On her classic album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, one of the standout tracks was “To Zion.” The song was an introspective work about Hill’s decision to have her first child, Zion David Marley. Her career was climbing substantially at the time she became pregnant (though the Fugees split that same year), and those around her suggested that an abortion might have been the right way to go.
“Names wouldn’t come when I was ready to have him,” Hill told VIBE Magazine during an interview in 1998 about her son. “The only name that came to me was Zion. I was like, ‘is Zion too much of a weight to carry?’ But this little boy, man. I would say he personally delivered me from my emotional and spiritual drought. He just replenished my newness. When he was born, I felt like I was born again.”
He was born in August 1997. Almost 20 years later, the child we sang about in “To Zion” is now a 19-year-old man — and a father.
Zion and girlfriend Tania welcomed a son named Zephaniah Nesta Marley (Nesta was Bob’s middle name) this past weekend. While Hill, who has just welcomed her first grandchild, hasn’t said anything about the new addition to her family, Zion, his father, Rohan Marley, and sister Selah celebrated the birth on social media:
Anybody else feel old?
Congratulations to the entire family on their new blessing! Hill put it best when speaking about parenthood:
“It’s extraordinary how these babies are created, and they come to us and through us,” she said in that same aforementioned VIBE interview. “It’s hard to put into words. Trust me when I say this, it is the highest form of unconditional love that you can ever feel.”
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