By Chris Nguyen
Features Editor

I go through music cycles about every couple of weeks or so. Maybe it’s Radiohead. Maybe it’s The National. This past week, I have been obsessively playing non-stop Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on repeat. There’s something so genuine, so real about the album that it made me wonder, whatever happened to music?

This isn’t me being facetious. Instead, what I’m wondering is what happened to popular music that actually had soul. Because when Hill’s album came out 10 yeras ago, it set the charts on fire, going multiplatinum in months. She set the bar for music to be greater than merely a hook (though “Doo Wop (That Thing)” sure does have a hook) and everyone loved it.

Now, we’re living in a world where Ke$ha has to dress up in a spacesuit to sell singles. Maybe the reason “Tik Tok” and let’s be reall here, Gaga fans, “Poker Face” are so disposable because they’ve been tailored made to give a quick rush before falling to oblivion. While on the other hand, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill made with real instruments and uncompromising ambition sounds as fresh as it did over 10 years ago.

What this all boils down to is that music is missing an artist with integrity, a sense of purpose for just plain timeless music. You can call me nostalgic, but I’ll be listening to Lauryn Hill for a long time while you wonder why Usher’s “OMG” sounds so terrible a year from now.