Legendary comedian Aresnio Hall dropped his $5 million defamation lawsuit against Sinead O’Connor after she apologized for comments she made on Facebook last May, where she accused Hall of providing Prince with drugs, leading to his death.
O’Connor made the comments just weeks after Prince’s death at a time when evidence suggested, but hadn’t confirmed, that Prince had died of a drug overdose.
In a rather heated Facebook rant, O’Connor said: “Two words for the DEA investigating where Prince got his drugs over the decades…Aresnio Hall (aka Prince’s and Eddie Murphy’s bitch). Anyone imagining Prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land. Aresnio I’ve reported you to the Carver County Sheriff’s office. Expect their call. They are aware you spiked me years ago at Eddie Murphy’s House. You best get tidying your man cave.”
However, O’Connor backed down on her accusations in her apology stating “I apologize for my Facebook posts about Aresnio Hall to the extent that anyone thought I was accusing him of acting as Prince’s drug dealer and supplying him with illegal hard drugs, or insinuating that Arsenio had something to do with Prince’s death. I sincerely apologize because those statements would be false, and I retract them unequivocally.”
After Hall’s reputation had “been restored by Sinead’s unequivocal retraction and apology,” his publicist confirmed that the lawsuit has been dismissed, while a rep for O’Connor declined to comment any further on the situation when reached out to by Rolling Stone.
It appears that O’Connor’s accusations have had little impact, as investigators have been examining whether doctors illegally prescribed the pop star Fentanyl, or whether it came from a black market search.
In other Prince related news, his music will be made available for streaming this year.
Moral of the story: If you come at Aresnio, you better come correct.