Who Sampled Ex Factor:
The most iconic line from the song is undoubtedly, ‘Loving you is like a battle / And we both end up with scars.’ This line perfectly captures the pain of heartbreak and the complexity of love. The entire song is a reflection on how it feels to experience a failed relationship. She questions how a person can so easily discard someone who has given them everything. She talks about how hard it is to let go and how it would be easier to hold on, even though she knows it is not what is best for her. Upon its release, “Ex-Factor” received widespread critical acclaim.[3] The song peaked at number 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and at number seven on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Internationally, it peaked within the top five in Iceland and the United Kingdom.
The laziest Hill samplers merely use her as a signifier, recycling her words and her melodies as substitutes for their own ideas. But the more clever ones have used Hill to enhance their own perspectives. The song has been sampled in many other songs in the hip hop and R&B genres.
Supreme Court ruled on Monday that only Congress, not states, can enforce Section 3, meaning votes for Trump in those states will still count. President Biden is the leading contender for the Democratic nomination, and he has no substantial primary challenge, while former President Donald Trump is leading former U.N. Listen to the song above and read all the lyrics to Drake’s ‘Nice For What’ and Lauryn Hill’s ‘Ex Factor’ on Genius now.
The 16-track album is filled with powerful messages, perfect songwriting and technically sound rapping. Not only is her solo debut scripture-worthy, her group work with the Fugees was also tremendously influential. From Talib Kweli to Nicki Minaj, Ms. Hill’s peers and musical successors have paid homage in one way, shape or form. Critics largely hated Lauryn Hill’s 2002 live great post to read album, taped during her performance for ‘MTV Unplugged,’ but rappers have mined it for inspiration constantly. In his verses, the Wu MC takes fans and reviewers to task for their roles in, what he believes to be, a misguided rap culture fueled by unwarranted criticism. ‘They’ve got so much things to say right now,’ Lauryn sings, in this context echoing Meth’s sentiment.
Two years after the release of her d’but, she parted ways with her management and fell in with a spiritual guru. She spat at the wealth and sex of the day through her performance on ‘MTV Unplugged No. 2.0,’ the live acoustic effort she released in 2002, which extends the provocations of ‘Miseducation’ in alternately prophetic and parodic ways. Since then, she has occasionally released singles, including ‘The Passion,’ for Mel Gibson’s film ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ but not another album. In the few interviews she has given, she has emphasized that she finds not only the music industry but also the whole of Western culture to be incompatible with her world view.
Providing even more atonement is lush, gorgeous production work, fueled by a sample of ‘Can It All Be So Simple.’ Still fresh, years later. The most recent example is Drake’s brand new song ‘Nice for What,’ which features a sample of Miseducation’s ‘Ex-Factor,’ a top 10 single on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 1999. The name of the song is derived from clever wordplay; ‘ex’ as in ex-relationship, but also ‘x’ as in x-factor i.e. special something. According to Vada Nobles, one of the producers of ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, this song is entitled ‘Ex-Factor’ because it was originally conceptualized to be used by a female group who were known as Ex Factor.
As the 20th anniversary of Lauryn Hill’s debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, approaches, it’s clear to see that the Fugees singer continues to have a profound influence on modern-day hip-hop and R&B. It’s called Super Tuesday because more delegates are at stake on March 5 than on any other single date during the primary campaign. There are 865 Republican delegates that will be allocated, and the winner of the GOP presidential nomination must collect 1,215 delegates. On Tuesday, Democratic primaries will allocate a total of 1,420 delegates, and 1,968 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination. ‘Ex-Factor’ was also later sampled by big-name rap acts, such as Drake on his 2018 track ‘Nice for What’ and Cardi B on a song she released that same year entitled ‘Be Careful’.
It encourages listeners to reflect on their own experiences with relationships and to find hope in the midst of pain. This month, L-Boogie has returned to the music spotlight in a major way, thanks to some of today’s hottest artists. Cardi B sampled the legendary rapper/singer’s classic song “Ex Factor” for her own scorned anthem “Be Careful.” Drake doubled down with a sample of the same song on his new hit single “Nice For What,” placing Ms. Hill’s riffs in the forefront.
And basically, what she is doing throughout is lamenting the state of their romance. More to the point, Lauryn presents herself as the victim of emotional abuse and neglect. And even though this relationship is tearing her apart, she is so much in love that she cannot turn her abusive, on-and-off partner away. In the midst of a Lauryn Hill resurgence in spirit, XXL took a look back at some of the hardest songs to sample the music icon, listed in reverse chronological order. In addition to Drake and Cardi B, ‘Ex-Factor’ has been sampled by several other notable acts, including Omarion, Lil B and Kehlani.
His 2014 loosie ‘Draft Day’ was released to commemorate the then-upcoming drafts for NFL prospect Johnny Manziel and NBA prospect Andrew Wiggins. The song itself panned out about as well as the players it celebrated, slowing Hill’s ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’ vocals down to the point of deflating them. Drake’s second swing at invoking the rap icon, on the early song of the summer contender ‘Nice For What,’ is much more spirited and flat-out more fun.
Plus, the beat breaks and drum patterns to which she’d flow are nostalgia ultra. As Doreen St. F’lix recently wrote in The New Yorker, ‘Part of the point of sampling Hill is to tap into her cult of seriousness. As an artist, advice she represents a purity almost to the point of abstinence.’ Hill does personify a certain rap virtue, and sampling her can mean channelling that, but that purity can be and has been distorted to express other things.
Notable examples include Drake’s ‘Nice for What’, Cardi B’s ‘Be Careful’, and Kanye West’s ‘Lost in the World’. The album features several other hit songs, including ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’, ‘Everything Is Everything’, and ‘To Zion’. Lauryn Hill states that the song was inspired by the many failed relationships of those closest to her.
“Ex-Factor” is a song by American recording artist Lauryn Hill for her debut solo studio album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). Written and produced by Hill herself, it incorporates elements of R&B, neo soul and hip hop soul. It speaks to the universal experience of heartbreak and the complexity of love.
However, it was ultimately decided that Lauryn should drop it herself due to its personal nature of the narrative contained therein. And on the instrumental, she samples a track by another 1990s hip-hop act, the Wu-Tang Clan, entitled ‘Can It Be All So Simple’ (1994). The album was released in 1998 and was critically acclaimed, winning several Grammy Awards. “Ex-Factor”, although not as successful as Hill’s previous single “Doo Wop (That Thing)”, still entered several international charts. It spent 22 weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 21 on the chart dated April 10, 1999.
He’s less sullen than he’s been recently, party-ready and perhaps (temporarily) freed from his usual insecurities. But the sample itself, produced by Murda Beatz and Allen Ritter, does most of the work. The song constructs page a winding carousel out of Hill’s pleas, functioning as a curio all on its own; it coolly, unexpectedly, mashes up her heartfelt hip-hop soul with joyful New Orleans bounce, conjuring up an intoxicating dance-rap hybrid.