Flack “moved me and showed me through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul,” Fugees singer writes
Lauryn Hill has penned a tribute to the late Roberta Flack, whose rendition of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” inspired the hit version recorded decades later by the Fugees.
“Whitney Houston once said to me that Roberta Flack’s voice was one of the purest voices she’d ever heard,” Hill wrote on Instagram Tuesday, a day after Flack’s death at the age of 88.
“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.”
In addition to the aforementioned essential songs, Flack also popularized “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” first recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1971 and inspired by that singer’s experience at a Don McLean concert. While Lieberman’s original wasn’t a big hit, Flack — who heard the song by chance on an airplane — turned it into a Number One smash, ultimately winning a Grammy for Record of the Year for her rendition in 1973.
Nearly a quarter-century later, Hill and the Fugees dropped their own rendition of the track, which became a Grammy-winning hit and arguably the group’s signature song. Both versions of “Killing Me Softly” — Flack and Fugees’ — landed on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs list.
“Mrs. Flack was an artist, a singer-songwriter, a pianist and composer who moved me and showed me through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul. 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,” Hill 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.”
