Lauryn Hill, with two hush-hush “rehearsal” shows at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco last night, Lauryn Hill silenced the skeptics, answered years of questions, and unveiled a reinvention of sorts.

Backed by a raucous 12-piece band, the Fugees centerpiece oozed passion and soul, showing off new material, some reimagined old hits, and an aplomb reminiscent of the late 1990s, when her Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album made her the biggest artist in the world for a time.

On this night, the frail-voiced woman whose raw emotion at her 2001 MTV Unplugged performance that caused many to worry about her state of mind, let alone her musical career, was transformed into a heat-seeking funk bomb. In an hour-plus set that didn’t start until 1:15 a.m. and continued even after the venue operators had turned on the lights and cut off Hill’s mic, it was as though James Brown himself had inhabited her body as she let out howls, shrieks, and fist pumps of encouragement to her band.

The band kicked off the set with an almost free jazz-style intro jam, with Hill taking the stage and almost immediately storming into a hyperspeed version of her hit “Lost Ones,” rattling off telling lines like, “I was hopeless now I’m on hope road” in rapid-fire fashion (read more)