Lauryn Hill is being sued for fraud and breach of contract by Fugees bandmate Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, who claims he was cheated out of his fair share of profits from the group's tour last year.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in New York, Michel accuses Hill of unlawfully cutting 40% of the tour's proceeds “from the top” before splitting the rest. He is seeking unspecified damages and a court order voiding contracts he signed in exchange for participation in Hill's scaled-down 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 North American shows were canceled days before they were due to begin due to poor ticket sales. It details a contentious split between Hill and Michel, who will not join his bandmates.
Hill announced a solo tour in 2023 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his Grammy-winning album, The miseducation of Lauryn Hill. That same year, he proposed reuniting the Fugees as part of the tour.
At the time, Michel was fighting government fraud charges for allegedly directing a vast conspiracy in which he funneled money from Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho to a network of straw donors to make illegal contributions to Barack Obama's campaign in 2012. After rejecting a plea deal, he was found guilty last year for his role in looting about $4.5 billion from Malaysia's state 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 agreed to “onerous terms that he would normally have refused”, including ceding creative control of the tour to Hill and agreeing to license the group's trademark for live shows in subsequent years. regardless of whether it was included, according to the lawsuit.
Under the agreement, the group was to equally split a payment of $750,000 per show. But Michel claims he later learned that MLH, Hill's company that ran the tour, was actually paid about $1.26 million. “They failed to disclose to Michel that the accounting for the 2023 Fugees Tour had been set up so that Hill and MLH would take a 40% cut of the tour guarantees and net profits 'from the top' before calculating the fee of 1 /3 by Michel.”
As a result of the alleged scheme, Michel claims he was deceived into entering into contracts that he would not have made 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 his bungled 2024 North American tour, which was canceled due to poor ticket sales. Hill earlier this year made a deal with Live Nation for an 18-show Fugees tour starting in August. Live Nation, however, would only agree 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 he still owed nearly $1 million because he had failed to recoup the advance from the 2023 tour, which led him to discover the uneven split, the complaint alleges. Although they later reached a settlement, which provided Michel with another advance to pay his lawyers, Live Nation allegedly failed to adequately market the tour in time for there to be sufficient ticket sales, says the lawsuit, which challenges the Hill's unilateral refusal of $5. a million-dollar offer for the group to perform at Coachella.
Robert Meloni, an attorney for Michel, said in a statement that Hill “exploited” his client's “vulnerable legal situation” by manipulating him into an unfair deal for the Fugees' 2023 reunion tour. He pointed out that Hill “has misrepresented critical financial information and concealed his intention to take an excessive 60% share of the tour proceeds, leaving Mr. Michel with only 20% instead of the group's usual one-third split.”