Refugee Camp All-Stars (featuring Lauryn Hill) "The Sweetest Thing"

Album: Love Jones-The Music (Sony/ Columbia; 1997)
Songwriters: Lauryn Hill
R&B Peak Position: #2 (Airplay Only)

"Excuse me if I get too deep"

The success of The Fugees' remake of "Killing Me Softly" only strengthened the long-held opinion that star member Lauryn Hill needed to drop a solo album, pronto. It wasn't that her co-Refugees weren't as necessary as her, there just was this underlying feeling that if given the opportunity to express herself without the requisite interruptions of her groupmates, the results would be nothing less than extraordinary.

Less than a year after "Killing"'s seemingly endless airplay reign, Hill inched closer to that exciting solo project reality with the release of the Love Jones soundtrack single, "The Sweetest Thing", a track that only re-affirmed the great artistic potential she had yet to fully explore.

Never one to simplify her output (an initially satisfying characteristic that would eventually prove quite frustrating as her career wore on), "Sweetest Thing" took the soulful love ballad template and twisted it into this breathtakingly complex musical piece that, both lyrically and production-wise, bravely challenged most of what the R&B genre was putting out at the time.

Here, Hill re-lives the emotional and physical punch of her stint with a former love, recalling the fits of ecstasy triggered by things as simple as the taste of his "amaretto" kiss or the sound of his voice over the telephone. With arresting references to his "dark skin tone" and descriptions about him being "warm as the sun dipped in black", the lyrics beautifully illustrated the soul-enveloping intensity of Black love.

Unfortunately, it didn't last, and from her current post-break up perspective, realizing how frightening the power this idealistic Nubian prince held over her was, only makes her heartache pierce deeper ("I wish I didn't get so weak/ Ooh baby just to hear you speak...").

Produced by Hill and Wyclef Jean, the duo vividly brought her forlorn despair to life with a dense, hip hop backdrop accented by teardrop-trickling guitar strums, and sudden boom-bap breaks that supported the exclamatory cries of her inner pain repeatedly boiling back to the surface.

"The Sweetest Thing" might have lacked an easily accessible "commercial sound", but the mature love ode still made major waves on urban radio (reaching the runner-up spot on the R&B airplay singles chart), earning continued worship from soul fans far and wide along the way. Thankfully, we were only another year away from the highly anticipated full-length masterpiece that would truly solidify her as one of the greats.

Lauryn Hill - Sweetest Thing
Uploaded by classics007

DL: "The Sweetest Thing" (YFH)



DL: "The Sweetest Thing (Mahogany Mix)" (YFH)