And once again, its lenses focused on the Haitian immigrants, legal or otherwise, coming into the country after the coup d’etat that removed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It was under these intense rays of xenophobia that three black musicians decided to tell the struggle of black Americans and immigrants in a sound so irresistible it found its way across the Atlantic.  

The Score was created by Wyclef Jean, Prakazrel Samuel Michael, and Lauryn Hill. They took the hate America hurled at Haitians and black Americans to tell a story that captured their multidimensional perspectives. It was this mindset that even inspired their name “Fugees”, taken from the often derogatory term “refugees”. It was not just because Wyclef and Pras were of Haitian heritage, but because everyone takes refuge in something, whether in friends, lovers, or even their identities. For them, it was their music.   

The Fugees did not immediately find their footing. It took nearly being dropped by their record label for them to create the masterpiece that was The Score. 

Their first studio album was Blunted on Reality, released in 1994. They tried to conform to the gangster rap of the mid to early 90s with little success, initially selling only 12 records and receiving mixed reviews. It wasn’t until 22-year-old producer Salaam Remi came along to produce the ‘Nappy Heads remix’ that the group began to find their groove. He stripped the original’s quick-fire, shouty flow, slowing the tempo, injecting a jazzy groove, and giving Wyclef and Lauryn space to spit their bars. 

‘Nappy Heads remix’ quickly caught fire, peaking at number 49 on Billboard's top 100. The group later performed the song before a raucous crowd at an MTV block party in 1994, and just then, they could see the embers of a ferocious sonic flame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKABZQyL35U

While making a song for Spike Lee’s Clockers, Remi played a beat originally meant for rapper Fat Joe at Lauryn’s request. The beat had a simple drum snare accompanied by an enchanting piano riff sampled from Ramsey Lewis‘s 1972 instrumental version of ‘If Loving You Was Wrong I Don’t Want to Be Right’. According to Remi, Wyclef simply got in the booth and yelled out the lyrics “We used to be number 10 / Now we are permanent one”. Lauryn then experimented with multiple songs for the hook, eventually landing on the melody from Teena Marie’s 1988 soul hit, "Ooo La La La". And just like that, the iconic ‘Fu-Gee-La’ was made. 

‘Nappy Heads remix’ saved the group from the brink, but ‘Fu-Gee-La’ defined their sound. 

Columbia Records subsequently provided the group $135,000 and full creative control to make a new album. They used the advance to buy music equipment and retreated to the Booga Basement, an improvised studio in Wyclef’s uncle’s house. The basement served as the headquarters of the Refugee Camp crew, comprising artists like Rah Digga, John Forté, and a young Akon. It was in the Booga Basement that they dropped all pretence and found the sincerity in their music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPlb9HoOCxs&list=RDMPlb9HoOCxs&start_radio=1

The Score was a revenge mission for the Fugees. The lack of recognition they received for Blunted on Reality deeply hurt them. “We wanted to settle the score. Like, you ain’t pay attention then, but you’re gonna pay attention now,” Wyclef said in an interview with Genius. For him, working on the album became his life, even moving to a bedroom above the Booga Basement after his preacher father kicked him out for making the devil’s music. He wanted to create an album that properly told their stories on a cinematic scale, reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. 

Wyclef understood that blackness is complex and multifaceted. He wanted the group to steer clear of the gangster caricature that record labels had confined their black artists to. No two songs on the album reflect the group’s shift in focus more than ‘The Mask’ and ‘The Beast’. 

‘The Mask’ starts with Wyclef asking, “Have you ever worn the mask?” to which he solemnly answers, “Yeah”. The mask in this case refers to not only African Americans having to hide behind a mask in the face of white supremacy but also Haitian immigrants needing to keep their heritage a secret lest they be subject to xenophobia. This is especially true for Wyclef and Pras, both of whom grew up in a time when Haitian-Americans were branded as high-risk for HIV infections and were also denied housing and employment. Many Haitians like them had to hide their identities and would rather be mistaken for immigrants of other Caribbean nations. 

On ‘The Beast’, the trio rap about the streets, not as gangsters flipping bricks, but as regular people of colour caught in the trap that is the American system. They rap about African-Americans’ often deadly interactions with the police, government surveillance and the gruelling effects of institutional racism over drums sampled from ‘God Make Me Funky’ by The Headhunters. Although the song has many merits, the China-man skit at the end, which featured an arguably racist caricature and the jarring use of the r-slur, reminds us that even our geniuses are not infallible.

Much of The Score’s success can be attributed to the group’s awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, which made them a formidable triple threat. Pras, the savvy businessman, and not having the musical talent of the other two, always had the shortest verses, giving Lauryn and Wyclef space to work. He also had a keen ear for pop music, as it was his idea to cover Roberta Flack’s 1970s Soul hit ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’, a decision central to the album’s commercial success. Wyclef, an instrumental virtuoso adept on guitar and piano, brought a level of musicianship that elevated the album. It was his guitar that formed the basis of ‘Family Business’, an acoustic-heavy hip-hop track which was very rare for its time.       

Finally, there was Lauryn, the multitalented musical prodigy who could go from vocally enchanting on Killing Me Softly to lyrically precise and vulgar on Ready Or Not. You would be hard-pressed to find any artist who could sing and rap as well as she did on The Score. Her talent was undeniable, and everyone wanted a piece of it; she consistently received offers to leave the group, as Wyclef references in Zealots. 

Unfortunately, the musical synergy could not keep the Fugees together, as cracks began to form in their relationship. This was in no small part due to Wyclef and Lauryn’s clandestine affair. Wyclef’s marriage to Marie Claudinette Georges, which coincided with his relationship with Lauryn, made collaboration increasingly difficult. The band being riddled with offers from labels looking to capitalise on their success only widened these cracks. Each member wanted more independence and creative control over their work. The final nail in the coffin was the paternal dispute between Lauryn and Wyclef. The group eventually disbanded in 1998, but has done multiple reunions in the years since, most recently Wyclef appearing on stage with Lauryn Hill at her Diaspora Calling! Festival in London in August 2026. 

Although the Fugees’ time together was short, their talents coalesced to create an album that told not only what it means to be black in America, but also what it means to be human, a sentiment Wyclef shares on ‘How Many Mics’: "Before Black, I'm first human." It was this approach to storytelling that propelled The Score to 22 million copies sold worldwide, keeping it at the top of the Billboard 200 for a month and making the Fugees the best-selling hip-hop group of all time. 

The story behind The Score is about finding your place in unfamiliar territory, something many British immigrants could relate to. And that is probably the reason why, outside America, the album’s biggest market was the United Kingdom. 

It showed a generation of British artists how to blend conscious lyricism with melody, be politically engaged without being joyless, and mix genres without losing their identity. Lauryn Hill's richly introspective writing created greater space for acts such as Floetry, whose blend of soul and spoken word earned them five Grammy nominations.

The influence did not stop there. Little Simz has long cited Lauryn Hill as one of her greatest musical inspirations. In a 2019 interview with The Independent, she said she wanted GREY Area to become "an integral part of someone's day-to-day life" in the same way Lauryn Hill's work had been for her. Lauryn Hill later co-signed her publicly, something Little Simz has said pushes her to be better.

Perhaps the most telling tribute came from Loyle Carner. In 2018, he pulled out of a BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge appearance after being told his chosen covers (Kendrick Lamar's ‘Feel’, Kanye West's ‘30 Hours’, and The Fugees' ‘Fu-Gee-La’) were not "big enough hits." That he chose a Fugees track as one of only three covers he prepared for national radio tells you everything about how central their music is to him. His early material layers candid flows over easy-going boom-bap beats, with deep storytelling heroes, the exact tradition the album established.

The Score taught a generation of black people to drop the mask, ignore the racist zealots and embrace the Fu-Gee-La.