Lauryn Hill: Unplugged 2.0

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * )

The people behind the former Fugee's Grammy-winning but unremarkable solo debut, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, must be wondering where the heck the follow-up is by now. Especially with the likes of India Arie and Alicia Keys taking the spotlight in her prolonged absence.

Well, on this 100-minute double disc you, too, can get to experience what that impatience must feel like.

Hill spends much of that time talking about God, life, artistic freedom, rejecting her public image, why she hasn't dressed up for the occasion, and keeping it real.

She does that for as long as 10 minutes at a time to a small but enthusiastic, forgiving audience. There are songs, too - 12 new ones driven by Hill's raspy voice and her nylon-string guitar playing - plus a cover of So Much Things To Say by her late father-in-law, Bob Marley.

But even shorn of the monologues, Hill's hip-hopped folk session is an underwhelming indulgence. Even more so when you consider it's an artist banging on about rejecting all those commercial trappings on a set of live demos with a price tag.

Even when the songs perk up a bit, as on the I Find It Hard To Say (Rebel) and I Gotta Find Peace of Mind, it's all like being stuck in front of an admittedly funky Sunday School teacher and worrying that should she ever stop talking, it's going to be time for Kum By Ya.

Label: Columbia