193. Lauryn Hill
The O2 Arena
4 December 2018
This was the 20th anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the once-in-a-generation record that rewired the boundaries between soul, hip hop and poetry. The O2 buzzed with a kind of anticipation: part reverence, part apprehension. After all, Hill’s reputation precedes her: a perfectionist, a prophet, a possible time traveller, depending on who you ask. I was flying solo on this, my friend having bowed out for reasons that are lost to memory, but for the sake of this story, let’s say “accident with a cheese grater”, it matters not, because I was going, come what may.
When she finally appeared, the place erupted. Draped in a glorious tartan suit with gravity-defying shoulder pads and earrings the size of tractor wheels; she looked magnificent: part Eighties Harlem matriarch, part Afrofuturist general. The band kicked in, the screens flared, and we buckled in.
Then came the songs, familiar, but not as we knew them. Hill’s live arrangements are like free-jazz dreams of the originals: tempos stretch, hooks dissolve, choruses are reimagined. “Everything Is Everything” morphed into a percussive funk sermon; “Lost Ones” roared with militant energy; “Ex-Factor”, still one of the greatest break-up songs ever penned, built and broke like a storm. There were moments when the whole thing teetered on the edge, only to be pulled back by her astonishing band, all eleven of them, locked in behind her like an army of groove mechanics.
The sound mix, alas, was pure O2: bass booming like artillery, vocals occasionally buried beneath reverb. But when the levels settled and Hill’s voice cut through, rich, bruised, righteous, it was glorious. “To Zion” shimmered; “Forgive Them Father” struck like prophecy, backed by footage of police violence flashing across the giant screens. For all her reputation as a mercurial performer, there’s no mistaking the conviction.
Between songs, Hill was warm and lucid, pausing to talk about love, gratitude and the strange business of legacy. She told stories about motherhood and creativity, about hearing Adele recall seeing her in Brixton as a child and thanking London for “still being there.”
But make no mistake: this was not the perfectly honed nostalgia machine some fans might have expected. It was messy, mercurial, thrilling, and occasionally exasperating, exactly what Lauryn Hill has always been. You don’t go to see her to hear Miseducation recreated note-for-note. You go to see what she does to it now, to watch her wrestle with her own mythos in real time.
By the finale, “Doo Wop (That Thing)”, the arena was on its feet, 20,000 voices singing that immortal chorus back to her like scripture. It felt at the time like we had all witnessed a moment. Twenty years on, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill still feels like homework. Tonight, the headteacher was in.