Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean are marking 30 years of The Score with a project that asks fans to do more than revisit a landmark record. Fugees Hopeline is a phone-based public-art commission that lets callers hear a new Fugees medley and messages from Hill and Jean, then record their own reflections on hope.
The project launched November 5 with public-art platform CIRCA and three new Hill collages. Selah Marley narrates the phone experience. U.S. callers can dial +1 (424) 738-4337, while international participants can use the same number through WhatsApp.
Its basic proposition is intentionally simple: the telephone is both a playback device and a microphone. A caller hears material curated by the artists, then has an opportunity to answer the project’s central prompt in their own voice. Those contributions are intended to form an international audio archive, with selected recordings planned for presentation at Faena Forum in Miami Beach on December 4 and 5 during Art Basel Miami Beach.
A listening line that becomes a public artwork
Hopeline sits somewhere between an audio installation, a participatory archive and an artist-led call-in program. An audio archive, in this context, means a collection preserved through recorded voices rather than written submissions or static images. The important distinction is that visitors are not merely consuming a completed work: their recordings may become part of the project’s later form.
Hill and Jean have framed the invitation around the many possible meanings of hope. Their joint statement describes hope as something that may be found in a difficult moment, in an act of kindness, or in the belief that an individual voice has value. That broad approach matters. The project does not prescribe a single response or define a correct version of optimism; it asks participants to place their own experience at the center of the call.
“Hope means something different to everyone,” Hill and Jean said in their joint statement, describing the project as a space for people to share wisdom and stories while connecting through a sense of shared humanity.
For a group whose music connected to audiences internationally, the use of a number accessible by ordinary phone call—and via WhatsApp for people outside the United States—is a deliberate choice. It lowers the practical barrier to taking part compared with a gallery-only installation. At the same time, the eventual Miami Beach presentation gives selected recordings a physical public-art setting.
That does not mean every message is guaranteed to appear at the exhibition. The plan is for selected Hopeline recordings to be presented. People recording a contribution should therefore regard the call as an opportunity to participate in the wider archive, not a promise of exhibition inclusion.
Related coverage includes Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean Launch Fugees Hopeline for New Music and Fan Stories.
New Fugees material, but not a fully defined release
One of the line’s biggest draws is a first listen to a new Fugees medley. A medley is a sequence that joins multiple musical passages or songs into one continuous piece. The available details identify it as new Fugees audio, but do not establish whether it will receive a separate commercial or streaming release, identify every work incorporated into it, or provide a running time.
That distinction is useful for fans setting expectations. Hopeline is confirmed as the place to hear the medley; beyond that, its future availability has not been specified. The project’s emphasis is participation and presentation rather than a conventional album rollout.
The launch follows Hill and Jean’s November 4 anniversary performance at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. Announced dates continue in Las Vegas on November 6, Los Angeles on November 8 and Seattle on November 10. In that sense, Hopeline expands the anniversary beyond the concert stage without simply duplicating a tour experience: a live show has a fixed audience in a fixed place, while the call line can gather voices across locations over time.
For more music-world context on the site, see Ye’s planned Mexico City concert.
Why use a phone line?
The project draws inspiration from John Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem, which used telephone access to bring recorded poetry directly to listeners. Hopeline adapts that core idea for a two-way exchange: callers can hear artist-curated material, but can also leave a message of their own.
In practical terms, the format changes the role of the audience. A screen-based campaign can invite a comment, but a recorded phone message preserves inflection, hesitation, pace and accent. Those qualities can make voice submissions feel more personal than typed responses. They also give the future presentation an audible record of different speakers rather than a collection of quotations detached from the people who delivered them.
The phone format also carries a certain directness. It requires no claim that participants are critics, musicians or art-world regulars. The work’s question—what does hope mean in your life?—is available to anyone prepared to make a call and speak. That accessibility is consistent with CIRCA founder and artistic director Josef O’Connor’s description of the project as passing the microphone to the public.
Still, participation comes with a straightforward implication: a caller is creating a recording for a project intended to build an archive, and selected material is planned for public presentation. Anyone leaving a message should keep that public-facing purpose in mind and only share details they are comfortable voicing in that context.
From public screens to collages and recorded voices
The Hopeline number is scheduled to appear throughout November on London’s Piccadilly Lights, the Marriott L.A. Live screen in downtown Los Angeles, and other international locations. These displays make the invitation visible in high-traffic urban spaces, while the phone call supplies the quieter, individual interaction that follows.
Hill’s visual work accompanies the audio commission. Her three collages combine photographs, typography and archival images spanning three decades of Fugees history. The listed photographers are B+, Angela Thomas, Ricardo de Rozario, Hideo and Jonathan Mannion.
A collage is an artwork assembled from different visual elements. Here, the use of photographs, text and archive material connects the anniversary theme to a physical visual record. Rather than operating as a separate merchandise exercise, the images are part of a larger commission that joins music, voice, public display and visual culture.
Hill had previously worked with CIRCA on a public-art presentation in August, when she curated Lauren Halsey’s work for Piccadilly Lights as part of the broader Diaspora Calling! celebration. That earlier involvement helps explain the current project’s movement across formats: Hopeline is not only a music-related activation, but a continuation of Hill’s work in public-facing visual-art programming.
The print editions: sizes, signatures and open-order totals
For people interested in the physical editions, the available information separates the prints by size and signature treatment. Large A2 versions are hand-signed by Hill and Jean, limited to 500 of each design, and priced at about $1,350 individually or about $3,370 for the three-print group. Smaller A4 versions are stamp-signed, priced at about $270 each or about $675 for the set.
The distinction between hand-signed and stamp-signed is material. A hand-signed print carries signatures physically written by the artists. A stamp-signed print uses a signature stamp rather than an individually handwritten signature. Neither description, on its own, says anything about artistic quality; it tells buyers what form of marking is being offered and helps explain the difference between the editions.
The smaller editions also use an order-window model. Orders run from November 1 through December 31, and the total number sold during that period will determine the final edition size. In other words, the final quantity is not stated in advance. The A2 version, by contrast, has a declared maximum of 500 per design.
That is an important practical difference for anyone considering a print. A capped edition has a known ceiling, while an edition determined by sales has an eventual total that remains uncertain until ordering closes. The source material does not provide further production, shipping or resale details, so buyers should avoid assuming information beyond the stated sizes, pricing, signature methods and ordering period.
A 30th-anniversary project built around participation
Fugees Hopeline’s most notable move is to treat the anniversary as a conversation rather than only a retrospective. The new medley and messages from Hill and Jean recognize the artists’ side of that history. The public call-in element asks what listeners have carried forward from their own lives.
Its reach extends in several directions at once: callers can participate remotely, public screens can direct passers-by to the number, the collages provide a visual counterpart, and selected recordings are planned to enter a Miami Beach exhibition curated by Hill in collaboration with Saint Citizen. Each component has a different audience, but all circle the same question of whose voice belongs in a cultural commemoration.
For fans, the immediate route is clear: call the line, hear the new medley and decide whether to leave a message. For the project itself, the more ambitious outcome is still ahead. Its archive will be shaped not only by the Fugees’ history, but by the voices that choose to answer the call.
