Every year, the producers of the Grammy Awards look for a breakout performance from beyond its roster of nominees. A returning icon, perhaps, to bring the audience — millions of fans watching at home, along with the stars in the front rows — to full attention.
At the 68th annual ceremony on Sunday, that guest may be Lauryn Hill, who has been booked to pay tribute to Roberta Flack and D’Angelo as part of the Grammys’ annual segment honoring artists who have died in the past year.
The other performers announced so far this year include Justin Bieber; Sabrina Carpenter; and Clipse with Pharrell Williams, along with a segment highlighting all eight best new artist nominees: Alex Warren, Sombr, Addison Rae, Katseye, Leon Thomas, Olivia Dean, the Marías and Lola Young.
A successful appearance by Hill — a beloved artist, though one whose chronic tardiness and concert cancellations have sometimes tested her fans’ loyalty — could end up a top Grammy moment on the order of Tracy Chapman’s duet with Luke Combs on “Fast Car” in 2024. That performance, Lindsay Zoladz wrote in The New York Times, “was a genuine moment of warmth and unity, the sort seldom offered these days by televised award shows — or televised anything, really.”
Hill is closely associated with both Flack, who died last February at 88, and D’Angelo, who died in October at 51. As part of the Fugees, she landed a monster hit in 1996 with a remake of “Killing Me Softly,” the aching meditation on attraction that Flack took to No. 1 in 1973; with a hip-hop beat, the Fugees recast the song for a new era, and Hill’s melismatic flights announced her as a major new R&B-inflected voice.
D’Angelo joined Hill on “Nothing Even Matters,” a ballad from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” her 1998 debut solo album. That LP dominated the Grammy ceremony in 1999, winning album of the year and three prizes in the R&B field, with Hill also taking best new artist.
After D’Angelo died, Hill wrote on Instagram, “I regret not having more time with you.” She also posted a lengthy tribute to Flack on Instagram, saying she had “moved me and showed through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul.”
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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