It also topped the Top R&B/Hip-hop Albums chart for eight weeks, becoming the longest running number-one for a hip-hop group, and topped the 1996 year-end chart. Upon its release, The Score was a commercial success, peaking at the number-one spot on the Billboard 200, and becoming the third best selling album of 1996. Most versions of the album feature four bonus tracks, including three remixes of "Fu-Gee-La", and a short acoustic Wyclef Jean solo track entitled "Mista Mista".
The album's guest verses are from Outsidaz members Rah Digga, Young Zee, and Pacewon, as well as Omega, John Forté, and Diamond D. Primarily, The Score's production was handled by the Fugees themselves, Jerry Duplessis and Warren Riker, with additional production from Salaam Remi, John Forté, Diamond D, and Shawn King. The album features a wide range of samples and instrumentation, with many aspects of alternative hip-hop that would come to dominate the hip-hop music scene in the mid-late 1990s. The Score was released worldwide on February 13, 1996, on Columbia Records.
Hill's dual-threat presence, Jean's booming toasts, and Pras' knotty rhymes made Fugees a shining example of balance The Score's sonic palette, which honored the New York area's then-burgeoning underground through precise use of massive hits and crate-dug gems, made the group's second album a key part of hip-hop's 1990s explosion.The Score is the second and final studio album by the hip hop trio Fugees. The former allowed her to show off her reference-packed, thoughtful MC skills, while the latter established her rich, confident alto as one of R&B's great voices. "Ready or Not," which flipped a late-'60s single by the Philly soul outfit The Delfonics into a rallying cry for Black music, and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," a boom-bap-propelled cover of the ode to musicians made famous by Roberta Flack in the early '70s, both defined late-'90s hip-hop and turned Hill into one of its biggest female stars. (If you use the intricate, incisive rhymes the trio casts across The Score as a predictor, the answer is "a lot.")įugees' take on the swaggering yet claustrophobic sonics of '90s East Coast hip-hop give The Score a charge that remains electric decades later, as the boastful "Fu-Gee-La" and the hazy title track prove. Its lyrics are pointed and political, while also being laced with wit: "How many mics do we rip on the daily?" Hill and Jean crow on "How Many Mics," the album's first proper song. The homespun hip-hop production on The Score gives it a vibe not unlike a lengthy listening session with friends, complete with running gags that bust up the room its sample list includes hooks from classic soul sides and sound-system-worthy beats, as well as bits borrowed from Enya, Francisco Tárrega, and The Moody Blues. The album that came out of that cellar, 1996's The Score, became one of the defining hip-hop albums of the '90s and launched Jean and his bandmates Lauryn Hill and Pras to stardom. When the New Jersey hip-hop trio Fugees regrouped to record their second album, they went underground-to the basement of Wyclef Jean's uncle, which was transformed into a recording studio and rechristened as the Booga Basement.