Lauryn Hill had the support of her children as she returned to the Grammy Awards stage Sunday night for the first time in 27 years.
The performance marked Hill’s first time back to the awards show since 1999. That year, her debut album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, won Album of the Year and made her the first hip hop artist to receive the award.
This year’s return came under very different circumstances. Hill took part in the in memoriam segment at the 68th Grammy Awards, which paid honor to the late Roberta Flack and D’Angelo.
The tribute opened with a celebration of D’Angelo’s catalog. Hill, along with Lucky Daye, Raphael Saadiq, Anthony Hamilton, and Leon Thomas, delivered renditions of “Brown Sugar,” “Lady,” and “Devil’s Pie.”
The focus later shifted to Roberta Flack’s music. Hill performed “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Where Is the Love,” before closing the tribute with a combined performance of “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” The final moments brought the singer back together with her Fugees bandmate Wyclef Jean.
“Overly blessed I was able to see this live,” Hill’s daughter Sara Marley wrote on her Instagram Stories, sharing photos from the night.
Lauryn Hill recorded her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, while she was pregnant with her first son, Zion.
Becoming a mother during the height of her career sparked controversy at the time, and she later reflected on that experience in the song “To Zion”.
“That song is about the revelation that my son was to me,” Hill said in a 1999 interview with The Guardian. “I had always made decisions for other people, making everybody else happy, and once I had him that was really the first decision that was unpopular for me…And it was the best decision that I could have ever made because I’m the happiest and healthiest that I have ever been.”
In all, Hill is a mother of six. She shares sons Zion, Joshua, and John, and daughters Selah and Sara with Rohan Marley. She welcomed her son Micah in 2021 with an unidentified man.