The Score

Fugees

1996

Taken as a whole, The Score is an album about the rap genre itself: its subjects (inner-city life, racism, police brutality), its myth and facade, and its members. It’s repeatedly self-referential: it begins with an intro that incorporates all of the song titles and themes of the album and the mid-album title track is a pastiche of samples from the album.

Lauryn Hill commented: “It’s an audio film. It’s like how radio was back in the 1940s. It tells a story, and there are cuts and breaks in the music. It’s almost like a hip hop version of Tommy, like what The Who did for rock music.”