Lauryn Hill Tribute at BET Awards 2026 Is the Most Joyful Thing

While The Fugees only released two albums, one of them was the smash hit 1996 LP The Score, featuring their oh-so-memorable cover of Robert Flack‘s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” featuring Hill’s velvety vocals.

And then she may have only put out that one solo LP, but the aftershocks are still rippling across the culture to this day from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the first (and still only first of two) hip-hop release to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

The crew gathered onstage—which also included Tierra Whack, Tems, Nas, Rapsody and Alexia Jayy—was testament to how much education she has provided her fellow artists since.

And you don’t see an awards show tribute every day that requires an intermission, the ceremony going to commercial break after a run that included snippets of “Fu-Gee-Law,” “Killing Me Softly,” “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “Lost Ones” and more before Hill took the stage for her own fiery performance of “Ex-Factor.”

“I do this because I love y’all, you know?” she said as her acceptance speech got underway after Ice Cube handed her the actual statue. “I do this because I want you to have everything that I experienced, right? I had wonderful parents who loved on me, poured into me and protected me. And once I realized that not everybody got to have that experience, I felt like it was my duty, my responsibility to share as much love, and to pour into as much people as I possibly could. And music was a way for me to do that.”

Hill continued, “But also, I have always cared about the expression of and the representation of the dignity of our people.”

Noting that sometimes artists are put in places to say things that “aren’t always comfortable,” she added, “we understand that people will understand later.”

“Everybody may not know it, but I fight for y’all,” Hill said. “And fighting for y’all is me fighting for myself. It’s me fighting for my children, it’s me fighting for my parents, it’s me fighting for my grandparents. It’s me fighting for my community.”

We all have different gifts, the artist added, and that’s important “because somebody out there needs your gift, so don’t sell your gift short.”

And then she closed the show with “Everything Is Everything,” which doesn’t always feel like the case, but tonight it did.

See all the stars who came out to experience this and so much more at the 2026 BET Awards: