Sat. Nov 2nd, 2024
Occasional Digest - a story for you

Ms. Lauryn Hill and the Fugees have called off a U.S. tour that was set to begin Friday.

Concert dates listed on Ticketmaster were updated Tuesday to say they’d been canceled, while show listings on promoter Live Nation’s website informed ticket holders that they’d soon be refunded. Representatives for Hill and Live Nation didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Billed as the “Miseducation” anniversary tour, the road show was supposed to feature Hill and her Fugees bandmates Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel performing music from the Fugees’ seven-times-platinum 1996 album, “The Source,” and from Hill’s Grammy-winning 1998 solo debut, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” It was scheduled to kick off Friday in Tampa, Fla., and run through mid-September, with a Sept. 17 stop at the Hollywood Bowl, where Hill brought a 20th-anniversary tour based on “Miseducation” in 2018. The cancellation was reported earlier by Variety.

After not performing together for 15 years, the Fugees — known for expanding the role of melody and live instrumentation in hip-hop with hits like “Ready or Not” and their smash rendition of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” — announced a reunion tour in 2021 but played only a single date before canceling the tour as a result of what the group said were pandemic-related difficulties. Hill and the Fugees hit the road again in late 2023 only to end up pulling out of concert dates a second time, with Hill citing “serious vocal strain.”

Before she called off the 2023 tour, Hill made headlines with a performance at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, where she gave a viral six-minute speech about her reputation for starting shows late (“Y’all lucky I make it on this … stage every night,” she told the audience) and what she characterized as her mistreatment by the record industry.

Source link