Lauryn Hill, off the MTV Unplugged album.
granted I clearly have genius-complex issues, but it amazes me that even today in progressive liberal avant garde art-genius capital of the world New York City, a talent like Lauryn Hill could be so easily written off as ‘crazy’. does this 10-minute clip of her talking and then doing the song “I gotta find peace of mind” sound crazy? no, it sounds like someone who like so many others in the last decade since this album came out were overexposed and found capitalism to be a heckuva drug. it still remains to be seen if capitalism and family can go hand-in-hand in this country. L-Boogs chose fam, simple as that.
much like the clip, the album is indulgent. a little sloppy. there’s a flub at 2 minutes. the riffs and chorus go on too long from 7-10. but like a live Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Marley this is indulgent in the best possible way. the essence of art. mixing talent, the casual genius of someone organically blessed, and fully aware of it, in with the intimate details and confessions that allow us to convert the genius into something human. something divine but disposable. and maybe even something we can call ‘crazy-talk’.
