Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums podcast unpacks The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill fans rejoice; the elusive musical genius made a rare appearance on the latest episode of the podcast, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums. OK, in actuality, she just answered a couple of email questions, but hey — Lauryn Hill is like the J.D. Salinger of music, so we’ll take it!

On the show, Hill opens up about how The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill almost didn’t happen. Though Hill didn’t name names, she confirmed that in the 90s, certain industry nincompoops tried to dissuade her from creating one of the greatest albums of all time:

“When I decided that I wanted to try a solo project, I was met with incredible resistance and discouragement from a number of places that should’ve been supportive. So that had a motivating factor. But it was less about proving myself and more about creating something I wanted to see and hear exist in the world,” Hill told Rolling Stone.

The episode also features interviews with people close to Hill, like Ruffhouse Records president, Chris Schwartz.  Schwartz talked about how people at Colombia and Sony Records pushed back when Hill showed interest in making the record:

“Wyclef made a solo record, fine — no problem. Nobody batted an eye. She went to do a solo record, it was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no...we gotta do another Fugees record,’ and all this different stuff. It was like, ‘No, she wants to make her own record. Wyclef made his own record; she wants to make her own record,’” Schwartz told Rolling Stone.

Listen to the full episode at Amazon Music.

In other news, did you know that “Everything is Everything” was John Legend’s first commercial piano gig?