Only 24 hours after being released from a three-month minimum-security prison term for tax evasion, singer-songwriter and rapper Lauryn Hill has released a stream of her latest track, Consumerism, online.
Hill fell in hot water in 2012, facing accusations of tax evasion stretching back three years. In June of that year, she released a statement explaining her tax evasion was part of a period that the singer spent living as a recluse, disconnected from society.
In April of this year, Hill announced that she would release new music when her legal travails cease. The following month she was sentenced to a three month term in a Connecticut minimum-security prison. Now a free citizen, Hill has said of the new track:
“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.”
Readers can hear the former Fugees member’s chaotic new track below.
(Via mxdwn)
Listen: Lauryn Hill – Consumerism
