Lauryn Hill’s return to the stage has been a comeback tale for most of 2010. The reclusive singer has been absent from the music industry since around 2002 and was set to kick off her concert tour of smaller venues on Tuesday night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York.
However, despite the show time listed at 8:30 p.m., Hill did not appear on stage until after midnight, according to the New York Times.
The stunt left fans voicing their irritation with Hill by greeting the singer with boos when she finally walked on stage.
“Don’t do that. That’s disrespectful,” she replied to the fans, according to the newspaper. “I spent my entire 20s sacrificing my life to give you love. So when I hear people complain, I don’t know what to tell you.”
She later added, “I personally know I’m worth the wait.”
It has been well over a decade since Hill released her critically praised and commercially successful album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. This year she released her first new single titled “Repercussions.”
Hill, a solo artist and singer of The Fugees, last appeared on the charts as a lead solo artist in 1999 with a remix of reggae legend Bob Marley’s song “Turn Your Lights Down Low.” She later recorded with Method Man a song called “Say,” which spent 10 weeks in the charts in 2006.
In a video interview with Fuse TV back in September the Grammy Award-winning artist said, “I think I’m ready to express myself again, you have to live life so you have something substantial to share or else it’s kinda pointless and vain.”
She later said, “You know, I don’t think I ever did music just for attention or to be seen, I really did it because it also simulated me, you know I was excited about the challenge or the challenges making music presented.”
Earlier in 2010, she explained to NPR why she left the industry. “The support system that I needed was not necessarily in place,” Hill told NPR regarding her lack of record releases in the past few years. “There were things about myself, things that I needed to go through and experience in order for me to feel like it was worth it.”
See a video of Hill’s response to booing fans at her recent concert below:
