Ready or not, the Fugees are reuniting before Pras faces prison

MALIBU, Calif. — Prakazrel “Pras” Michél is trusting the process.

To trust the process is to recognize that your situation is pretty awful right now, but there’s some sort of greater plan in place to turn the bad into something good. In the case of Pras, the Fugees founder who is now considered by the U.S. government to be a foreign agent, he has no choice but to have faith.

“You have to trust the system and trust the process,” he said.

It’s been about six months since Pras was convicted in what federal prosecutors say is a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government that’s part of a complex scheme of money and power that stretches across multiple continents and American presidents.

A D.C. jury found Pras guilty in April of 10 federal charges for his role in a web of conspiracies involving money laundering, campaign finance violations, illegal lobbying and witness tampering. A sentencing date has not been set, but he faces up to 20 years in prison. Pras’s new attorneys filed a motion for a new trial on Monday, accusing his former legal counsel of using an “experimental” AI program to draft his closing argument.

“I wouldn’t want to wish this on my worst enemy,” the 50-year-old artist told The Washington Post.

This is what life has become for Pras — a Grammy Award winner, a documentary filmmaker and entrepreneur, a father. There are some topics Pras can’t talk about for legal reasons — his publicist joining us for lunch at Nobu says as much. He can only shake his head, take a bite of his miso-marinated black cod and repeat the same three words: Trust the process.

Before Pras is sentenced, he will reunite with Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, who along with Pras are the Fugees, one of hip-hop’s most influential groups. The group is headed out on their first tour in years, in support of the American leg of Hill’s headlining tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of her 1998 album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Their first show is Tuesday in Newark.

“In your most despair moment, you definitely know who is really there for you, no matter what,” he said. A text message from Jean to Pras asking him to go on tour, with Hill’s blessing, changed it all, the rapper said. “It wasn’t my idea, I promise you that. It was them being like, ‘Listen, let’s rock. You down?’”

Pras’s public life has largely been defined by his place as the architect of the Fugees — the hip-hop group that blended its Haitian influence with reggae, R&B and funk, and eschewed the gangster rap that dominated the ’90s, to become one of the most significant groups of the era.

Their meteoric success was driven by “The Score,” the group’s 1996 Grammy-winning album that’s estimated to have sold more than 22 million copies, which is believed to be the most ever by a hip-hop group. Even though the group broke up and never made another album after the runaway success of “The Score,” its legacy has remained. U2’s Bono likened the Fugees to hip-hop’s version of the Beatles, and Barack Obama listed “Ready or Not” as his favorite song as he was running for president in 2008.

“When I look at my peers, I say to myself, ‘Oh, s---, Bono was right when he called us the ‘Hip-Hop Beatles,’” Jean wrote in an email to The Post.

Those who know the group best agree: “They were a package of things that were not supposed to happen by any traditional reckoning,” said Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, a screenwriter and producer who covered the Fugees when he was editor in chief of the Source. Added David Sonenberg, the group’s former manager, “Whatever it is in the DNA of these three people, they did something amazing.”

While the tour is an exciting reunion for fans, it could also be the last dance for the Fugees after Pras’s conviction.

His case is tangentially related to one of the world’s biggest financial scandals: the looting of $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as 1MDB. Although Pras was not accused of participating in the exorbitant theft, prosecutors allege that he conspired “to sell out our democracy” for a pilfered foreign fortune of more than $100 million.

The criminal conspiracies aimed at helping President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and influencing President Donald Trump’s administration were hatched by an associate named Low Taek Jho, a wild-spending, lavish-partying Malaysian financier usually known as Jho Low. Low, who remains a fugitive of justice, has been dubbed by associates and media outlets as the Asian Great Gatsby.

Hill and Jean declined to meet for in-person interviews but agreed to answer a list of questions sent via email. (Jean responded, but Hill did not.) Pras’s legal team, which includes former Alabama senator Doug Jones (D), declined to comment. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, pointing to the statement after Pras’s conviction.

Fugees rapper Pras Michél guilty in sprawling corruption trial

“Mr. Michel sought to use his celebrity and access to influence U.S. government officials on behalf of undisclosed foreign interests,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in an April statement. “This is an affront to the rule of law.”

Now, Pras is trying to recapture the superpower he had with Hill and Jean. And Pras knows the clock is ticking, with his future in flux.

“I can’t hide into submission and stress myself. It’s been stressful enough,” he said. “I can’t even begin to tell you the stress.”

The trio has come a long way since they met in South Orange, N.J., when Pras’s very strict Haitian parents thought he and his friends — the quiet Hill and the bombastic Jean — were going to hell with microphones in their hands if they continued to be a rap group. If the Fugees wanted to rule the world, the group first had to survive the flop of “Blunted on Reality,” their debut album released in 1994.

While the album was praised by critics, it left fans and radio DJs confused on what the Fugees were supposed to be at a time when gangster rap dominated the charts. They were seen as a weird gumbo of alternative hip-hop that featured rhymes in Haitian Creole and live instrumentation on songs that relied on Hill’s melodies and Jean’s showmanship.

Chris Schwartz, the CEO and co-founder of Ruffhouse Records who signed the group in 1993, remembers how Columbia Records, the label’s distributor, wanted out, despite a growing buzz around their live shows.

“Sony wanted to get rid of them,” he said. Sonenberg echoed what it felt like after the album tanked: “For as talented and as charismatic as they were, I was not convinced that we would get a chance to do another album.”

That changed, Sonenberg said, when he persuaded Sony to give them another chance, with the group members given the reins to produce “The Score.” To find success, they had to become the best and boldest versions of themselves — Jean as the thunder, Hill as the lightning and Pras as the earth to keep everything grounded.

“I always felt like that group could not afford another personality like the other two,” Hinds said. “It was really Pras, and I’m not just speaking metaphorically and emotionally, but he literally kept them balanced. He was the cool head.”

When they started recording “The Score,” there was a consensus that they had something.

“I knew 100,000 percent ‘The Score’ was going to be huge,” Pras said.

Jean didn’t feel pressure to come through on the second album but knew Pras was carrying that burden for the group. “Pras felt more of that pressure because he was very business-minded out of the gate and wanted the album to be a success for the band,” Jean said. “He understood that if the album did not do well, the band would be dead on arrival.”

“The Score” became a cultural phenomenon, selling tens of millions of records and winning two Grammys in 1997 — best rap album and best R&B group performance for “Killing Me Softly.” The group was also nominated for album of the year, marking only the second time a rap album had been nominated.

Pras didn’t fully grasp the extent of the group’s power until a performance in England. Back then, he often gave a shout-out to Princess Diana during interviews and hoped she could be in one of their music videos. He didn’t think anything of it — until the Princess of Wales showed up backstage at one of the Fugees’ shows, Pras said.

“She was like, ‘I love the band, but unfortunately, I can’t be in the music video. But I appreciate the gesture,’” he remembered.

Then, at the height of their success from “The Score,” it was over. The group never put out another album, and the three pursued their own projects.

“I never thought it was done for good,” Pras said. “We were all just exploring.”

The first voice mail interlude on Pras’s 1998 album, “Ghetto Superstar,” features a familiar voice sandwiched between those of Naomi Campbell and Sting: Hi, this is Donald Trump, and I have no doubt that you’re going to be a big success. Now, after knowing you, I know that you’re going to be right up there, and I hope very soon you’re going to be in the leagues with me. So good luck, man. And do good!

“We need to preface that,” Pras exclaimed, emphasizing the voice mail was left by Trump the businessman, not Trump the president. “That’s pre-Donald Trump!” he said, laughing and nearly falling over in the booth. “It was very interesting back then.”

Pras found early success with “Ghetto Superstar,” but not to the sustained level of Hill or Jean. He expanded his range as an actor, a documentary filmmaker and a Daytime Emmy Award winner for his work on the web series “The Bay.”

But then in 2006, a meeting with a Malaysian man at a nightclub in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District changed Pras’s life forever. Low had cultivated a close friendship with Pras by 2011, as he had with several other celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and model Miranda Kerr. Low also helped finance “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the Martin Scorsese-directed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that was nominated for five Academy Awards.

Prosecutors accuse Pras of playing a significant role in political conspiracies involving millions of dollars in foreign money in hope of helping Obama’s reelection campaign and influencing Trump’s administration. Pras has been accused of funneling money from Low to straw donors to Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign so that the Malaysian financier could get a photo with the president. Prosecutors say Pras tried to get the Trump administration in 2017 to squelch an investigation into Low and persuade Trump to return Guo Wengui, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government who was living in New York, to the Chinese government.

Suddenly, the quiet Fugee was faced with a trial that turned into an A-list mix of Hollywood and Washington — one that included witness testimony from DiCaprio and former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

“He was greedy,” prosecutor Sean F. Mulryne said of Pras in April. “He wanted money, and he got it.”

When the name Jho Low comes up over lunch in Malibu, Pras’s jovial demeanor turns cold.

“I don’t even know how to explain that,” he said.

He faces up to 20 years in prison, but the judge in the case will probably impose a shorter prison term under advisory federal sentencing guidelines.

But until that day comes, Pras is thankful for the chance to reunite with Hill and Jean.

“Despite all of the circumstances, I still have one of the best lives someone can have,” he said. “Clearly I would have liked things to be different, but again … how can I not be positive, man?”

If this is the last time the Fugees are together in a meaningful way, then Jean believes it would be “one of the saddest things I will experience since my days on this planet.” Neither he nor Pras knows what the group’s legacy will be or how they will be remembered. Jean thinks the Fugees followed through on being “something bigger than music.”

“I hope history is kind to us,” Pras said. As he prepares to head to prison, he hopes history will be kind to him, too.

“I’m trusting the process.”