Lauryn Hill gets out of jail tomorrow in Danbury, Connecticut after spending the past three months there for tax evasion charges. The song is one of the first from Hill in years and comes on the heels of a Sony deal she signed to help ease the fines associated with the tax evasion charges. If anything, it seems as though she has packed all those years of empty releases into on 4:50 song, rapping so much it’s sometimes hard to tell there is indeed a beat behind her. Hill released a statement with the track:
“‘Consumerism’ is part of some material I was trying to finish before I had to come in. We did our best to eek out a mix via verbal and emailed direction, thanks to the crew of surrogate ears on the other side. Letters From Exile is material written from a certain space, in a certain place. I felt the need to discuss the underlying socio-political, cultural paradigm as I saw it. I haven’t been able to watch the news too much recently, so I’m not hip on everything going on. But inspiration of this sort is a kind of news in and of itself, and often times contains an urgency that precedes what happens. I couldn’t imagine it not being relevant. Messages like these I imagine find their audience, or their audience finds them, like water seeking it’s level.” — Lauryn Hill