Miseducation

L-Boogie not up in here

I miss L-Boogie. Can someone please tell Miss Hill that there are many folks out there that would like to hear L-Boogie back on the mic? Better yet, can you just get The Fugees back together for real this time?

Came into the Lauryn Hill show tonight at the Paramount Theater in Oakland with lower than low expectations after hearing about her "Miss Hill" issues, sound troubles during her previous shows, and general outlook on life (see: Lauryn Hill Unplugged). Unfortunately, rather than being pseudo-pleased with the outcome because of said low expectations, it was... well... just as I expected.

A good chunk of the people sitting around me left the show 20 minutes in with half of the upstairs balcony gone before she left the stage for the encore. At one point someone screamed, "Play something we wanna hear!" and there were a few times when booing was heard. My friends and I stuck it out to the end and were slightly pleased with the inclusion of old Fugees favorites into the set, but the energy was too little too late to save the performance. Miss Hill's voice sounded like she had just come off a bad chest cold, her pacing of songs included epically-long new stuff (including her first song that had a chorus that repeated something about heathens over and over and over) and crowd favorites so drowned out by the awesome, yet huge 11-piece band (3 guys on percussion, 2 guys on keys, 3 guys on strings, 2 guys on horns, 1 DJ plus 4 back-up singers) that you could barely make out Miss Hill's vocals.

Now, I'm all for artists expanding their horizons and trying new things, so don't think I only want Miseducation/Fugees Lauryn Hill. I didn't mind her Unplugged stuff, but when she started going off about being "caricatured" by the industry and then getting her being "crystalized" (whatever the hell that meant) midpoint of the show I really felt like just telling her to stop the yapping and get on with it. I mean, girl made one major album that she said she was proud of, won a ton of recognition for, gets cheated on by her baby daddy and suddenly she's "caricatured" and "crystalized?" You made one album! One! And it's been almost ten years since it happened!

Can someone get L-Boogie back?

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28 on the 28th... holy moly.