OAKLAND — For those who were in high school when Lauryn Hill released her seminal—and only—solo album, 1998’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, it likely holds a special place. The fact was not lost on Hill at Oakland Arena, where she and the reunited Fugees landed Tuesday with their Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 25th Anniversary Tour.

“I made a lot of these songs in high school, so if you listened to it when you were in high school, we grew up together,” Hill said toward the end of her solo set.

Miseducation reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, blending hip-hop with soul and reggae. It won five Grammys, including Album of the Year (the first hip-hop album to do so) while helping to introduce themes like Black self-worth to wider audiences. But after all these years, Lauryn Hill remains a bit of an enigma. She’s toured only sporadically, never released another album of new music and is known for showing up late to her own parties.

At Oakland Arena, where the Fugees marked their first Bay Area show together in nearly two decades, Hill took the stage in a white coat and matching pants with black polka dots only modestly past the advertised time. The stage had several tiers that housed a roughly 30-member band—though it’s better to think of it as an orchestra. Besides the typical instruments, there was a full chamber-size string section and a brass section that even included a tuba. Everyone was packed tight, leaving Hill (and later the rest of the Fugees) a more intimate performance space.

When the band kicked into opener “Everything Is Everything,” it quickly became clear Lauryn Hill wasn’t in the mood to perform the album versions of these songs. Like this one, most were sped up. Yet they were still recognizable and fun. The opener, for example, was poppy and gospel-like.

The downside, sometimes more noticeable than others, was that with so much music being made on stage, Hill’s vocals were a bit muffled and blended too far into the mix, such as on the second song, “When It Hurts So Bad.” It probably didn’t help that she was battling vocal cord strain and has had to postpone a couple of recent shows. Hill mentioned her raspiness in Oakland.

“I appreciate your patience, your considerations and your love,” she said midway through. “I keep saying it doesn’t feel like 25 years. But I’ve got adult children to prove it. They exist.”

After a powerful and emphatic rendition of “Final Hour,” Hill and the band followed up with a funky and racing take on “Lost Ones.” She slowed the pace for mature break-up tune “Ex-Factor,” scatted through an interlude and arrived at “To Zion,” a love song she wrote to her first son. As home movies from the ’90s rolled on a screen behind her, she delivered the beautiful ballad. As she repeated “my joy,” it was easy to feel her love. And because the song wasn’t raucous, it was easier to hear her singing.

On a couple occasions, Hill seemed to be directing the band to change something up. Here, she turned around and instructed someone “not [to lay it on] too thick..”

She spoke a bit about the romantic nature of the album, but also how she used the theme of love to inspire listeners. That led into the one-two punch of “Nothing Even Matters” and a shortened version of her cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” as fans loudly sang along to both.

Switching gears, “I Used to Love Him” was harder, while the album’s title track started fully orchestral, with the string section doing the heavy lifting. Then, before she concluded her set with her biggest hit, “Doo Wop (That Thing),” she brought an unexpected guest onto the stage: gospel artist and producer Jamie Hawkins, who was her bandleader when she first toured in support of the album 25 years earlier.

Hill spoke of how Hawkins was instrumental to her performances an her music back then. Hawkins, who’s worked with other stars as well, lost his wife, gospel singer Sunny Hawkins, to breast cancer in September, and Hill referenced his grief without getting into specifics. She then invited him to play a keyboard on the song that he used to lead. During the performance, which briefly detoured into another number, she checked on him a couple of times and saw he was smiling.

Promising “more show,” Hill briefly left the stage as old video clips of the Fugees played on. Hill’s band stayed on stage and joined her, Wyclef Jean and Pras when they returned. Hill introduced the band segment with a planned lengthy a cappella freestyle narrating the Fugees’ history and contributions to hip-hop: “The whole industry had a foundation ’cause they found us,” she rapped.

The New Jersey trio made lightning in a bottle earlier in the ’90s, avoiding the who East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry with its soulful songs. The Fugees’ 1996 album, The Score, won two Grammys, including Best Rap Album with hits “Ready or Not,” “Fu-Gee-La” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” a Hill-led cover of the Roberta Flack classic.

The group lasted just five years, and the members went their separate ways. A 2021 reunion was planned to mark the 25th anniversary of “The Score,” but the tour was scrapped due to the pandemic. There was some doubt a reunion would work this year, as Pras was convicted on numerous counts including foreign conspiracy last spring and is set to be sentenced in the near future.

The Fugees performed a handful of songs from The Score, as they took turns on a few songs from their solo careers. They began with “Vocab,” trading lines, weaving in and out of each others’ vocals. The vaguely sinister melody of “How Many Mics” was followed by the percolating, reggae-influenced “Zealots,” highlighted with bursts by the brass section.

On “The Score,” a boisterous number, they sometimes rapped together and other times over each other.

“If you believe in prison reform, get your hands up!” Pras yelled in the intro to “Cowboys,” for which the trio was joined by fellow New Jersey rappers Outsidaz. With all five rapping together, this was the loudest song of the night.

Wyclef then rapped a cappella in French and in Spanish before leading the band on guitar for a poppy cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry,” performing a handstand at the end. Hill belted away during “Killing Me Softly With His Song” before winding the song down and restarting it in a more rock-centric arrangement. The trio then demanded that the audience produce phones and light Oakland Arena up like a Christmas tree for “Ready or Not.”

The clock was pushing 11:30 p.m. by this point, but Wyclef kept right on going with his song “Gone Till November,” on which he played a guitar and delivered a blues solo that eventually morphed into some rock hammering.

Then it was Pras’ turn, and he got the audience to dance once again with “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are).” Again on stage, Lauryn Hill sang Mya’s part. Hill then took lead again on Miseducation cut “The Sweetest Thing” before the Fugees rounded out the night with “Fu-Gee-La.”

Chicago-born and Bay-Area-raised social justice advocate and arts teacher and DJ Reborn opened the concert by spinning some old-school hip-hop, funk and soul records.

“I’m gonna do my best to fit in as much Oakland music and artists as I can,” she announced. That included E-40, Tupac, Keyshia Cole, Too $hort, Stunnaman02 and Luniz.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter. Follow photographer Derek Fisher at Instagram.com/dfishswish.