After the passing of Roberta Flack on Monday (Feb. 24), many tributes have poured in to honor the legendary singer and pianist. One of the tributes came from another iconic singer, Lauryn Hill.
Taking to Instagram, Ms. Hill lauded Flack for her musicianship as she shared throwback pictures of Flack and album covers for First Take and Killing Me Softly.
“Whitney Houston once said to me that Roberta Flack’s voice was one of the purest voices she’d ever heard,” Hill said. “I grew up scouring the records my Parents collected. Mrs. Flack was one of their favorites and quite instantly became one of mine as soon as I was exposed to her.”
“She looked cool and intelligent, gentle and yet militant. The songs she recorded from ‘Compared to What’ to ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ to her version of ‘Ballad of the Sad Young Men’ fascinated me with their beauty and sophistication,” she added.
Hill added that Flack was an “artist, a singer-songwriter, a pianist and composer” who displayed the possibilities of what could be done “within the idiom of Soul” with her “creative choices and standards.
“Killing Me Softly, a song Mrs. Flack didn’t write but made hugely popular became the song that catapulted myself and the Fugees into household phenomena,” she continued. “We wanted to honor the beauty and brilliance of this song and her performance of it to our generation.”
“I will forever be grateful for the sensitivity and delicate power of her Love and Artistry. Rest in Grace Beloved One,” she concluded.
In 1996, The Fugees remade one of Flack’s signature songs “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” For Flack, the track topped the Billboard Hot 100. It won the 1974 Grammy Award for Record of the Year. The Fugees’ version appeared on the multi-platinum album The Score and became an international smash. Although it was not released as a commercial single in the U.S., it eventually sold more than three million copies.
At the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, Flack graced the stage to perform the song along with the Fugees.
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