Back in 2012, during his first Coachella run, Frank Ocean covered Lauryn Hill’s “Tell Him,” which was an early sign of how much her writing and emotion clearly meant to him ✍️ Then in 2018, that lineage got even clearer when Frank appeared on A$AP Rocky’s “Purity,” a song built around a sample of Lauryn’s “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind.” Critics immediately pointed to that Lauryn sample as the emotional center of the record, with Frank floating over it in a way that felt very intentional… Lauryn helped define the blueprint for deeply personal, genre-blurring Black music in the modern era, and Frank came up sounding like someone who understood that blueprint on a cellular level. Even outside direct musical links, people have been comparing their impact for years: elusive artists, emotionally dense catalogs, and albums that feel so singular they stay in the conversation forever. Apple Music’s all-time albums list even put “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” at No. 1, with Frank’s “Blonde” ...