Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean say to “absolutely” expect new music, teasing a Fugees reunion 30 years after ‘The Score’
Thirty years after The Score rewrote what hip-hop could sound like, two-thirds of the Fugees are hinting the story is not finished. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean told the BBC there is “absolutely” new music on the horizon, speaking ahead of their reunion at Hill’s Diaspora Calling! festival, which takes place today (Aug. 7) at Milton Keynes National Bowl. For fans who have waited three decades for another Fugees record, that one word carries serious weight.
The exchange was brief but pointed. Asked whether an album might be coming, Jean restated the question (“Will there be music in the future?”) and Hill answered plainly: “Absolutely.” Jean kept it spiritual, adding that “we’re in God’s hands” and framing the reunion as something bigger than a business decision. “I’m back with my bandmate! So we’re in an amazing place. I think the energy is very important,” he said. Hill echoed that, pointing to real repair between them. “There was an incredible healing process that happened with us as a band and as bandmates, and we just want to showcase that and give some of that energy to the world as well.”
Three Decades, Two Albums, One Classic
To understand why this matters, you have to understand what the Fugees mean. Made up of Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras Michel, the trio released just two studio albums, 1994’s Blunted on Reality and the 1996 landmark The Score, before splitting in 1997. The Score alone was enough to cement them, a genre-blending, Caribbean-tinged, socially conscious classic that still ranks among the greatest hip-hop albums ever made. Everything since has been reunions, rumors, and near-misses, which is exactly why “absolutely” from Hill and Wyclef lands differently than the usual reunion talk.
The group has flirted with comebacks before. They briefly reformed between 2004 and 2006, then reunited in 2021 for a tour marking The Score’s 25th anniversary. But momentum kept collapsing. That anniversary run was ultimately scrapped, and just before a planned 2024 US tour, the Fugees called off their dates entirely, setting off the messiest chapter yet.
The Pras Problem
Any Fugees conversation now has to reckon with the absence at its center. Pras Michel sued Hill for fraud after the 2024 cancellation, claiming the tour was sabotaged by her “arrogance” and “narcissistic tendencies” and alleging she padded the budget with “unnecessary and, most likely fictitious expenses.” Hill fired back through NME, calling the suit “baseless” and “full of false claims,” and stating that Pras had received overpayment and failed to repay substantial loans she extended as an act of goodwill, including a reported $3 million advance he said he needed for legal fees.
Those legal fees were no small matter. In April 2023, Michel was convicted for his role in a billion-dollar Malaysian money laundering scheme, and he was eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison. He has since declared he is “done” with the Fugees. That reality reframes the current reunion: this is Hill and Wyclef moving forward as a duo, not the full trio that made The Score.
Still, the chemistry between the two remaining members has been rebuilding in public. They performed together at Roberta Flack’s memorial in 2025, and Wyclef later joined Hill onstage in London to run through Fugees classics. Hill, who has famously never released a follow-up to her 1998 masterpiece The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, recently opened up about why that album stood alone for so long, making any promise of new material genuinely notable.
Whether “absolutely” becomes an actual album remains to be seen. But with the healing done and the energy, as Wyclef put it, finally right, the door that has been closed for thirty years is at least cracked open again.
