No one believed anymore, at this Fugees concert. No one has ever believed in Lauryn Hill (more or less) in time on stage, in the best of her form and voice. And yet this happened on Friday, October 18, at the Accor Arena in Paris. Contrary to all expectations, because a few weeks before the two concerts in Paris (second Saturday 19), the American press announced that one of the three members of the Fugees, Pras Michel, is suing him for fraud and breach of contract , reproaching him, among other things, for his chronic lateness to the stage.
Since the breakup of the group in 1997 and the global success of their second album The scorethen that of their singer and rapper Lauryn Hill’s deduction in 1998, The diva was particularly noted for being disrespectful to her audience, up to three and a half hours late in New York in 2021, more than two and a half hours in Paris in 2018and a more than erratic attitude with his musicians. Additionally, she asks her childhood friends Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel to call her Miss Hill.
On Friday, as if to prove everyone wrong, Lauryn Hill, 49, took the stage at a decent time: 9:45 p.m., receiving only a few boos for leaving her audience for two hours with DJ Reborn opening. On stage, the musicians are complete: four keyboards, two drummers, a bass player, a guitarist and three singers, barely audible because they are covered by the fan’s questions, for a rather painful and messy start to the concert.
Clad in a stunning wool coat with pink and green fringes, Lauryn Hill displays an Eiffel Tower T-shirt and greets an Accor Arena full of haircuts. “Good evening, how are you? “. Behind the scenes, a screen plays videos, mixing archival footage of her youth, a poster of the segregationist Jim Crow laws, a photo of Black Panther Assata Shakur, exiled in Cuba, and a video of teenagers in a classroom, reminiscent of the interludes of his solo album, in which a teacher asks students to define the word “love”. Lauryn Hill raps, sings, moves, asks to stage a comeback here, wipes her brow here, then delivers a long, encouraging version of The Lost.
YG Marley comes to steal the show
Then she seems to find her feet covering one of her most beautiful songs, X Factor, about a toxic romantic relationship that many believed acknowledged his history with his fellow Fugitives, Wyclef Jean. With Zion, written for his eldest son, his voice rises, ventures, then becomes more precise. Lauryn Hill is once again the artist who, in her early days, rocked every stage she appeared on. At the end of her song, she brings Zion, the first of six children she had with Rohan Marley, heir to reggae icon Bob Marley, on stage. Zion sings her song Why don’t you stay Then that of his grandfather, War.
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