Where hip hop meets scripture: that's what Lauryn Hill calls her blockbuster album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It's a strange marriage, to be sure. The musical genre hip hop has earned its bad rap (no pun intended) from a number of quarters for having "gangsta" associations and inciting its listeners to violence. Leave it to a woman to come along and disrupt things!

Lauryn has done something totally new with hip hop, combining steady beats and lively lyrics chock full of unusual rhymes with an eclectic selection of other styles. She weaves in sounds from jazz, the blues, Motown and reggae, sometimes even affecting a Jamaican accent for added effect. The finished product has been phenomenally popular, and thus has met with not a little resentment from her colleagues. In return, Lauryn is obviously unimpressed with the creative stagnation of her fellow hip hoppers who sit on comfortable wads of cash and drag out the same old tricks again and again. Consider these words from "Superstar," which follow a flat, bored recitation of the Doors' "Light My Fire": "Now tell me your philosophy / On exactly what an artist should be / Should they be someone with prosperity / And no concept of reality?" One gets the impression from listening to some of these songs that Lauryn has paid a hefty price for being an uppity, innovative chick in a tiny (read: elitist, tight knit) male world — or at least that someone has tried to exact a price from her. One such clue is that she identifies strongly with motifs of betrayal, as in her lyrics "Like Cain and Abel, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas / Backstabbers do this" and "Just as Christ was superstar, you stupid star / They'll hail you then they'll nail you, no matter who you are."

That's where Lauryn's broad message begins, as she warns against the wealth, power and hypocrisy that so often accompany fame. She knows the dangerous territory; after all, she walked away with five Grammy awards, including album of the year and best new artist. But she's too grounded to let it all go to her head and ruin her. Lauryn is secure enough to tell the stark truth to her unspecified aggressors, as in her opening song "Lost Ones": "Wisdom is better than silver and gold / I was hopeless now I'm on Hope road / Every man want to act like he's exempt / When him need to get down on his knees and repent / Can't slick talk on the day of judgement / Your movement's similar to a serpent / Tried to play straight, how your whole style bent?" In the same vein, she advises those who would imitate her for the wrong reasons: "You could get the money, you could get the power, but keep your eyes on the final hour." Lauryn does just that, and so "I remain calm readin' the 73 Psalm / Cause wit all this on I got the world in palm." The fact is, she's got things so in perspective that she can afford to be gracious and forgiving to the very people who have been mistreating her. One whole song echoes the words of Jesus, the name and refrain of which is "Forgive them father for they know not what they do."

It would appear that Lauryn's good sense has a lot to do with South Orange, N.J. South Orange is more than just her childhood home; it's her current residence too — no posh Beverly Hills for Lauryn, thank you very much. Relocation was probably a pretty enticing possibility in some ways, since South Orange isn't exactly one of the nicest places in New Jersey. (Yes, all of you doubting Thomases, there are some nice places in New Jersey.) Lauryn decided to stick it out in the town that nurtured her and her music nonetheless, where everyone knows her as a person and not as a star, where friends drop by the place she calls home. That's the real world, and those are the real people she wants to reach. She pays tribute in "Every Ghetto, Every City" when she compares South Orange to, of all things, the New Jerusalem — the home of the people of God that she knows and loves. Wistfully she tells us within a melody reminiscent of Stevie Wonder's "Living in the City": "Looking at the crew, we thought we'd all live forever ... I wish those days, they didn't stop." She takes community seriously, and has now taken her place in the honorable line of pop stars who use their influence to foster social awareness and justice. She's started up a charity of her own, called the Refugee Project, which creates social programs for disadvantaged kids.

Along the same lines, her music evinces her deep concern for the spiritually hungry searching for meaning in their lives. In "Everything is Everything" she outlines what might be called her mission statement: "I wrote these words for everyone / Who struggles in their youth / Who won't accept deception / Instead of what is truth." That search for truth is at the heart of Lauryn's "miseducation," which she has explained doesn't mean some kind of academic brainwashing — actually, the album's songs are interspersed with cute snippets from what sounds like a high school seminar on love — but the education that went on outside school hours, with family, jobs, friends and lovers. That's where she learned the crucial lesson that has guided her through all the rest: "I hear so many cry for help / Searching outside of themselves / Now I know His strength is within me / And deep in my heart the answer it was in me / And I made up my mind to find my own destiny."

Of course, confidence in God's good will doesn't automatically mean an easy path — frequently just the opposite. Romance in particular has a way of taking over one's brain to the exclusion of everything else. In "Nothing Even Matters," Lauryn lists off all the things that cease to have any significance, for good or for ill, when she's in love: her boss calling, alcohol, natural disasters, manicures and even her team making it to the Final Four (imagine that!). Her one-track mind comes of expecting a lot from love, even when love hasn't quite lived up to her expectations. In "Ex-Factor," a song about heartbreak, she longs for all that a lover should do and be. "Care for me, care for me, I know you care for me; There for me, there for me, Said you'd be there for me; Cry for me, cry for me, You said you'd die for me; Give to me, give to me, Why won't you live for me?" Another heartbreak song, "I Used to Love Him," starts with an apology to heaven. "As I look at what I've done," she says, "the type of life I've lived / How many things I pray the father will forgive." She's thinking of a young man who bowled her over so completely that "he stole my heart like a thief in the night." In the end, happily, she got her priorities straight: "Father you saved me and showed me that life / Was much more than being some foolish man's wife / Showed that love was respect and devotion / Greater than planets deeper than oceans ... My heart is gold I took back my soul / And totally let my creator control / The life which was his to begin with." If only we could all be so mature about break-ups!

Now that she's learned her lesson, she has a few things to say to other girls — and guys, too. "Doo Wop (That Thing)" has struck a chord in the youth scene, doing great on the charts as a single as well as being arguably the catchiest tune on the album. Despite using crude sexual slang to make her point, Lauryn chastises "my men and my women" for their bad (sexual) behavior. She chides the girls for giving it away too easy to guys and for dressing in ways that attract the wrong kind of attention. She sympathizes, saying "Now Lauryn is only human / Don't you think I've been in the same predicament," but all the same, "it's silly when girls sell their soul because it's in." Her girlfriends are worth more than that, she insists: "Don't be a hardrock when you really are a gem." The second half of the song is dedicated to men, all kinds of men, all of whom come in for a serious lashing from Lauryn. They're the "wanna pack pistol by they waist men / Cristal by the case men, still in they mother's basement / The pretty face men, men claiming they did a bid men / Need to take care of their three and four kids men / The sneaky silent men the punk domestic violence men." After remarking "you wonder why women hate men," she admonishes them with near irresistible authority: "Stop acting like boys and be men / How you gon' win when you ain't right within?" In the meantime, she advises her pals to look out for their own interests: "Guys (girls), you know you better watch out, some girls (guys) are only about that thing." (Can you guess what that thing is?)

So Lauryn, in wisdom beyond her twenty-two years, has "miseducated" her fans about fame, hypocrisy, power, money, community, truth and love, seamlessly incorporating a myriad of biblical allusions, all with such dazzling charm and talent that even skeptics (like me) are completely won over. But there's no question that the single most beautiful, touching, astonishing song on the album is Lauryn's ode to her son, "To Zion." Without one single speck of self-righteousness or hollow political advocacy, she presents the most powerful case for motherhood and against abortion that pop culture has ever seen. It starts out with her fear at the terrible decision before her: "Unsure of what the balance held / I touched my belly overwhelmed / By what I had been chosen to perform." She claims nothing less than divine intervention in turning her plans upside down: "But then an angel came one day / Told me to kneel down and pray / For unto me a man child would be born." She refuses to dishonestly disguise a difficult decision as an easy one: "Woe this crazy circumstance / I knew his life deserved a chance." The bigger problem was that her option for life didn't meet with a warm reception among her friends. "But everybody told me to be smart / Look at your career they said / 'Lauryn, baby, use your head.'" (How ironic that in encouraging her to dispose of her child they called her "baby"!) The angel won the battle, though, because "I chose to use my heart" instead. The result? "Now the joy of world is in Zion," she proclaims, his holy name adding a delicious double entendre to the song.

It might come as a surprise to learn that Lauryn is "pro-choice": "And I thank you for choosing me / To come through unto life to be." Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Lauryn gives thanks for being chosen to be a mother. And she knows the one and only source of that blessing: "A beautiful reflection of his grace / For I know that a gift so great / Is only one God could create / And I'm reminded every time I see your face."

Who knows? Lauryn Hill might just be the living proof that there's nothing more avant-garde than eternal truth.