SHE'S certainly brave, Lauryn Hill. She could easily have built a safe commercial career on her profile as singer in pop-rap hit makers The Fugees.

While her former colleague Wyclef Jean is content to clown around in the top 40, Hill is a troubled, serious soul who, after a few years in the wilderness, has chosen to ditch mainstream pop.

She makes an uncompromisingly personal return in front of a live audience, armed only with an acoustic guitar and a clutch of unreleased material. It's a raw record, raspy vocals and all - unheard of in the airbrushed world of soul these days - and she succeeds in burying her pop past.

The problem? It's just too personal. Part manifesto, part therapy session, lengthy confessional speeches precede lengthy confessional songs, with tracts of self-analytical lyrics.

Frustratingly, while Hill has the voice of Nina Simone and the social conscience of Bob Marley, and, while in moments like the apocalyptic beat poetry of Freedom Time, there are glimpses of an awesome talent, she gets bogged down in self-absorbed psycho-babble.

This is the sound of growing up in public; it does, however, suggest that great things could yet come from Lauryn Hill.

Updated: 16:00 Thursday, May 30, 2002