Fugees’ Pras Michel files lawsuit against Lauryn Hill over failed reunion tour
Hill has since responded to the lawsuit, calling it “baseless” and “full of false claims”
Pras Michel has filed a lawsuit against his Fugees co-founder and bandmate Lauryn Hill over the group’s failed 2023 reunion tour.
The suit was filed yesterday, October 1, alleging Hill of fraud and breach of contract after the second leg of the trio’s World Tour in November 2023 was cancelled just days before it was set to begin due to Hill’s “vocal strain”.
In a statement sent to Mixmag, Michel’s lawyer, Robert S. Meloni, said: “The lawsuit alleges that Ms. Hill exploited Mr. Michel's vulnerable legal situation, manipulating him into an unfair agreement for The Fugees' 2023 reunion tour.”
In April 2023, ahead of the tour’s cancellation, Pras Michel was found guilty of 10 criminal conspiracy charges he was facing in a Washington DC federal court, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China, witness tampering, and conspiring to defraud the United States government and make illegal political campaign contributions.
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Pras Michel is now suing Lauryn Hill for “fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract” over the cancelled second half of their 2023 tour, and cites alleged “chronic tardiness as the hallmark of the tour”, Robert S. Meloni’s statement says.
He alleges that “shows routinely started two or more hours late”, and that Hill even “cancelled the second half of the tour and, at the same time, financially penalised and defrauded Mr. Michel".
“We assert that Ms. Hill misrepresented critical financial information and concealed her intent to take an excessive 60% share of the tour's proceeds, leaving Mr. Michel with only 20% instead of the group’s customary one-third split.”
Michel said that Hill’s “narcissistic tendencies” and “arrogance” left him empty-handed, claiming: “Hill’s arrogance was again demonstrated when she unilaterally rejected a $5m offer [to play Coachella].”
In response to the lawsuit, in a statement sent to The Independent, Hill claims that Michel’s complaint is “baseless” and “full of false claims”.
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“It notably omits that he was advanced overpayment for the last tour and has failed to repay substantial loans extended by myself as an act of goodwill,” she said.
She added that her scheduled tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of her album, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, was being planned “whether the Fugees were involved or not”, but was expanded to include Fugees members when she “found out Pras was in legal trouble”.
“Pras was given a $3m advance for the tour, which he said he required to pay his legal fees. Wyclef and Myself deferred our full advances to make sure he had what he needed and was able to go,” she claims (via The Independent).
Fugees are scheduled to set off on a European tour today, October 2, starting in Dublin. Michel’s lawyer confirmed to Mixmag that Michel will not be performing alongside Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean.
Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Assistant Editor, follow her on Twitter