Pras Michel, co-founder of the legendary hip-hop group The Fugees, has filed a lawsuit against his bandmate Lauryn Hill. He’s alleging fraud and breach of contract over their disastrous 2023 reunion tour and the cancellation of a planned 2024 tour. The complaint was submitted to the Southern District of New York, and in it, Michel claims that Hill totally mismanaged the tour, its budgeting, and its marketing.
In the lawsuit, Michel alleges that Hill was exploiting his legal troubles. To refresh your memory, Pras has been involved in a criminal case involving illegal lobbying and acting as a foreign agent. In May 2019, he was indicted on four criminal counts for illegal contributions to the 2012 Obama reelection campaign. In exchange for a guilty plea, the feds offered to return a substantial portion of the $74 million they seized from him. He rejected the offer. Two years later, the government then slapped him with even more charges, including bank fraud, witness tampering, and working as an unregistered Chinese agent.
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Hill has a long, rich history of flaking out on her live shows and has just generally shunned any kind of spotlight or whiff of fame ever since her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, rocketed her to massive fame in 1998. She developed a reputation for starting shows way later than scheduled, if she even takes the stage at all.
Michel alleges that Hill’s tour budget was way too big and heavily favored her own financial gain. Specifically, he claims that Hill took 40 percent of the tour revenue before distributing the rest to the other two members of the group. When Hill canceled dates due to “serious vocal strain,” Michel says the sudden cancellation left him with almost $1 million in unrecouped expenses. The lawsuit also alleges that Hill rejected a $5 million offer for the band to perform at Coachella because an unnamed man would receive top billing over them. He alleges that Hill never told him about the offer, let alone her rejection of it.
