Killing Us Softly With Their Drama: 30 Years of Fugees Controversies

During an interview to promote Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit in 1993, one of its stars, 18-year-old Lauryn Hill, talked about the positivity she wanted to convey with her still-emerging group, the Fugees. “There are serious social ills in the community,” she said. “And I’d like to address them through the music.”

But talking about her enrollment at Columbia University, Hill already appeared prematurely savvy about the tenuous world she was about to enter. “I’m going to school in case things don’t work out in show business,” she said. “Or in case they don’t want me. It can be a very fickle business; even talented people can be hot one day and out the door the next.”

She might as well have been predicting the future of the Fugees. Last week, her bandmate Pras Michel sued her for fraud, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and refusal to permit an audit of the Fugees’ 2023 reunion tour, which was canceled over Hill’s reported “vocal strain.” As Pras’ legal team claimed, among other allegations, “We assert that Ms. 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.” In a statement, Hill called the lawsuit “baseless,” and her attorney argued that “Pras was grossly over-advanced for the last tour to help him pay his mounting legal bills.”

That comment referred to Pras’ 2023 conviction on counts of money laundering, illegal lobbying, witness tampering, and campaign finance violations connected to his involvement with Malaysian financier Jho Low, who has been accused of funneling illegal foreign campaign contributions to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, among other misdeeds.

Pras’ legal action against Hill was startling and very personal, yet also very much in keeping with the bumpy, swerving musical and interpersonal ride of the Fugees. The trio’s musical legacy — the way they blended hip-hop, reggae, and soul as a group, and the solo vision that landed The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in the Top Ten of our list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time — is undeniable. But so are the three decades of nonstop drama and friction that have dogged them, leading up to Pras’ lawsuit. Here’s a timeline of the many occasions on which they’ve either regrouped or metaphorically killed each other, softly and otherwise.
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Late Eighties-1996: Around 1989, the Fugees begin forming in a high school in Maplewood, New Jersey, when Pras recruits Hill to sing on some of his hip-hop tracks; Pras’ cousin Wyclef Jean soon joins up. The Fugees (at first with “Tranzlator Crew” attached to their name) are signed to Ruffhouse Records and release their first album, Blunted on Reality, in 1994.

The album is not a hit, but its follow-up, 1996’s The Score, establishes the trio as a Beatlesque amalgam of three different personalities creating a unique blend of pop that the world finds irresistible. Their remake of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” becomes their biggest hit and signature song. But one complication already arrives. Early in the group’s life, Hill and Wyclef hook up, albeit secretly: “We had become a real couple, even though I was with someone else at the time,” Wyclef wrote in his memoir, Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story. Even when Wyclef married designer Marie Claudinette in 1994, he and Hill continued to see each other.

June 1997: Wyclef releases his first solo album, The Carnival, featuring the hit single “Gone Till November.” Both Hill and Pras make guest appearances elsewhere on the album.

August 1997: Hill welcomes her first child, Zion, with her partner Rohan Marley (son of Bob).
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August 1998: Hill releases The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which credits her as producer, principal songwriter, arranger, even art director. The album wins rave reviews, sells multiple millions, spins off a Number One hit with “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and establishes Hill as a major solo artist in her own right. According to Rolling Stone, Wyclef, who had initially been indifferent to Hill’s own songs, had belatedly asked to work on the project and was turned down by Hill. Two of its songs, “Lost Ones” and “Superstar,” are supposedly about their relationship; another, “To Zion,” is dedicated to Hill’s young son.

September 1998: Two years after The Score, prospects for a Fugees follow-up are starting to look dim. Columbia, the band’s label, admits that the trio haven’t been in the same room together “for more than a year.” A month later, Pras releases his own solo debut, featuring the hit single “Ghetto Supastar.”

December 1998: Hill is sued by four of her collaborators (collectively known as New Ark) on Miseducation, who claim they were not given proper credit for their production and songwriting work on the album. “She is not a musician, she is not a producer,” a lawyer for the musicians says. “… I dare say if you put Lauryn Hill in a studio alone, she couldn’t do it again. Album No. 2 for her is not going to sound like this.” The suit is settled out of court for a reported $5 million, according to Rolling Stone. “That was the beginning of a chain effect that would turn everything a little crazy,” a source told RS at the time.

February 1999: Miseducation cleans up at the Grammys, taking home Album of the Year — the first hip-hop album to win that top category — among several other awards. As she’s accepting her Best New Artist trophy at the ceremony, Hill quotes from the Bible: “I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out from the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on the rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to my God….”

August 2000: Asked about the Fugees while he’s promoting his second solo album, Wyclef Jean tells the Miami Herald, “We’ve gone from not talking to considerations.”

July 2001: After firing her management team the year before, Hill tapes an episode of MTV Unplugged, accompanying herself on guitar and talking openly about her inner turmoil: “I’m crazy and deranged …  emotionally unstable,” she tells the audience. At another point, she announces, “I used to get dressed for y’all; I don’t do that anymore…. I used to be a performer, and I really don’t consider myself a performer so much anymore.” The album, released in May 2002, does not duplicate the success of Miseducation.

October 2003: As Wyclef continues to make records on his own and Pras moves into acting roles, the Fugees era appears to be over. Pras tells RS that Wyclef is “the cancer” of the Fugees: “He’s the reason why it got wrecked to begin with, he’s the reason why it’s not fixed.” Speaking about Hill, Pras adds, “I heard from a friend that she don’t really wanna do music right now. I heard from another friend that she wants to do a Fugees album.” Wyclef declines an in-depth interview with RS, and Hill responds to an interview request with an email: “The only interviews I will consider are those that amply compensate me for my time, energy and story.”

September 2004: The trio reunites at a secret show in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, as part of a Dave Chappelle “block party” (released as a film the following year). During their set, Wyclef freestyles, “Jay-Z said, ‘The Fugees gon’ break up’/He ain’t even know, one day we’d make up.”

June 2005: The annual BET Awards open with a surprise set by the still reunited Fugees, who rock the thrilled house on “Ready or Not,” “Fu-Gee-La,” and “Killing Me Softly.” But the following month, Hill tells Trace magazine, “The Fugees was a conspiracy to control, to manipulate and to encourage dependence…. I took a lot of abuse that many people would not have taken in these circumstances.” Asked in a different interview about a new Fugees album as the 10th anniversary of The Score looms, Wyclef simply replies, “We’re working on it.”

September 2005: Wyclef wasn’t wrong! “Take It Easy,” the Fugees’ first new track in nine years, finally arrives. Busy and hardened, the song alludes to Hill’s issues with the music business (“I got moxie, I’m so damn foxy/Industry try to block me like cops and paparazzi”). But although one critic compares it to a Fab Four reunion, the song quickly fades away. An accompanying album, which some hoped would arrive soon after, fails to materialize.

June 2007: On a solo tour, and not for the first time, Hill shows up more than an hour late for a show in Oakland. This pattern will continue over the next decade-plus in numerous cities. “I don’t show up late to shows because I don’t care,” she posts in 2016 after even more such incidents. “The challenge is aligning my energy with the time…”

January 2010: Wyclef’s charity, the Yele Haiti Foundation, which was providing aid to that country after a devastating earthquake, is scrutinized when tax returns indicate that some of its funds may have gone toward funding Wyclef’s own projects, like a recording studio. “Did I ever use Yele money for personal benefits?” Wyclef says during an emotional press conference. “Absolutely not. Yele’s books are open and transparent, and we have a clean bill of health by an external auditor every year since we started.” His brother Sam Jean, who is running the charity, tells RS, “There were basic mistakes that were made and corrected and Clef got the proper people in to make sure these things didn’t happen again.”

June 2012: Hill, living with her family in New Jersey, is charged by the U.S. Attorney’s office in that state with failing to pay income taxes on $1.8 million in earnings between 2005 and 2007. Between those monies and unpaid federal and state taxes in the two years after, the owed amount balloons to $2.3 million. She pleads guilty to the charges.

July 2013: Hill is sentenced to three months in federal prison on her tax charges. “I came to be perceived as a cash cow and not a person,” she tells a judge during her sentencing. “When people capitalize on a persona, they forget there is a person in there…. I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me.” That month, Hill reports to a minimum-security prison (with “dormitory-style living quarters,” according to one report) in Danbury, Connecticut. She is released in October.

August 2014: Hill rolls out what she calls a “sketch” of a new song, “Black Rage,” dedicated to the people of Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

November 2014: At the Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, Hill’s set, which started 45 minutes late, is abruptly shut down mid-set to accommodate the schedules of other acts on the bill. According to reports, her mic is cut after “Ready or Not,” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” begins playing from the speakers at the festival. Late that night, she plays at another stage at the festival but is again 45 minutes late, to the consternation of fans.

July 2016: Asked about the state of the Fugees by the Baltimore Sun, Wyclef says, “It’s not up to me at this point; I’m in…. The nucleus of the Fugees is Lauryn, you know what I mean? I think if she could come to an agreement, the rest of us would figure it out.” In other words, it’s not happening.

March 2017: Wrongfully mistaken for a suspect in a robbery, Wyclef is handcuffed and detained by L.A. police offices close to a recording studio where he was working. “They just took off my Haitian bandanna,” he says in a video posted on Twitter. “That’s what’s going on right now with Wyclef in L.A. right now. The L.A.P.D. have me in cuffs for absolutely nothing.” Police officials later apologize over the mistaken-identity incident.  

August 2018: Wyclef tells the New York radio station Hot 97 that the Fugees were offered $90 million for a tour but that he and Hill had turned it down. Pras is not happy, telling Hot 97 DJ Ebro, “I said, ‘All right, it’s all good. You guys will never hear from me again pertaining to the Fugees.’ I want nothing of them.”

July 2018: Hill embarks on a 20th anniversary tour for Miseducation, yet glitches remain: seven U.S. shows are canceled and three are rescheduled for that fall due to what Live Nation called “unforeseen production issues.”

May 2019: Pras is charged in the money laundering case. He pleads not guilty.

September 2021: Seemingly out of nowhere, the Fugees announce a reunion tour set to begin in November. To initiate it, the trio appears at the outdoor venue Pier 17 in New York, a show that starts two and a half hours late and includes only seven songs. Three days before the tour is scheduled to start, it is postponed until early 2022 for unexplained reasons.

January 2022: The Fugees reunion tour is officially canceled, with the band saying, in a joint statement, that “the continued Covid pandemic has made touring conditions difficult.” In his 2024 lawsuit against Hill, though, Pras blames the debacle on his bandmate, alleging “Hill tried to usurp control of the group, including the exclusive control of the ‘Fugees’ trademark and all financial, creative and business aspects of the proposed Fugees tour.”  

April 2023: Pras Michel is convicted of 10 criminal charges including conspiracy, witness tampering, and failure to register as an agent for China. He begins awaiting sentencing. A judge later denies Pras’ request for a new trial.

Summer 2023: During a 25th anniversary tour for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Hill is joined onstage at select shows by Pras and Wyclef, including one in Newark, New Jersey. “A lot of people didn’t think this would happen, including some of the people on this stage,” declares Hill. “Facts!” Pras replies.

November 2023: The second half of the Hill/Fugees tour is canceled due to Hill’s self-proclaimed “vocal strain.”

August 2024: Yet another Fugees reunion collapses when all the shows on their 18-city tour are canceled three days before it starts, the result of sluggish ticket sales. Hill claims the cancellation is the result of an injury she had sustained and cites the media’s “penchant for sensationalism and clickbait headlines” for driving away potential ticket buyers.
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Speaking to Vulture, Pras cites Hill’s years-long record of tardiness at shows as another reason for the tour’s failure. Soon after, he releases a new single, “Bar Mitzfa,” that takes direct aim at Hill: “No one will remember clickbait beefs, how many Gucci bags you owned, bogus excuses/People will remember how you made them feel, if you kept your word, if they could count on you, if you come on time!”

Oct. 7, 2024: Hill resumes her Miseducation/Fugees tour in the U.K. On opening night, in Dublin, Wyclef joins Hill for the last portion of the show, which, for an Irish Times critic, “upgraded a humdrum evening into an unforgettable one.” According to a rep, Pras has no plans to partake in the European shows.