12. Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Arguably one of the most important albums in Hip-Hop, the 1998 release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill merged rap music’s honesty with the full gamut of love expressions found in R&B. The cover represented the theme of the project, threaded throughout its 16 tracks and interludes. On the front, there was a replication of a wooden school desk, with her face carved in. Her face, framed by her lovely locs, seemed to stare off (as students usually do). Undeniably Black and Caribbean influenced, many have likened the simplicity of this cover with the burning of the portrait into the imagining of wood to the Burnin’ cover from The Wailers. A nod to the Marley family, a clan that she later found herself intimately in a relationship with as her children are the grands to legendary Tuff Gong.