How Fugees’ ‘The Score’ defined an era of alternative hip-hop

The record is woven together with samples that bring to life the trio’s intense love for music, including cuts from the Delfonics, Moody Blues, Cymande, and more. It’s cut through with skits that are frantic, harrowing and, at points, a bit silly — listen to the Chinese restaurant one after ‘The Beast’ now and it’s, at best, puerile, if not out and out racist. (Though, in line with Fugees’ music fandom seeping into every moment, even the stereotyped restaurateur is singing Michael Jackson to himself). 

One sample that almost backfired was their infamous use of Enya’s ‘Boadicea’ as the haunting backdrop to ‘Ready or Not’. Enya nearly sued the group for not seeking permission, before settling out of court after hearing the song and apparently realising they weren’t gangsta rappers. This was something of a point of pride for the Fugees: ‘The Score’ has a knowingness about what cuts through lyrically, often making fun of the dominant force that was gangsta rap. Take two great Hill lines: “So while you imitating Al Capone / I’ll be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone”, and “Even after all my logic and my theory, I add a ‘motherfucker’ so you ign’ant n****s hear me.” 

But just because they were dubious of kids who got into hip-hop “for all the wrong reasons”, that does not mean Fugees didn’t recognise the fraught socio-political backdrop that underpinned so much gangsta rap — the inherent systemic danger of being Black in America. Released on the same day as the final Tupac album, ‘The Score’ is, in many ways, conversant with his earlier work in the school of conscious rap, even if the album ultimately led to beef between them, with Jean’s verse on ‘Cowboys’ containing a dig at rappers-turned-actors, which ‘Pac rebutted in his own song, ‘When We Ride On Our Enemies’. 

“Oh, say can’t you see, the cops more crooked than we,” Jean laments over the swirling grogginess of ‘The Beast’, interpolating the US national anthem into a critique of police brutality. For all that this is an album of its time, there are certainly moments that feel horribly evocative of the present moment. Watching the news in 2026, or at any point in the last decade — whether it be the brutal actions of police forces and ICE agents, violent apartheid states, or the sheer impunity of those with wealth and power — and the pertinence of many of the lines on this album is harrowing. Again, on ‘The Beast’, Jean offers: “You can’t search me without probable cause […] Now you ask me for my license, registration / Where the fuck do I work? / What the fuck is my occupation?” It’s a reminder that the United States as a project has never been accommodating to those it perceives outsiders.