Lauryn Hill Hosts Surprise Fugees Reunion At Roots Picnic Festival

Lauryn Hill already thrilled fans when she came on stage on time at the Roots Picnic mini-festival – an event hosted by music icons The Roots – but when her headline appearance signalled a surprise reunion with her Fugees bandmates Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel, fans knew they were in for something very special.

On Saturday, 3 June, Lauryn Hill headlined Roots Picnic and ran through a string of classics, including Superstar and Doo-Wop (That Thing) before the second half of her set comprised of an iconic Fugees reunion. Performing a snippet of the band’s The Score, Hill was then joined by Jean and Michel for five Fugees songs.

Taking on How Many Mics with Michel and Jean, Hill looks visibly stoked as the trio reprise their magnetic energy on stage. You can check out the footage below. From there, the reunited Fugees performed Zealots, the hits Ready Or Not, the Lori Lieberman cover of Killing Me Softly (With His Song) with Jean on keys, and a crescendo of Fu-Gee-La to close the set.

As Variety reports, Hill gave a shoutout to Questlove and The Roots for making “this class reunion” happen.

While the performance was fantastic, it's also bittersweet: the reunion happened a little over a month after Pras Michel was found guilty of criminal conspiracy to influence the US government. 

Upon entering the courtroom in late April, Pras was facing up to 11 serious criminal charges including lobbying schemes to influence the administrations of former US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump on behalf of the Malaysian financier and fugitive Jho Low.

The Fugees rapper’s legal troubles began in 2019 when he was charged with a count of criminal conspiracy. 

Pras allegedly illegally donated to the 2012 Barack Obama presidential campaign and lobbied the Donald Trump administration to halt investigations into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad controversy connected to Low.

The federal prosecutor said in their opening statements, “The defendant, Prakazrel Michel, received over $100 million from Jho Low, a foreign fugitive responsible for one of the largest embezzlement schemes in history, to use backchannel influence to convince the then-President of the United States to drop a federal investigation into Low and to agree to the extrajudicial removal of a Chinese exile living in the United States.”

Addressing the jurors, federal prosecutor Nicole Lockhart continued, “This is a case about foreign money, foreign influence and concealment… The defendant wanted money and was willing to break any laws necessary to get paid.”