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Originally Posted by jjhatfield /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Jay-Z's Unplugged is also really fun. The Roots are his backup band, and he has a lot of fun with the setting and the audience. Unstoppable HOV.
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Agreed, I love that one. Also agreed that Nirvana and AIC are the gold standards for each band, funny that MTV manages to put together such quality sounding mixes.
The only other one I'm familiar with is Lauryn Hill's, which is cool if you want to see what an insane amount of celebrity can do to an already strange person. She talks a lot over the 2 hour set, telling about how she's "gotten out", she's a new person, it's a new day, etc. The public response wasn't pretty, sending her back into an exile from the public view. She wrote a bunch of songs that were only performed for that set and a few live dates (I saw her in Orlando in a similar performance), and are deeply spiritual and usually very long. The Mystery of Iniquity is one of the stronger examples and includes some rapping from Hill.
It contains the hook "When it all falls down", which was grabbed and performed by someone else for a Kanye West track (All Falls Down). Hill starts with some serious venom for the judicial system and the political world.
Ya'll can't handle the truth in a courtroom of lies
Perjures the jurors
Witness despised
Crooked lawyers
False Indictments publicized
Its entertainment...the arraignments
The subpoenas
High profile gladiators in bloodthirsty arenas
And like the rest of the album it turns to some heavy Biblical imagery and eventually a Biblical salvation.
Under the curse
Evil men waxing more worse
Faxing the first
Angelic being cast to the earth
It's time for rebirth
Burnin up the branch and the root
The empty pursuits of every tree bearing the wrong fruit
Lauryn's voice is very rough throughout, the results of no longer "pampering" herself like she did in the past. She describes herself as a family woman now, no longer shooing the kids away so they won't strain her before a performance. As a result she pops and squeaks through most of the set, and a few emotional moments set her into crying which makes it worse. She is also the lone performer for all but one song, where her husband Rohan Marley joins her on the bongos. Her guitar skills are limited to some very rhythmic strumming and excellent chord choices to offset her long repetitive song structures.
Overall I recommend Lauryn Hill's set to anyone who liked her Miseducation album or The Fugees and want to see what really happened to her. I think that people were way too harsh on her when this came out, saying she'd gone insane. Well I believe she did go a bit mental after Miseducation, sparking her to delve into this newfound religion and spirituality. This performance isn't insanity, it's a fully thought out philosophy that I can only respect her for, even if I don't believe the same things that she does. The passion for her new life though is infectious.
