Where are the Fugees now – jail time, presidential campaign and anniversary tour

Ready or not, here they come, you can’t hide.

The 90s sensation hip-hop group have made their epic comeback this year when they returned to the stage once again to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their best-selling album The Score which debuted in 1996.

But the Fugees haven’t always had a smooth relationship throughout their staggered musical success as the group famously disbanded multiple times over the past two and a half decades.

Lauryn Hill, Pras Michel and Wyclef Jean formed the now infamous rap group back in 1992 and the trio soon became as famously known for their fierce arguments as they were for their legendary music.

When the group last tried to reform the band in 2007, rapper Pras Michel famously said: “You will have a better chance of seeing Osama Bin Laden and (George W.) Bush in Starbucks having a latte, discussing foreign policies, before there will be a Fugees reunion.”

So, what happened to the beloved hip-hop group? As the trio reach the final leg of their tour, the Daily Star has done a deep dive inside their music history through the years.

Music stardom

When the group first took off in the early nineties the pop group gained international fame overnight with their song The Score which spent four weeks at the number one spot on the Billboard 200.

In less than two years, the album of the same name went platinum six times and won a Grammy award for Best Rap Album which included such hits as Killing Me Softly and Ready Or Not.

Their movement became so iconic in the music scene that they went on to inspire fellow artists to step into the lime light including The Black Eyed Peas and City High.

Their impressive songs have gone on to become some of the biggest records of the 1990s and sold more than 19 million records across the world throughout their global reign.

Explosive breakup

Unfortunately not all good things last forever as rumours began to swirl of an affair between Lauryn, who was dating Bob Marley’s son Rohan Marley, and Wyclef while he was married to his wife Claudette Jean.

The cracks really began to show as the group approached the final months of their music career when the singer fell pregnant with Rohan’s son which she kept under wraps throughout her pregnancy.

It appeared that there could have been a romantic relationship between the two band members when confusion set in as to who was the father of her first child Zion David.

In Wyclef’s personal memoir, Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, he claimed Lauryn lied to him about being the father of her first son.

He penned: “In that moment something died between us. I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn’t forgive that.”

And the songstress appeared to corroborate the volatile nature of her former relationship in the Manifest/Outro of their album in which she performed a worrying verse about her former partner.

She sang: “You see I loved hard once, but the love wasn’t returned, I found out the man I’d die for, he wasn’t even concerned.

“Diamonds deserve diamonds, but he convinced me I was worthless, I was God’s best contemplating death with a Gillette, but no man is ever worth the paradise manifest.”

Looking back on the event Wyclef later hypothesised that the group was always doomed to end, in which he said: “If it wasn’t the baby, something else would’ve happened, and it would’ve exploded in different ways.”

Solo career

Two years after the band found fame, Lauryn decided to go solo and the group disbanded for the first time in 1998.

And even though she didn’t have her two bandmates to support her, the starlet still found international success on her own as she went on to launch her only studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

And it’s fair to say it was an instant hit with fans all over the world and has since been interpreted by both Drake on his single Nice for What and Cardi B on her track Be Careful.

Lauryn was reportedly one of the most famous musicians in the world at the height of her solo career, and is believed to have earned $40 million from her album alone which went platinum eight times in the US.

And her success didn’t end there, as the star went on to take home five Grammy Awards while being nominated for 10 categories at the 41st Annual Awards show in addition to being ranked in numerous best-album lists since its release.

Following her album, she was soon flooded with requests from Hollywood films including The Bourne Identity and Charlie’s Angels to take part in their blockbuster movies.

The star turned many of them down apart from her key role in Sister Act 2 in which she played the part of Rita Louise Watson and worked alongside the greats including Whoopie Goldberg and Dame Maggie Smith.

Legal Battle

But her overwhelming success soon backfired after Lauryn failed to correctly credit the musicians who worked with her on the album, who went by the name New Ark.

The group claimed the album was a collaborative piece and her record label failed to attribute them for their contribution to the music.

In 1998, soon after the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the band filed a 50-page lawsuit against the singer, her management and her record label which stated that she “used their songs and production skills, but failed to properly credit them for the work.”

The musicians went on to claim to be the primary songwriter on two of her 13 tracks as well as include a heavy influence on several other pieces of her work.

However, Gordon Williams, who was the album’s mixer and engineer later described the album as a “powerfully personal effort by Hill … it was definitely her vision.”

Despite the backlash, Lauryn went on to settle the suit outside of court in February 2001 in which she paid the band $5 million dollars for their work.

Tax Evasion

And things soon went from bad to worse for the musician as she later went on to be found guilty of tax evasion in 2013.

The starlet served a three-month sentence in Connecticut for failing to pay tax on $1.8 million dollars for her earnings between 2005 and 2007.

She was housed with the general population at the Federal Correctional Institution of Danbury where prisoners live in open dormitory-style living quarters and are expected to work during their stay.

In a statement to the judge, Lauryn admitted she intended to pay the taxes but couldn’t after withdrawing from public life and ending her music career to raise her six children.

She told the court: “I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me.”

Presidential Campaign

But it wasn’t just Lauryn who found herself at the heart of national headlines, as her bandmate Wyclef Jean went on to run as a presidential candidate of Haiti.

Throughout their lengthy music break, Wyclef found a passion in politics and decided to enter himself as one of the 15 proposed candidates in the 2010 presidential race.

When he first announced his intention to stand for presidency, Wyclef told the Guardian: “Singing is not enough. I am being drafted. Every year I probably do 200 shows and I have a very comfortable life.

“But people are saying to me, ‘Clef, if you don’t put yourself on the ground, in 10 years’ time you will look at it and say you could have’.”

His high-profile name and well-funded campaign certainly shook up the country’s dysfunctional politics as well as unnerving some of Haiti’s political competitors ahead of his enrolment in the political campaign.

But the star was unfortunately cut from the campaign when his detractors said he had spent too much time in the States rather than his birth place in Haiti.

Many of his supporters argued that the singer’s residency requirement should not need to apply to him because, as a contributing UN goodwill ambassador for Haiti, he was required to travel globally most of the year.

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk