The continuing education of Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill performs.
7:53 am Jan. 3, 20112
In the 12 years since the release of her unanimously acclaimed solo album, Lauryn Hill has drummed up a hefty lot of confusion and head-shaking from fans and critics.
Artistic inactivity, passive-aggressive bickering with her Fugees counterparts, bizarre religious entanglements and a spotty live performance reputation represent a small fraction of the behavior that's made her seem like a lunatic in the public eye.
Hill launched an East Coast tour with six New York dates at small venues: The Music Hall of Williamsburg, the Bowery Ballroom, and a three-night stint at the Blue Note that begins tonight—that has her working a grueling schedule. Her failure to arrive promptly at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where she kicked off on Tuesday evening (the blizzard had moved her engagement at Hammerstein Ballroom to Feb. 1), should have come as no big surprise: Hill’s earned earned her reputation as a disgruntled diva who’s misplaced a few marbles along the way, and that night a crippling blizzard had just finished dumping almost two feet of snow on the city. It was a miracle she showed at all.
Still, when she teetered onto the stage at a quarter past midnight (the show had been scheduled for 8:30 and no openers had performed), the crowd was angry.
Moments earlier, concertgoers were lobbing drinks at the band and DJ who had become exhausted trying to placate them. Would Hill get a drink-toss to the head?
She began by being mostly unapologetic: Teeth sunk into the hand feeding her (tickets to each of her six sold-out New York shows cost $75; she was rumored in 2008 to have moved into her mother’s house in New Jersey), she pronounced: "All those who aren't happy are always free to go back and ask for a refund … When I hear people complain, I don't know what to tell you."
And: "I personally know I'm worth the wait."
Hackles up, gasping for breath, Hill ended her self-righteous diatribe in the nick of time.
“Let’s start the show with a Bob [Marley] tune,” she directed her band, who began a rendition of “Forever Loving Jah.”
But Hill relaxed into her spot on stage and offered up a strong vocal performance. While she seemed unprepared for the physicality of a live show, mopping sweat from her brow and catching her breath at any free moment, her voice stayed powerful and clear as she belted her way through a set list consisting mostly of material from her 1998 debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and former bandmates The Fugees’ The Score. Her rap game was similarly polished: despite her apparent physical exhaustion, she delivered each of Wyclef Jean and Pras’s verses from assorted Fugees tracks, in addition to her own, without a snag. Hill is one of the very few artists whose vocal strength ends up being a crutch for the rickety structure of the rest of the operation.
It was a shame, then, that her pipes were forced to compete with the army of accompaniment she’d brought on stage. They performed excessively embellished versions of her classics, largely stripped of the sounds that initially categorized her as a hip-hop artist.
Some songs were upwards of 10 minutes long and filled with flourishes and instrumental solos that pushed them beyond recognizability, if her voice hadn't been there to guide the way. During a needlessly long electric bass solo at the end of “To Zion,” the song that tells of her 1996 impregnation by Rohan Marley, one irritated onlooker summed up the instrumental bloat:
“This is actually happening,” she said in disbelief. “Bring the DJ back out, because nobody gives a fuck about the bass player.”
She was right: minutes later, Hill and her band performed “Ready Or Not,” sticking closely to the sound of its original recording instead of bogging it down with decoration, and struck on a fresh swell of excitement from the crowd.
Having won back the crowd, Hill now was able to be contrite.
“I deeply apologize for being late,” she said, going on to express her gratitude toward the fans at length.
Hill had fueled rumors in an NPR interview that she's preparing to release new recorded material, so this tour was booked with the feel of a comeback. But no new material was played, which is perhaps the biggest indicator that those rumors were only bait and that Hill maybe just needed a new source of income and publicity.
But if Hill’s impromptu leap back under the spotlight doesn’t lead up to a new album and a full-fledged comeback, it’s not necessarily to her detriment.
If anything, the success of the sold-out, hastily promoted tour of intimate venues has shown that fans are willing to wait years, and then hours more, for the chance to catch Hill performing songs that are 12 and 15 years old. In her half-hearted attempts at being a comeback kid, she’s proven herself a bit washed-up and quite a bit wacky. But she's also proven that the small output of her career so far is classic and resilient enough to matter for a long time.
Lauryn Hill has fascinated me because I think that, in a lot of ways, she's hip-hop's first bona fide spoiled diva. She's got the hallmark symptoms: mild contempt for fans, a tendency to attach herself zealously to religions and new causes, and artistic self-indulgence and erratic output. Like most rock and r&b divas, she seems to have a personality disorder and quite possible bipolar disorder- a mood disorder at least.
Psychological observations aside, I think that she's kind of the originator of a new- and sort of annoying- hip-hop artist archetype. The Fugees and Hill were kind of the first to make it really big with genre-bending in hip-hop (others preceded them, but none became as huge). The hip-hop diva has a tendency towards genre-bending- the heirs of her diva legacy- M.I.A. and Kanye West strike me as similar to her. There's the the predeliction towards high-profile media feuds with reporters and former collaborators, and an adoption of fashion and affectations that lie outside of the typical hip-hop palette. These divas separate themselves from the older style hip-hop divas like 50 Cent or Sean Combs in that they are more decidedly within the lines of hip-hop as it is popularly portrayed. Whatever genre-bending they do is flagrantly capitalist and publicity-driven; they don't seem too interested in it creatively. The new diva does, and has the megalomaniacal entitlement that comes with wide acclaim as "groundbreaknig" Their pretentions of prophetic, visionary status are what make them annoying, as opposed to just harmlessly boring like Diddy or Puffy or whatever the hell he goes by now.
This kind of diva-ism, as you noted, has a really long shelf-life. For years to come, people will pay 75 bucks a pop to see Hill perform whether she delivers as well as she did at this show or not. I think that the kind of mixing with other genres that she did, and that her diva heirs Kanye and company have done even more extensively, is (or will be) the secret to their ability to sell out shows long after many of their more categorically rap-style counterparts have to play increasingly smaller venues for decreasing paychecks.Their crossover appeal means that non hip-hop fans will be insurance against the flagging support of purist rap fans who will be less interested as the artist becomes increasingly annoying and entitled. More importantly, as their ability to work a crowd at a concert disintegrates, hip hop fans will continue to flee because live shows are so important to them. The fans who dabble in hip-hop and adore Kanye, but feel uncomfortable with Masta Killa or MOP, will show up for years to come.
More straight rap artists can't count on that. If they go diva and believe their own hype, as KRS-One, Chuck D and others have, they'll fade. Artists that avoided the kind of thing, like Big Daddy Kane, or even Run DMC, can count on hip-hop fans for years, but probably won't be able to charge 100 bucks a ticket for a show they headline, sell as many new albums, or get the same amount of ink for performing.
In the new era of the mash-up, when genre-bending in all subcultures is more tolerated and the tribalism of popular music dies off, this new diva will be more and more common. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Kanye West and MIA have been releasing consistently good music. Lauryn Hill's next album, if their ever is one, will probably be good. I guess the moral of the story is that if you're kind of an asshole and are starting out in rap, have someone play a violin or something on your debut. You'll sell out shows for years.
"We can end that conversation with that right there."