Enough already about her personal shit. Enough of the gossip. Let’s just stop it and instead turn our minds to the fact that hiphop only has a handful of female rappers who made it big (meaning, entered the mainstream) by selling nothing but skills, and Ms. Lauryn Hill is one of those rappers. Her name is on two albums in the hiphop canon—the Fugees’ The Score and her own The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. There is also the raw boom-bap of the track “Lost Ones,” which is on Miseducation and put any doubt about her skills on the mic in the grave forever. So, none of this talking behind her back—let’s just show some respect to a person who did not subtract from but contributed to the great adventure of hiphop. (Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St, stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $35–$65, all ages)

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...