UPDATE: TMZ reports that Lauryn Hill has been released from federal prison after her three month sentence, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Hill, who was Inmate #64600-050, was released from the minimum security Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
She has been imprisoned since July 8 after she didn't pay taxes on over $1.8 million between income earned in 2005 and 2007.
If the Danbury prison sounds familiar to you, it may be because it's the same prison that the TV show Orange is the New Black takes place in.
ORIGINAL: Billboard reports that Lauryn Hill has released a new song called "Consumerism" just before she is released from prison today. She has served a three month sentence for tax evasion. The song was written before she went began the sentence and mixed while she was imprisoned.
She posted a message on her Tumblr page to explain the song. She wrote:
"Consumerism is part of some material I was trying to finish before I had to come in. We did our best to eek out a mix via verbal and emailed direction, thanks to the crew of surrogate ears on the other side. Letters From Exile is material written from a certain space, in a certain place. I felt the need to discuss the underlying socio-political, cultural paradigm as I saw it. I haven't been able to watch the news too much recently, so I'm not hip on everything going on. But inspiration of this sort is a kind of news in and of itself, and often times contains an urgency that precedes what happens. I couldn't imagine it not being relevant. Messages like these I imagine find their audience, or their audience finds them, like water seeking its level."
The tax evasion charges happened after Hill failed to pay taxes on around $1 million in earnings. She wrote a criticism on Tumblr when she was arrested, rejecting pop culture's "climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism." Before she was sentenced, she said that threats to herself and her family were why she left the music industry and didn't pay the taxes. It didn't help her case.
The song will appear on her upcoming album Letters From Exile.
