New music: Lauryn Hill – ‘Consumerism’

To mark her release from prison after serving three months for tax evasion, Lauryn Hill has premiered a new track, Consumerism.

Bar this, and pre-prison track Neurotic Society, Hill has been fairly absent from the music scene of recent years; a failed Fugees’ reunion in 2007 followed her groundbreaking LP The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill from 1998.

To coincide with the release, Hill released the following statement:

“‘Consumerism’ is part of some material I was trying to finish before I had to come in. We did our best to eek out a mix via verbal and emailed direction, thanks to the crew of surrogate ears on the other side. Letters From Exile is material written from a certain space, in a certain place. I felt the need to discuss the underlying socio-political, cultural paradigm as I saw it. I haven’t been able to watch the news too much recently, so I’m not hip on everything going on. But inspiration of this sort is a kind of news in and of itself, and often times contains an urgency that precedes what happens. I couldn’t imagine it not being relevant. Messages like these I imagine find their audience, or their audience finds them, like water seeking it’s level.”