Lauryn Hill addresses being late to her shows: “Y’all lucky I make it on this stage”

After years of jokes and complaints about her tardiness at live shows, Ms. Lauryn Hill is addressing the matter. 

“They say, ‘Oh, she’s late’ and ‘She’s late tonight,’” Hill told fans Saturday during her show at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. “Yo, y’all are lucky I make it to this bloodclot stage every night. I leave my soul on this stage. And I don’t do it because they let me do it. I do it because I stand here in the name of God. And I know it. God is who allows me to do it.”

“He surrounded me with family and community when there was no support,” Hill continued. “When the album [her 1998 solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill] sold so many records and no one showed up and said, ‘Hey, would you like to make another one.’ So I went around the world, and I played the same album over and over and over and over again. Because we’re the survivors. We’re not just the survivors; we’re the thrivers.”

Hill had previously mentioned her tardiness in a 2016 Facebook post, where she noted, “The challenge is aligning my energy with the time, taking something that isn’t easily classified or contained, and trying to make it available for others.”

Her 25th anniversary tour celebrating her one and only solo album heads to Oakland on November 7.