Ms. Lauryn Hill tests her fans. As an artist, she has barely released any new music since her monumental genre-spanning debut, 1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. As a performer, she is so consistently late to concerts that fans buy tickets merely hoping that she will show up at all. As a public figure, she has not been largely relevant to the overall cultural landscape since we stopped worrying about Y2K.
However, after attending Hill's December 6 performance at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Pete, one could be excused for forgetting her fade into obscurity and forgiving her tardiness. Ms. Hill is as electrifying a performer as you'll ever see, as has ever existed, right up there with Elvis, Johnny Cash or Chuck Berry. You just might have to sit through a few opening acts first.
Possibly that is why this show and many others have been billed as "The MLH (Ms. Lauryn Hill) Caravan: A Diaspora Calling!" instead of as a solo show. While most concerts include opening acts, this is the only show I have ever attended in which their main purpose seemed to be buying the headliner more time to "align" her energy. Only while at a venue waiting for Hill, peering down at your phone as another hour drifts by, does this request seem a bit rude or inconsiderate.
The show began a little after 7 p.m. with Chakra Khan, a very bald electronic duo from Orlando comprised of members from hip-hop collective Solillaquists of Sound. Producer DiViNCi bounced to the frenetic beats like a bobblehead, while vocalist Alexandrah Love preached vague messages of self-acceptance in songs that lacked the grounding experiences and detail of Hill's work.
Seun Kuti, son of Afrobeat pioneer and activist Fela Kuti, followed the group, fronting his father's old band Egypt 80. Kuti showed the audience that he and his band were beyond capable of continuing his father's legacy. The music fused jazzy trumpet and saxophone with instruments like the coconut drum and a uniquely African "call and response" vocal delivery. Shoutouts to the DAPL protests and songs like "Gimme My Vote Back (C.P.C.D.)" gave the music a political edge as Kuti stomped and wiggled in hot yellow pants.
After Kuti, a DJ turned the venue into a makeshift nightclub, scratching out hits from the '90s and today as members of the crowd swayed to the music and danced to pass the time. This continued for almost an hour and a half, with the DJ pausing briefly in the middle of his set for EL, a Ghanaian "Afro-groove" rapper and singer.
Finally, as patience began to wane, not long after one brief but irritated crowd chant of "Lauryn, Lauryn," Ms. Hill strutted out onstage wearing leopard-skin pants and a long maroon leather coat. She looked as if she had just stepped off the set of Shaft, or a much funkier version of The Matrix.
At this point, I had a feeling she wasn't going to give the crowd the stripped-down performance I was expecting. Rather, she came in with the full force of a huge backing band and a trio of talented backup vocalists.
Still, no one could outshine Ms. Hill as soon as the crew whipped up a sped-up samba version of "Everything is Everything." In fact, most of the songs felt a little sped-up, with the band adding a funky bassline to "Forgive Them Father" and Hill struggling a little to double-time the bridge of "Ex-Factor." Her voice, lava cake-rich and deeply soulful, reined in the music, even when you felt it might speed right past her.
Ms. Hill showed she can keep up with, even surpass, any rapper alive right now with a driven delivery of her clever verses on "Lost Ones" and the Fugees' "How Many Mics." A few songs later, she proved the same thing to today's pop singers by belting out her former group's cover of "Killing Me Softly with His Song," her voice sounding simultaneously sleek and raw.
While she played no new material, Hill still had a couple tricks up her long leather sleeve. They came in the form of covers, one of Sade's "The Sweetest Taboo" and the other of "Feeling Good," a song from an obscure British musical later popularized by Nina Simone. The latter showcased her incredible vocal range, and as a musician who has always demonstrated both a political and spiritual awareness of her place in the world through music, the Simone song fit her voice like a comfortably snug glove.
Ms. Hill ended her set on "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and everyone in the crowd still seemed to know the words. Sure, Hill might not have released music anytime recently, but in spite of this her work somehow remains current, or perhaps more accurately, timeless. Artists are forgotten easily, and yet hundreds came to see her perform songs that are two decades old.
Hill's life has been fraught with various troubles, whether romantic or financial, yet she injects the pain directly into her work, if not creating new songs then perfecting older ones. Maybe she will never release another track, and maybe she will never be on time for a live performance.
But then again, with such fully-realized songs and satisfying performances, maybe she will never need to.
