Lauryn Hill Still Got it, Slays Nina Simone Cover on Jimmy Fallon

The album presents the biggest batch of new Lauryn Hill material in easily over a decade, and “Feeling Good” is a bold choice for a new Lauryn performance, since things seemed shaky to her for years, but she looked and sounded totally renewed.

Hill stopped by Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show on Thursday, in what is only her second-ever appearance on the show, and delivered her spectacular version of Jazz singer Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”. She gave fans what they wanted, and everybody loved it. But would a live performance of the song measure up?

Netflix aired a documentary about her titled “What Happened, Miss Simone?” Another documentary, “The wonderful Nina Simone“, is scheduled for later this year, as is a biopic, “Nina”, starring Zoe Saldana.

If you aren’t in the know, the Nina Simone covers album was released July 10 and features covers by Mary J. Blige, Common, Alice Smith, Simone’s daughter Lisa and more. This time around, Ms. Hill was backed by strings, horns, back-up singers, a DJ and a killer guitarist.

Thus, without further ado, here is Lauryn Hill interpreting Nina Simone the only way she knows how. “Because I fed on this music, both hers and lovers like her, like my basic food, I believed I always had a right to have a voice”, Lauryn previously said about working on the project.