Lauryn Hill, Snoop Dogg Join Rock the Bells Festival

Tweet

This year's four-city Rock the Bells tour added three more headliners to its already stacked lineup of hip-hop acts: Snoop Dogg, A Tribe Called Quest and, for three of the dates, Lauryn Hill will all be joining previously announced performers like the Wu-Tang Clan, Rakim, Slick Rick and Tom Morello's Street Sweeper Social Club.

Snoop Dogg, along with Warren G and Tha Dogg Pound, will be performing the entirety of his 1993 masterpiece Doggystyle, while A Tribe Called Quest will revisit their own 1993 classic Midnight Marauders. But the biggest news is the addition of Lauryn Hill, who will bring a set that culls from both her Fugees years plus songs off her landmark 1998 LP The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Hill's involvement has been rumored for several weeks, but she was left off the initial lineup announcement. Hill will join Rock the Bells August 21st in Los Angeles, August 28th in New York City and August 29th outside Washington, DC. Hill is skipping the fest's August 22nd date at San Francisco's Shoreline Amphitheatre because she'll be performing in that market on June 13th at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California.

For more on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, check out our oral history on Hill's landmark debut.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, this year's Rock the Bells will include full-album performances by Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers), Rakim (Paid in Full), Slick Rick (The Adventures of Slick Rick) and KRS-One (Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded), plus slots by Clipse with Wiz Khalifa, Murs and 9th Wonder, Tom Morello's Street Sweeper Social Club and DJ Premier with a "Tribute to Gang Starr."

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES The 10 Best Zombie Movie Scenes
• 
  TV The Most WTF? Moments of 'Mad Men'
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“He Will Break Your Heart”

Jerry Butler | 1960

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter