I’m cised (DC style) about this one yo. So maybe about…9 or 10 years ago a friend played this Lauryn Hill song that she had on some random mix-tape ( yes, an actual tape) for me and my friends to listen to. All of us who were there to hear this were just in awe at the lyrical content, the style & arrangement of her vocals and just the overall feel to such a hot song.

Naturally we all rushed to dub a copy and we contently played it out on our walkmans with the satisfaction of knowing that this was a work of art with a limited amount of listeners. It wasn’t on Lauryn’s masterpiece, “The Miseducation” and it wasn’t on my copy of ‘Unplugged’. We had no idea the name of the song or when and where it was recorded. All we knew was that it was one of the most incredible love songs we had heard from her and that the logistics of the recording was just one huge mystery.

This all occurred during a time when the cassette tape was rapidly becoming obsolete, (well…it probably was already pretty much obsolete, I was just late catching up with the times) and it was all about the mix CD; so eventually that mix-tape I had became lost maybe even tossed into an unknown oblivion consisting of tapes, VHS cassettes, walkmans, and VCR’s.

So as it happened, the music industry progressed, Napster was introduced and the way music fans accessed music suddenly became a whole lot different. And one day it dawned on me: “where in the world is that Lauryn Hill song??” And sadly no one I knew had it anymore. I searched and searched every peer to peer file sharing site to no avail. I remembered the opening lines of the song being, “Your love is like the ocean and I am like the sand” (dope right?) so I tried Googling that a bunch of times but had no luck. 

 Lo and behold last week, one my girlfriends called me (she was also on the mad hunt for this song) and played on my voicemail the ‘Lauryn Song” as we had named it and I just couldn’t believe it. After all this time, I finally heard it again. So now I must share this because odds are a lot of you probably missed it. 

The song, titled ‘A Perfect Match’ is rumored to be a free-style that she recorded along with reggae artist Kali Ranks sometime in the 90’s.  I’ve dug around but can’t come up with much more info than that. So in a way, it’s still a mystery. But her writing/free-styling is impeccable and I’m just happy to have the song in my iPod. Thank you Erica Jones for finding this again! Enjoy.

Lauryn Hill – World Is a Hustle

Some unreleased Lauryn Hill for y’all. Where has she been hiding? No word on if this track is new or old, but its nice to hear at least some new Lauyrn until that “comeback” album sees the light of day.