From the Fugees to the Marleys, Lauryn Hill embraced and was embraced by a radical Afro-Caribbean tradition of the poetics of Blackness. In Lauryn Hill, I hear Revelations and Rastafari. As a professor of Black studies, I have long considered the distance between the mad ravings, conspiracies of the street corner, and the writings of Black academics denied tenure. The line “Mafia with diplomas keeping us in a coma / Trying to own a piece of the American corona” took on a new prophetic power.
I heard the prophecy anew in an echo of global chants for Black lives, amidst burning and looting as the coronavirus pandemic raged on. Ever the perfectionist and show woman, Lauryn Hill dutifully performed the songs from over a decade ago that had sustained her and us, her audience.įrom an album that never quite was, The Mystery of Iniquity continued to reverberate for me in subsequent months, the summer protests of 2020 in New York City where I live.
#LAURYN HILL UNPLUGGED FULL FULL#
With a full band in tow, she finally emerged dressed in all-white. I did not know if she would be on time, but it didn’t matter because I knew she had always been on time. Just before the borders closed, mandated by then President Donald Trump in the United States, the concert was a religious experience for me though I am an atheist, because music is my sacred ritual. Lauryn Hill performed in Old Westbury, New York, on February 15, 2020. I was reminded of the power of this song at the last concert I attended, and perhaps ever will attend in person, Ms. Lauryn Hills gives us a draft for revolution.
Unfinished, the song epitomizes a certain set of struggles against injustice that is best defined as Black politics or the familiar key of Black diasporic life. Hill asks, “What do we expect of the system made for the elect?” The song The Mystery of Iniquity is as contemporary as it is unvarnished. She denounces the commander-in-chief as the “son of perdition.” She deploys a cascade of legal metaphors, rapping her critique of modern-day lynching. She excoriates “Babylon’s benefactors” in what might now be described as a call for abolition, not only of the “criminal justice system,” but of all unholy wars. A perfect second album that never quite was, Hill’s political critique is as prescient as it is poetic. Lauryn Hill’s 1998 live album MTV Unplugged 2.0 is a draft for revolution.
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