6 days ago
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Lauryn Hill headlined the first night of the 2025 Essence Festival of Culture on Friday, July 4th, just days after being added to the lineup. When she took the stage at the Caesars Superdome nearly two hours behind schedule around 2:30 a.m., the stadium was “essentially empty,” according to NOLA.com. While she is notorious for running late, this time it wasn’t entirely her fault.
As reported by NOLA.com, the evening ran behind schedule from the start, with each of the seven performers before Hill pushing the timeline further back. By the midpoint of the show, Memphis rapper GloRilla had finished her set 45 minutes after the Isley Brothers were originally slated to perform.
These delays resulted in Babyface starting his performance nearly two hours late around midnight, and then Maxwell not beginning his scheduled 11:15 p.m. performance until 12:55 a.m. By the time Maxwell’s gear was cleared and Hill’s stage was set, it was 2:04 a.m. Only “a few hundred holdouts clustered in front of the stage” remained in the 83,000-capacity stadium when Hill finally appeared.
According to NOLA.com, however, Hill seemed unbothered by the “nightclub-sized crowd” while performing alongside her sons, Zion and YG Marley, and wrapped her set at 3:37 a.m.
Highlights included hits like “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” and “Fu-Gee-La,” as well as Hill fulfilling an audience request to play “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind” from her live album, MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, despite admitting that “we didn’t rehearse that.”
Check out a few clips from the performance below.
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English (US) · 