Lauryn Hill Leads Emotional Grammy In Memoriam Tribute to D’Angelo and Roberta Flack, Reunites With Fugees’ Wyclef Jean

A Grammy In Memoriam segment for both D’Angelo and Roberta Flack, curated by Lauryn Hill and some of her musician friends, brought the house down with soulful performances.

During the D’Angelo segment, Hill began by singing alongside D’Angelo’s vocals over their song “Nothing Even Matters,” followed by Lucky Daye’s rendition of “Brown Sugar.” Raphael Saadiq and Anthony Hamilton were next up with “Lady,” with Leon Thomas following with “Devil’s Pie.” The last stretch featured Transition with Vanguard BGVS performing “Another Life,” Bilal singing “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” and Jon Batiste closing with “Africa.”

For the Flack tribute, Hill and Batiste performed “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” with Leon Bridges joining Batiste to follow with “Compared to What.” Lalah Hathaway and October London followed with “Closer I Get to You,” with John Legend and Chaka Khan up next with “Where Is the Love.” Hill covered the Flack song “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” which D’Angelo also covered, as the penultimate song, with Hill reuniting with her Fugees bandmate Wyclef Jean for Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which transitioned into the Fugees version for the rousing end.

D’Angelo was a widely influential R&B singer-songwriter who helped pioneer the genre of music known as “neo-soul” and is known for such hits as “Lady,” “Brown Sugar” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel?).” He was a reclusive figure who released just three albums in a career spanning more than 30 years, but his influence on ensuing generations of musicians has been vast. His death from cancer last year at the age of just 51 came as a surprise even to many who had been close to him.

Flack was a legendary pop/R&B vocalist who was launched to stardom in the early ’70s by the Grammy-winning hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” the latter of which enjoyed a second life thanks to the hit cover version by Hill and the Fugees in 1996. The classically trained vocalist also enjoyed a string of hits with singer Donnie Hathaway in the early ‘70s, most notably “Where Is the Love?,” and had a decades-long career after her charting years were over. She died last February at the age of 88.