Twelve million album sales can do terrible things to a person's psyche. Witness Lauryn Hill, returning four years after her epoch-defining solo debut, 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill'. Another landmark album, then, another effortless combination of R&B, hip-hop, reggae and socially astute thought?
No chance. 'MTV Unplugged No. 2.0' is a landmark release, however: an album that takes self-consciousness about the perceived 'honesty' of art to startling new ends. Evidently troubled by lawsuits, fractious relationships (chiefly with her husband Rohan Marley) and the enormous pressure of following up 'The Miseducation', two things appear to have happened to Hill of late. One: she's found herself unable to finish recordings. Two: in a not-unconnected twist, she's flipped.
Recorded before a predictably sycophantic audience last summer, 'MTV Unplugged' sprawls across two CDs and lasts for nearly two hours. The songs are all previously unrecorded, but they're less immediately memorable than Hill's spoken introductions; tortuous explanations of the new material that revolve around rejecting the trappings of fame and embracing religion with frankly alarming zeal. When she does get around to sing, she's incapable of knowing when to stop. Hill plainly considers that any form of editing is a compromise, so her new songs are shapeless, intermittently beautiful and often insanely long, accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar-playing. The tellingly-titled 'I Gotta Find Peace Of Mind' only dribbles to a halt after about nine minutes when she remembers what a smashing bloke God is and bursts into tears.
Of course, the candour of the session is remarkable it's hard to think of an artist of comparable stature putting herself on the line so nakedly. But there's also something rather egotistical about the whole endeavour: a sniffy superiority that implies this stripped-down, indisciplined music is the only truthful form of expression. More importantly, the songs themselves are underwhelming often just plaintive pastiches of the work of her father-in-law, Bob Marley. 'Just Like Water', 'Just Want You Around' and 'I Remember' may well turn out to be brilliant but only when Hill climbs down off her pedestal and deigns to actually finish them.
Voyeurs may be bewitched by the extent to which Hill dismantles her own myth, but they'll need to be particularly stoic. For 'MTV Unplugged' is, for all its air of confession, a curiously unmoving experience. And, most damningly of all, it's an inexcusably boring one.
