Dawn Robinson recently made news when she revealed she’s been living in her car.
Shortly after sharing this information, Jermaine Dupri commented on her situation, suggesting she must have chosen this lifestyle since she mentioned having an assistant.
“Having an assistant isn’t something that you should even think about if you don’t have no money,” he said during an Instagram Live.
Robinson responded to his remarks during an interview on Way Up with Angela Yee.
“I’ve only met him once in my life, if that, the former En Vogue singer said of Dupri. “I remember being around but not directly meeting him. So I don’t even think we said hello and shook hands or gave a hug. So I was shocked. Usually artist to artist…we don’t attack each other like that. You would swear that he knows me directly. Like he knows my story. Where you coming from? It was a shock but some people have to just be negative.”
Dawn Robinson further explained her decision to live in her car, emphasizing it was a “choice.”
“It’s almost like people think that I was just thrown into car life and I had no,” Robinson explained. “She’s just homeless.’ It’s not that at all. I made a choice. Like I said, I could’ve stayed at the hotels, or I could’ve worked it out even with my manager to stay with him.”
She added, “It’s like they saw what they wanted to see. They didn’t see what I said. Like I said, they tore it apart.”
She rejected the way people have recently portrayed her as “‘homeless'” and “‘destitute,'” or needing help.
“I love the ones that came for me like, ‘I have a place, I have a room…you can stay with me.’ My car is right now temporarily my room, my home, but I’m building my life from here.”
In mid-March, Robinson revealed in a YouTube vlog that she’s lived in her car for three years. Before that, she lived with her parents in Las Vegas, which didn’t work out—then her co-manager tried helping her find an LA apartment, which also failed. She told her assistant she wanted to live in her car.
Robinson first tried car living in Malibu, feeling “a sense of freedom” in her choice. “I was so free I felt like, Wow, this is so different. I felt like I was on a camping trip. I just felt like it was the right thing to do–I didn’t regret it.”
