Credit: Tracy May

At this point, everyone knows that Ms. Lauryn Hill rarely starts her shows on time.

On Friday night in Sterling Heights, Michigan (about 20 miles outside of Detroit proper) the lateness presumably led someone to pulling the plug on the 43-year-old's performance of "Doo Wop (That Thing)." Hill is on tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of her landmark solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and playing the album in full at tour stops, which leaves her loyal fans — all well aware of the risks that come with buying a ticket to see Hill — on a high.

"Sadly, the high was promptly quashed at 11 p.m., the venue's mandated stop time, right in the middle of the 'Doo Wop' intro," Detroit-Metro Times wrote about the July 20 show. "There was a feeble attempt at bringing her back on stage, but to no avail. The crowd trickled out of the amphitheater with heads down and furrowed brows."

This is after Hill showed up late and played an abridged set in Toronto earlier in the week.

Hill is playing a set at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on Sunday, and her tour resumes three days later on July 25 and 26 in Charlotte and Raleigh before arriving at St. Petersburg's Al Lang Stadium on July 29.

MS. EDUCATING FANS ON THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE
Review: When St. Pete fans wait for Ms. Lauryn Hill, the payoff is exceptional

Doors for the St. Pete show — where Big Boi, Dave East and Bambaata Marley will play support — are scheduled to open at 4 p.m., and the show is supposed to start at 6 p.m.. On record (and Ms. Hill rarely plays anything the way it sounds on the record), The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill runs 70-minutes long. That gives the openers almost four hours to get onstage and out of the way so that Hill and her band can get through the the album before an 11 p.m. noise ordinance would kick in.

Doable, right? More information on the St. Pete show — plus a stream of Miseducation — is available below.

Lauryn Hill. Sun. July 29, 6 p.m. $49 & up. Al Lang Stadium, 230 1st. St. SE, St. Petersburg. More info: ticketmaster.com.

This article appears in Jul 19-26, 2018.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...