It was coming up on 15 minutes past the scheduled 8:30 start time for Ms. Lauryn Hill’s headlining Pitchfork set when her DJ started playing Nas’s “If I Ruled the World,” which features Hill’s classic rendition of Kurtis Blow’s hook from the original—her cooing vocals over the itchy percussion of the song’s intro were met with thunderous anticipatory applause. But in moments it became disappointingly clear that this was not, in fact, the song that was going to introduce Ms. Lauryn Hill. A young photographer, not much older than me, came clamoring into the photo pit. “Damn, so she still hasn’t come out yet?” she asked, with a dash of genuine concern sprinkled on top of the obvious sarcasm. “Nah, but that was kind of a sick tease,” I replied.
As the instrumental for “Lost Ones” began, a half-second of silence washed over what was clearly the weekend’s largest crowd. As Ms. Hill pranced onto the stage, wearing a sun hat and a billowing, diaphanous white skirt topped by an oversize plaid button-down, the park erupted. One of the people in that sea of waving arms and chanting voices was Chicago-based rapper Smino, who’d graced the same stage only a couple hours earlier.
In an impromptu speech during her set, Hill spoke about the struggles she’d faced in bringing her solo debut to fruition after the breakup of the Fugees. “There were a lot of skeptics after I left the group. But I was so driven to get this thing done that I didn’t even sleep,” she said, raising her voice to a shout and sending an echo bouncing across the park.
