Lauryn Hill dropped her first new song in five years. Take a listen.

We all could use more Lauryn Hill in our lives.
By Jess Joho  on 
Lauryn Hill dropped her first new song in five years. Take a listen.
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It's not every day you hear a new song from the iconic Ms. Lauryn Hill. Actually, it's such a rarity that her most recent drop on Friday, Nov. 15, was the first solo song she released in half a decade.

Despite her impressive discography and influence on hip hop history, Hill has only ever released one full solo album to date, the inaugural The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998. But according to Rolling Stone, she's been performing this new song, "Guarding the Gates," at live performances for years now.

'Guarding the Gates' was released as part of the Queen & Slim soundtrack, an upcoming romantic-thriller starring Daniel Kaluuya that confronts issues of race and police brutality. These subjects are all personal to Hill, as she dedicated her last solo song, 2014's "Black Rage," to Ferguson. The lyrics of "Guarding the Gates" describe a narrator finding love while feeling perpetually persecuted, making it ideal fit for a film about the "black Bonnie and Clyde."

[h/t The AV Club]

Topics Music

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Jess Joho

Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.


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