Which Ex-Fugees Member Is The Messiest? (Hint: It Was Never Ms. Lauryn Hill)

The one upside of being very late to the Fugees’ party is that you cannot be disappointed by their career paths over the last two decades. You come into the fandom already knowing that Pras, Wyclef Jean, and Ms. Lauryn Hill are… a messy trio. Now, the music industry is predatory and can ravage even the soundest of minds, but the ex-Fugees have gone in a whole other direction of chaos, compared to the usual burnouts of other legendary stars. In a way, just like those two classics, their messiness is also the opposite of basic: No downward spirals on substances; no run-ins with the law as in beat cops, because their run-ins are at the US Attorney SDNY-level; no mental breakdowns, they just live on another planet altogether. But not all messes are made equal, so it’s time we dispel some misconceptions about which ex-Fugee is actually the messiest. See, our biases had us convinced that the most visibly chaotic one was, in fact, the messiest, when it turns out that it was always the quieter ones who were actually doing the damage.

Let’s kick off with its unquestionably brightest star.

Ms. Lauryn Hill is just an eccentric, get off her case

Here is a myth we need to falsify: The music industry is actually very open to recruiting people with mental disorders. They will welcome talented but unhealthy people with open arms because they can squeeze them dry, for every penny they’re worth, and then they can just spit them out without ever doing a single thing to help them get treatment, other than an emergency detox if they’re still being profitable. And if said artist happens to be Black and a woman, the music industry will go flat-out exploiting them. So, good thing Ms. Lauryn Hill has costed them at least $2.5 million in that second LP that is coming out alongside The Winds of Winter.

Most music legends are the result of a long and storied career, at least 10 albums deep. Ms. Lauryn Hill became a Legend in only two. Well, three counting Blunted on Reality, and the less said about that Unplugged session the better because it’s already been said by Todd in the Shadows. Lauryn Hill is habitually late to her concerts, but she just lives on a Time Zone that is a few hours delayed. Just turn the wait into a tailgate party or something. Ms. Lauryn Hill will go on lengthy, preachy rants, but every once in a while she will start denouncing the Catholic Church’s abuse of children at the Vatican itself, which already makes her the OG stage ranter, and also ballsier than Kanye has ever been. She has been prosecuted and convicted by the IRS … and yes? So? She paid her dues. Good. Now target the CEOs. She’s been in messy relationships with Wyclef Jean and her long-time partner Rohan Marley … as opposed to the romantic stability so common among artists.

Nah, we don’t need to make excuses for Ms. Lauryn Hill, but we can provide context. And context tells us that she is an incredibly talented person with some issues, overwhelmed after being turned into this Great Promise of Music. People expected her to become a combination of Angela Davis, Aretha, Nina and … Joni Mitchell. You know, small stuff. Instead, she’s just Lauryn. There’s nothing about what she has done that would even register in an eccentric male artist. To quote someone defending another superstar, just leave her alone. Plus, we can always just blame her problems on Wyclef Jean, speaking of which:

Wyclef Jean screwed Haiti.

I mean, he should be prosecuted for his part in the most annoying thing of 2006: “Hips Don’t Lie” becoming inescapable. But if we are talking about real accountability, let’s talk about Yéle Haiti. It’s been over a decade since investigations by The New York Times showed that Jean’s NGO was basically an overhead vortex, sucking up to half of its revenue in private jets to and fro Haiti, lavish charity events, and payments to Wyclef’s relatives and friends. Wyclef never accepted responsibility for the NGO falling apart shortly thereafter and instead went on the defensive by dissing Sean Penn’s actually functional NGO and Pras, who would not support him in his failed bid for the Haitian presidency. Did I mention all of this happened in the wake of the 2010 earthquake?

Wyclef has never faced any major consequences for the shadiness that took place in Yéle Haiti; it was enough of a relief that he didn’t bring his shitshow to the politics of a country that has already suffered enough. And sure, he probably didn’t really damage Haiti any more than the French already did, but even at the very small scale that charity almost always is, he stiffed his own countrypeople.

But Wyclef, turns out, was just small potatoes compared to the Fugees’ smallest potato, because:

Pras Tried to play House of Cards, ends up in an episode of Veep.

It’s always the quiet ones… or the least successful ones. And just like Pras took over the final verses, he also dropped the last, but definitely not the least scandal.

Where do we even start?

There’s this thing called the 1MDB Scandal, 1MDB meaning the 1Malaysia Development Berhad, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Throughout the years, the fund has been embezzled to the tune of billions of dollars, in a scheme involving several political figures in Malaysia, including a PM. The scheme was set up by international fugitive Jho Low, and as usual for shady men working on an international level, he mingled with Hollywood figures, laundered money by funding movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, and tried to buy influence in US politics. And somehow, Pras became a central figure in the latter. Ever since 2021, Pras had become Low’s intermediary in funneling tens of millions of dollars to pro-Obama PACs and Super-PAC, in conjunction with infamous GOP operative Elliot Broidy (the same one who admitted to an affair and paying for an abortion that may have involved the former guy). The goal of the donations, which continued into the campaign and government of the former guy, was for the Justice Department to cease all investigations involving the 1MDB scandal, and Pras himself helped move up to $100 million dollars. I cannot imagine what his cut was, but some documents show that he would stand to win $25 million in retainers and up to $300 million if successful.

Worse still, during the same operation, Pras tried to create a media campaign to have Guo Wengui, a businessman and critic of the Chinese government, extradited from the United States. The only connection to the case is that Low is apparently hiding in China, so getting this man extradited would curry favor with the government.

The plan failed, spectacularly, and now Pras Michel has been found guilty, by a federal jury, of charges of conspiracy and tampering, which could net him a couple of decades in prison. In response to attacks by other rappers calling him a snitch for collaborating with the investigation, Pras denied being an informant for the FBI by claiming this is not a “Tekashi 6ix9ine situation,” missing the point in spectacular fashion.

I mean, isn’t this just surreal? But then you can’t help but wonder, this man Low wanted to gain influence in the US government at the highest levels, to buy his way into stopping an investigation led by the US Justice Department. And the best person he could find to make a beachhead for himself is… the third most popular member of the Fugees? Pras Michel of 1998’s “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)” fame (feat. Mya and Ol’ Dirty Bastard), the one-hit wonder promotional single for the soundtrack of Warren Beatty’s Bulworth, the movie in which he plays a US Senator that has a mental breakdown and starts rapping The Truth to Power? That Pras Michel? That’s whom all these crooks thought was a secret power player, not just in the Music Industry but in the freaking Beltway? So influential that you could confidently give him hundreds of millions of dollars in order to move the system to your will?

If only half of this is true, Pras Michel has not only crowned himself as the messiest and shadiest ex-Fugee, but he might also take the crown as the Biggest Hustler in the history of Hip Hop. The Fugees’ inevitable biopic is going to be on fire.

Alberto Cox says that if you think Ms. Lauryn Hill is late for her concerts… well, she is, but consider the time Axl Rose’s jet was departing Uruguay at the same time the concert was supposed to start in Santiago. The concert started three and a half hours later.