To Zion - Lauryn Hill

Hey readers, let’s talk music. Everyone struggles with choices in their life. Some of them are minor, but some are huge and complicated, and they tend to wear you down. I love songs that are just so raw and don’t try to sugar coat the hard stages of life. It’s very common to feel like you’re the only one going through hardship. It’s the feeling of loneliness when you’re standing in a crowded room. We feel this way often because the people around us hide the bad things and only let the good things come to the surface so they can show them off. Since we can’t vividly see that our friends and family might be hurting too, often times we feel like it’s only us and it creates isolation. I love songs where the singer doesn’t try to convince you everything is perfect, they tell you what it’s really like the live the Hollywood “dream”. Music that is relatable is music from the heavens, and Lauryn Hill is a great singer for that reason.

Lauryn Hill sings and raps and most of her songs are collaborations of the two. She’s got an insane range and a gorgeous sound. Every single one of her songs is beautifully written. Miss Hill wrights her songs on some of her most important life events that she knows can speak to others, not just cocky crap that producers want to hear. Her voice has a way of making you feel every emotion and everything she’s singing about, it’s crazy. Lauryn Hill first became pretty popular when the “Sister Act” movies came out. She was one of the main characters in the second movie. Watching that movie was the first time I’d heard her sing, and I immediately fell in love with her voice. She was singing “His eye is on the sparrow” by Whitney Houston (whom I also love) and she killed it. Her voice was so genuine and she was so passionate. She’s got a style that sticks with you and makes you want to smile.

“To Zion” is probably my favorite song of her “Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” album Other than “Doo wop”. In this song, the beautiful singer song writer tells us the journey of her pregnancy with her son Zion. When she got pregnant, it was the beginning of her singing career and she was still a rising star. Fame was hard enough by itself, but as she enlightened us in her song, it was significantly harder with a baby on the way. Many of her friends and fans told her to abort the baby so that she could easily get back on her career path with no huge complications. But, being a woman of god, she held onto her faith, and held onto her child. Lauryn believed that the baby was a gift from god so she decided to push through and see the blessing that she’d earned. Her lyrics tell us how scary and overwhelming this was for her, and how all she knew to do in the situation was pray and trust god.

The song isn’t only honest about the hard parts of pregnancy though. Lauryn Hill doesn’t hold back in this spectacular song about how having Zion was the best choice she had ever made in her life. A lyric repeated throughout the chorus of this song is, “Now the joy of my world is in Zion,” because she wants us to know that he is everything she’ll ever need. He wasn’t a distraction, or a complication, or a burden, but a beautiful gift. This song is so powerful, because it shows that Lauryn has lies spoken over her and her baby, but she gave them to god, stayed strong in her faith, and was blessed with Zion. Through all the hardships that pregnancy brought, she didn’t loose sight of god and she kept choosing him.