It has been some 14 years since I saw Lauryn Hill’s dowdy performance on the “Miseducation” tour at the Theatre At MSG.
No reason I can think of for Hill, at the height of he success, to fail so miserably at proving it -then again, if she had been happy why would she have disappeared for over a decade.
Lauryn played a free concert at Prospect Park a coupla years ago and two sets this year… So with anticipation sky high for the return of Lauryn Hill, there was well over an hour between Boogie Down Productions and the set beginning. Bored and hot I went for a walk around and from a distance heard “X Factor” playing in the distance. For some reason there was no close circuit for this set so all I can hear is a Ramonesy speed rap through the song: all bass, only bass, metallic, harsh, and a guy rapping.
Except as I push my way to the stage it isn’t a guy t all. It is Lauryn. To get personal, she has put on weight and no, I don’t care, but her voice hasn’t aged particularly well either. It is harsh, husky, a throttling rattle without respite.
And from there till near the end, the set is as aggressive as you can imaginable. The LA Times said her skills are unimpaired last week. I can’t say I agree. The mix was dreadful, and her energy was huge and exciting, but if she did “Lost Ones” or “Doo Wop (That Thing)” I didn’t recognize them. All I saw was Lauryn dancing up a storm and sounding fairly yech. A new song “Beautiful Fire” off what she states is a new album called, Thank You, God, is energetic but more MTV Unplugged, Lauryn’s scary follow up to Miseducation, two CDs and not a melody line, than anything human. Her dancing and her funking shines but there is no gentleness. Passion and not heart. She needed both.
And as she moves to the sets conclusion you might be forgiven for thinking that the lack of heart, the lack of softness, is a good thing. An out of tune “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was easily the worst moment, a baffling and awful thing she should drop asap. But it did lead to a penultimate set high point, an excellent “Fugee-Gee-La” with Lauryn skanking center stage. Then she introduces visiting hip hop royalty: how much dya have to pay to NOT have Jay-Z join you on stage? Enough already. Does the term silence begets legends mean nothing? A coupla others, Alicia Keys and husband, etc., come out. Anywhere else it might meaning something.
The last song is also stand out, a “Ready Or Not” to die for… the sound is perfectly dreadful but Lauryn saves it single handedly. The last two songs were so good it put the set into relief for me. I didn’t write the review till now because I was, and pretty much still am, confused about it. I respect and love Lauren, that’s the only reason I went but…
Some thoughts:
1. The mix wasn’t Lauren’s fault.
2. The energy was excellent, the dancing (what I could see of it) divine.
3. Her skills might be intact and the thickening of her voice less disturbing if the mix wasn’t dampening everything.
4. The set list sure built the way it was meant to, and the last two songs probably were Lauryn finding the ground beneath her feet. But it wasn’t a greatest hits set.
5. I would have loved the exact same set at, say, the Beacon Theatre. I don’t know how to explain that a sound I found so harsh might be softened through mix and proximity but I think it might. I think, for all her funkadelic, bass heavy, heavy handed hand downs, somewhere in all that was one of the great ones.
So, yeah, I wouldn’t SRO in a field again but I would definitely MSG her ANY TIME.
There was still a lot of music left to go. But not for me. I can’t take these kinda gigs, it ruins it all for me. If you are standing miles away, you might as well not be there. If you are up close in the muck and mire, you can’t relax for a second.
Tell my little lamb that I’m on my way home…
