The Fugees covered the song in 1996 on their album The Score, with Lauryn Hill singing the lead vocals. Their version, titled “Killing Me Softly,” became a hit, reaching number two on the U.S. airplay chart, and had similar success in the UK, reaching number one, becoming 1996’s best selling single in the country.
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The version sampled the 1990 song “Bonita Applebum” by A Tribe Called Quest from their debut album People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. ATCQ themselves had sampled the riff from the song “Memory Band” found on the self-titled album of a little-known 1960s psychedelic soul Chicago band called Rotary Connection. The Fugees single was so successful that the track was ‘deleted’ and thus no longer supplied to retailers whilst the track was still in the Top 20 so that attention could be drawn to the next single ‘Ready or Not’. Propelled by the success of the Fugees track, the version by Flack was remixed in 1996 and topped the Hot Dance Club Play chart. In 2008, it was ranked number 25 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop and #44 on its list of the “100 Greatest Songs of the 90s”.
