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Five Reasons Lauryn Hill Shouldn’t Be Getting Booed
RnB/Hip Hop | Monday 22nd September 2014 | Annalisa
The negative press and fan reaction surrounding Lauryn Hill’s highly anticipated O2 Brixton Academy shows raises longstanding questions concerning whether a performer of her caliber is somehow obliged to comply with fan expectations or whether she has every right following her own creative impulses.
The first of her five UK shows saw fans allegedly booing, with some leaving early and an instantaneous backlash resulting in it trending on Twitter. The complaints about the 20th September gig ranged from sound quality issues to fan objections to old material being rearranged for these shows.
1. She was late? Sorry guys, but that’s rock n’ roll. Most of the best artists and innovators have at some point rocked up late to a show. The fraternity of established superstars and innovative performers has always included divas and impunctuality. All part of the repertoire.
2. The main gripe, however, is with Hill’s so-called ‘mistreatment’ of her own material. The London Evening Standard, jumping on the bandwagon, even referred to it as ‘butchering her beloved back catalogue’. So does this experimentation with classic material say something negative about Lauryn Hill? Or does it say something negative about her audience, or at least portions of her Brixton Academy audience specifically?
As far as experimenting with the current performances of her back catalogue is concerned, it is her prerogative as an artist. Just like writing those songs in their original form was her prerogative too. Fans booing her or music or journalists deriding the shows are therefore by definition suggesting that an artist is accountable to their audience for all their creative decisions. If we lived in a world where no artist could experiment with their own music because it might annoy fans, there would be no actual ‘artists’ left, just highly paid performing puppets or wind-up toys.
If a concert-goer only wants to see note-for-note, exact replications of old album tracks and not dynamic, changeable interpretations of the material in a live setting, then why bother going to the show? Far cheaper to just watch a You Tube video of shows from fifteen years ago, no?
3. She’s Lauryn Hill. There’s a certain category of artists that have graduated beyond the standard rules of live show etiquette that might apply to more up-and-coming artists who, according to the unwritten rules, need to make sure they please everyone they can in order to help build a fanbase. But any artist of Lauryn Hill’s caliber, any artist who’s discography includes 1998’s era-defining The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, has surely earned the right to do it how she sees fit.
It’s called artistic license and is a basic right of someone who considers themselves an ‘artist’ and not just a commodity. She wants to reimagine The Fugees Ready Or Not as a rap-metal performance? Fine, it's her show and it's her material to do whatever she wants with. She wants to do a bunch of Bob Marley covers? No problem, she's Lauryn Hill.
4. Bad sound quality? As for the complaints about the poor sound quality, that’s not the artist’s issues, but the venue and the engineers.
5. She does things her own way. Someone like Lauryn Hill is not only an artist and poet, but like the most expressive artists and poets she falls into the "sensitive soul", does-things-her-own-way category. It's part and parcel of the whole package and her proper fans would probably understand that about her and even like that about her too.
High profile artists and performers having their crowd turn against them is no new thing. It happens to plenty of them, particularly with those who've acquired ‘superstar’ status. Everyone from Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse to Guns N’ Roses have received the booing treatment in recent years; so Lauryn Hill isn’t in bad company.
For the record, Guestlist can totally vouch for the general awesomeness of the Lauryn Hill live experience. We would never be caught booing the fine lady.
