Lauryn Hill has been sued for fraud and breach of contract by Fugees bandmate Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, who alleges he was cheated out of his fair share of profits from the group’s tour last year.
In a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, Michel accuses Hill of illicitly taking a 40 percent cut of the tour’s proceeds “off the top” before splitting the rest. He seeks unspecified damages and a court order nullifying the contracts he signed in exchange for joining Hill’s condensed 2023 tour, which allegedly relinquished some of his intellectual property rights and proceeds from the Fugees’ future artistic endeavors.
The complaint was filed as Hill and Wyclef Jean moved forward with plans for a European tour after their run of shows in North America was canceled days before it was supposed to start due to poor ticket sales. It details a contentious split between Hill and Michel, who won’t be joining his bandmates.
Hill in 2023 announced a solo tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of her Grammy-winning album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Later that year, she pitched reuniting the Fugees as part of the tour.
At the time, Michel was fighting allegations of fraud from the government for allegedly directing a sprawling conspiracy in which he funneled money from Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho to a network of straw donors to make illegal campaign contributions for Barack Obama in 2012. After refusing a plea deal, he was found guilty last year for his role in the looting of roughly $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund.
Michel says he agreed to join Hill on the tour to fund efforts to overturn the conviction. He received an advance against his one-third share of the tour’s expected profits and accepted “onerous terms he would have normally rejected,” including ceding creative control of the tour to Hill and agreeing to license the group’s trademark for live shows in later years, regardless of whether he was included, according to the lawsuit.
Under the agreement, the group was to equally split a $750,000 payment per show. But Michel alleges he later learned that MLH, Hill’s company managing the tour, was actually being paid roughly $1.26 million. They “failed to disclose to Michel that the 2023 Fugees Tour accounting was set up so that Hill and MLH took a 40 percent cut of the tour guarantees and net profits ‘off the top’ before calculating Michel’s 1/3 share.”
As a result of the alleged scheme, Michel argues he was defrauded into entering contracts he wouldn’t have had he known the truth. Those agreements detailed control of future artistic endeavors, including recording services, ownership of recording projects and live performances.
Additionally, the lawsuit blames Hill for the bungled 2024 tour in North America, which was canceled due to poor ticket sales. Hill earlier this year entered into an agreement with Live Nation for an 18-show Fugees tour scheduled to kick off in August. Live Nation, however, only agreed to promote the tour if Jean and Michel agreed to perform with Hill as the Fugees, according to the complaint.
Negotiations faltered when Hill’s managers told Michel that he still owed nearly $1 million because he failed to recoup his advance from the 2023 tour, which led to him discovering the uneven split, the complaint claims. Although they later reached a deal, which provided Michel another advance to pay his lawyers, Live Nation allegedly couldn’t properly market the tour in time for there to be sufficient ticket sales, says the lawsuit, which takes issue with Hill unilaterally rejecting a $5 million offer for the group to perform at Coachella.
Robert Meloni, a lawyer for Michel, said in a statement that Hill “exploited” his client’s “vulnerable legal situation, manipulating him into an unfair agreement for The Fugees’ 2023 reunion tour.” He stressed that Hill “misrepresented critical financial information and concealed her intent to take an excessive 60 percent share of the tour’s proceeds, leaving Mr. Michel with only 20 percent instead of the group’s customary one-third split.”