LAURYN HILL at Sound Academy, Saturday, January 22. Rating: NNN
Lauryn Hill hit the stage like an unstoppable force at her first Toronto concert in a decade, mic in one hand and hanky to wipe away the sweat from her furious rhymes in the other.
Dressed in a black fur vest, beads and an embroidered turquoise tunic, the hip-hop legend seemed to step out of 1972 when she appeared to rapturous applause shortly before midnight.
Her unrelenting energy made up for the underwhelming rearrangements of songs from The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill that dominated the two-hour show’s first half. Gone were their smooth, syncopated beats, replaced by abrasive, sometimes unwieldy hard rock and funk. The 10-piece band played fast, loose and very loudly to keep up with Hill as she waved her hanky commandingly and repeated lyrics, teasing out new meanings with each emotive ad lib.
A string of Fugees hits during the second hour enlivened the capacity crowd and demonstrated that, 10 years on, being a Lauryn Hill fan still requires patience.
