One of the original members of the Grammy-winning hip-hop group The Fugees, Pras Michél, is suing his bandmate, Lauryn Hill, in federal court. The lawsuit includes charges of fraud and breach of contract over the group’s shortened 2023 tour and postponed 2023 shows.
The singer “was actually a veiled and devious attempt to make a big score for herself,” according to Michél, who filed a scathing lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. Hill allegedly mismanaged the setup, marketing, and budgeting of their postponed 2023 tour, and subsequently stole money from the tour guarantees. In addition, failure to allow an audit of the Fugees tour and breach of fiduciary responsibility are included in the whole list of allegations.
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Hill denounced the lawsuit in a statement to Variety, calling it “baseless” and “full of unwarranted attacks and false claims.”
Howard King, her lawyer, continued: “It is particularly disappointing that the suit fails to reveal that Pras was grossly over-advanced for the last tour to help him pay his mounting legal bills. His failure to show appreciation for the financial help Ms. Hill has afforded him in his time of need is disappointing. This action will be aggressively defended and defeated.”
Robert Meloni and Thomas McCaffrey are Michél’s legal representatives.
According to the lawsuit, the 2023 Fugees tour ought to have been “a huge commercial success, since most of the shows for the entire arena size tour were sold out in advance.”
However, because Hill was in charge of the tour money, Michael left empty-handed.
He added, “That was so bloated with unnecessary and, most likely fictitious, expenses, that it seemed designed to lose money.” Moreover, Hill abruptly called off the second leg of the tour in November 2023, citing “serious vocal strain.” The tour was shortened as a consequence.
A $5 million offer for the Fugees to play Coachella this year was turned down by Hill, according to the lawsuit, which portrays her as a wolf in sheep’s clothing with “narcissistic tendencies.” She claimed that this was because the festival had passed over her because No Doubt was first on the bill.
According to the lawsuit, “Hill’s arrogance was again demonstrated when she unilaterally rejected a $5 Million offer [to play Coachella]. The reason was that her ego was bruised since the group No Doubt would be receiving top billing over The Fugees .”
In addition, it noted, “Hill never told Pras about the offer or that she had was rejected it. Pras only learned about it when it was too late, after Hill, in an astonishing display of hubris, asked Pras if he would agree to perform a few Fugees songs for free as the opening act for her son, ‘YG’ Marley, who was slated to perform at the same Coachella festival.”
The trio, which came together with Wyclef Jean in South Orange, New Jersey, in the late 1980s, is frequently regarded as one of the most significant hip-hop artists of the 1990s and has sold over 22 million albums worldwide. The RIAA certified “The Score,” their final album, seven times platinum in sales. It was released in 1996.
Reeling after a botched solo tour, Hill allegedly initially suggested a Fugees reunion in the spring of 2023 to her ex-husband Jean, who then brought it up to Michél. Reuniting with Michael and Jean and billing the 25th-anniversary tour as a “Fugees” tour was her only option to play at arena-sized venues and satisfy her ego, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Hill took advantage of Michél’s vulnerable circumstances and his need for cash to cover his escalating legal bills. At the time, Michael was facing charges from the U.S. Department of Justice that would take him four years to resolve after being identified as a co-defendant of financier Jho Low, dubbed the “Wolf of Wall Street,” who was accused of stealing $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB, in one of the biggest financial scandals in history. While Michél was found guilty in April 2023 of several charges, including working as an agent of China and breaking the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Low is still at large and is said to be residing in China where he eludes prosecution.
However, Michél’s 2023 Fugees tour, which Hill unexpectedly canceled, did nothing to assist him in paying his legal obligations and left him with roughly $1 million in unpaid liabilities because, “Hill was taking 40% of the tour guarantees and tour net profits ‘off the top’ for herself, leaving the remaining 60% to be split equally between Hill, Pras, and Wyclef.” It was only lately that Michél and his delegates discovered that arrangement and requested a financial examination. The lawsuit alleges that they were turned down.
Hill is said to have signed a new contract with Live Nation earlier this year for the 18-show Fugees U.S. tour, which is set to begin in August 2024. The lawsuit claims that she never told Michél about the arrangement. Michél attributes the low-ticket sales to Hill because she “had taken far too long to close the deal with Live Nation [and] there was little or no marketing for the tour, and not enough time between the announcement and the first concert date to do sufficient advance sales to justify the tour.”
Because of this, Live Nation decided to cancel the tour in August, which led to rumors about what exactly went wrong. Hill criticized the media at the time. She issued the following statement: “Last year, I faced an injury that necessitated the rescheduling of some of my shows. Regrettably, some media outlets’ penchant for sensationalism and clickbait headlines have seemingly created a narrative that has affected ticket sales for the North American portion of the tour.”
Hills’ “habit of showing up late for shows, sometimes by as many as two to three hours,” according to Michél’s lawsuit, has “tarnished the Fugees brand.” Fans have continued to complain about Hill’s persistent tardiness. The musician is said to have arrived on stage for a gig in Nairobi, Kenya, more than four hours late only this week.
Not just The Fugees are a musical act that is embroiled in legal disputes right now. The creators of Hall & Oates, Daryl Hall and John Oates, have been engaged in a private arbitration battle about the sale of their business partnership.
