Lauryn Hill Settles Lawsuit

More than two years after filing a fifty-page lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, plaintiffs Vada Nobles, Rasheem Pugh, Tejumold and Johari Newton have received an undisclosed settlement from defendants Grammy winner Lauryn Hill and members of her management team and record label.

The four musicians claimed in the suit that they worked on arranging and producing all the cuts on Hill's Grammy-winning solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and requested partial writing credit on thirteen of the fourteen original tracks on the album, with percentages specified in the suit.

While Hill's spokesman at Columbia Records confirmed that a settlement had been reached, he said the terms are undisclosed, which is typical in such cases.

This does not mean the end of Hill's courtroom days, however. Bassist Vere Isaac, who worked on the "A Rose Is a Rose" sessions with Hill and Aretha Franklin, filed suit against Hill last year in the Seventh District Court in New York. Isaac states in his complaint that he wrote the melody for the hit single. Isaac has retained Peter Harvey -- who represented Nobles, Pugh and the Newtons -- as counsel.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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