DJ M-Dash writesDid P. Diddy and the 90s Save Live Music?

Maybe it wasn't all about the Benjamins.

In mid-June, I went to see Lauryn Hill up at Ravinia. Besides the fact that many of us, roving around the grounds with craft beers and even White Claw cans in our hands, were mostly middle-aged people, Gen Xers (‘90s kids as we call ourselves now), I was reminded of one other very ‘90s thing. 

Hill came on after dark—easily 9:15 pm. And we weren’t surprised it would be a fabulous but brief show. As Hill trumpeted out tunes from her nearly 25-year-old album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the other flashback that hit was that back then… the short hip-hop show was standard. 

In the first half of the 1990s, whether Fugees tipped your consciousness or Digable Planets’ dreamier tales were more your style, live tours were the same. You went to see an act that would come on at least an hour, maybe two hours later than scheduled. 

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