Music

Twitter reacts as Lauryn Hill leaves Toronto crowd waiting for nearly two hours last night

by Tyler Munro

Last night Lauryn Hill gave nearly 8000 Toronto hip-hop heads a taste of her Axl Rose-ian ego when she strolled on stage at ten after eleven, an hour and a half later than scheduled and two hours after Nas finished a set that had the crowd buzzing. Worse yet, the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre had already planned on the show going late, expecting Hill to break the city noise curfew with a set ending at 11:30. Unfortunately, 11:30 rolled around and Hill was already on an off-stage break. In her defence, she needed to get a hat.

While Hill had slightly redeemed herself by the end of her set, mostly thanks to Nas guesting on “If I Ruled the World,” the audience was less than impressed by her theatrics. Not only was she late, but the set left a lot to be desired. There was almost a breath of cognizance on Hill’s part, a rarity given her reputation as a bit of a loony tune, and the way she kept rushing her band, signaling them to speed up, did nothing but confuse the audience and ruin some of her classics. When she wasn’t singing in fast-forward she was dishing out unrecognizable arrangements of some of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill‘s most memorable cuts—“Everything is Everything” sounded like ringtone karaoke, for example.

In the end, Lauryn Hill does what Lauryn Hill wants, and sometimes that means showing up to the venue five minutes before your set (which is already an hour-plus delayed). Sometimes that means butchering your own songs (and one of Bob Marley’s). And sometimes, like last night, it means alienating people who paid good money and wasted valuable time to see you. But don’t take it from me: Twitter was a-twitter with reactions before, during and after Hill’s set. Here are some of our favourites (click for a bigger size). As you’ll see, they’re not all bad. Most of them are, though.