Inside "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"

Marley: The musicians, my brothers, the whole studio was filled with people, this place was moving. And she's just walking around and dropped a verse on that, she gave everybody chills. Those lyrics, they cut through you.

"Nothing Even Matters"

Nobles: Lauryn was in the kitchen at the house up the hill in Jersey where she'd moved with her parents when we first played "Nothing Even Matters" for her. I was so excited but Lauryn didn't get it musically. Sony started putting a lot of pressure on her to hurry and wrap the record up. She started scrambling, going back through the ideas and then the lyrics came together.

Che Vicious: I was messing around with these finger snap sounds for the D'Angelo song ["Nothing Even Matters"] and she started coming with the song out of her head. We built the record around this weird snap pattern. That's how it was with her — the creative process wasn't this strict environment.

Randolph: "Nothing Even Matters" I hold dear to my heart because I got to meet Mr. D'Angelo, himself.

D'Angelo: Collaborating with Lauryn was very cool. She was warm and sweet. Originally, we were going to swap tunes for each other's projects because I was working on Voodoo at the same time and my keyboardist James Poyser was also working with her. I went to her house in New Jersey, she played a lot of songs for me and gave me a rough copy to listen to. When Lauryn and I went into in the studio together, I laid down my vocals in the course of an hour.

"Everything Is Everything"

Nobles: A friend of mine had a little studio in East Orange [New Jersey] where "Everything Is Everything" came about. Lauryn didn't need to use fancy studios — she was down. The title concept came from Donny Hathaway. Then John Legend came by and played. He was trying to get his career off the ground.

John Legend: I was in the spring of my junior year at University of Pennsylvania. A friend invited me to give her a ride to Lauryn's house in Jersey. Lauryn was working "Everything Is Everything." I sang and played a couple songs for her. She asked me to play piano on the track. She guided me a little bit but it was pretty simple because I was playing along with a string part that was already there. I became known around campus as the dude who played on "Everything Is Everything." It was my little claim to fame at Penn for my whole senior year.