Variety: En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson Has Been Living in Her Car for ‘Almost 3 Years’

[telekin]

Boy, if I didn't think she was a piece of work before...

The pandemic broke her brain, I think.

En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson Has Been Living in Her Car for ‘Almost Three Years’ but Says: It’s Not ‘Woe Is Me’

By Ellise Shafer

Former En Vogue member Dawn Robinson has revealed that she’s been living in her car for nearly three years, but it’s not a “woe is me” situation.

Robinson broke the news in a video on her YouTube channel, saying: “You guys, for the past almost three years, I have been living in my car. I said it! Oh my God, it’s out.”

The singer, who was part of En Vogue from its inception in 1989 until 2011, detailed that she was living with her parents in Las Vegas in 2020 but started to not get along with her mother. She then moved to L.A., where her former co-manager said she could stay with him, but that also fell through. Robinson said she ended up living in a hotel for eight months while looking for apartments, but her co-manager refused to approve one

“Sometimes I think people want to trap you and keep you in a situation where you’re vulnerable and depending on them, and I wasn’t the one,” Robinson said. “So yeah, I got out of there."

She then started researching “car life” and “loved what I was seeing,” adding: “I just thought, ‘Wow, I could do this.'” Robinson is now living in her car in Malibu, and has a gym membership in order to shower.

“That first night was scary,” she recalled. “But then, as I got to know what to do in my car and how to do it, like how to cover my windows and you don’t talk to certain people. You’re careful of telling people that you’re alone, as a woman especially, and I’m a celebrity — I don’t just divulge that to people. If you don’t know who I am, I’m not telling you that part.”

Robinson emphasized that “this is not like, ‘Oh my God, poor Dawn. She’s living in her car and it’s terrible and woe is me.'”

“I’m learning about who I am, I’m learning myself as a person, as a woman,” she continued. “If you would have said to me while I was in En Vogue, ‘You’re going to be living in your car one day,’ I would have been like, ‘Huh? No, I’m always going to have an apartment. I can’t live in my car. How can I do that?’ We say that we can’t do certain things before we even know we’re capable.”

In addition to posting videos about car life on her YouTube channel, Robinson said she’s making a documentary of her experience. “Succeeding again is going to be amazing. I see it in my mind,” she said. “Sometimes before I go to sleep I visualize seeing that, seeing myself like, oh my God, No. 1 documentary. Whoever I sell it to, I don’t know, Netflix. Because people have to see what this is like.”

She also affirmed that “this is not a publicity stunt” and she expects many more people to follow suit and live off-grid, citing factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, which she called a “plandemic.”

“It was a ‘plandemic,’ now everybody’s finding out the truth of it, they’re admitting a lot of stuff about that,” she said. “But during that whole thing, a lot of people were like, ‘Why am I paying rent or mortgage and we have a RV or van or car and we can do that instead of paying all this money?'”

Robinson left En Vogue in 2011 after a dispute over the recording of a new album. She briefly reunited with the group in 2019 for a performance to celebrate Epic Records CEO Sylvia Rhone, which sparked talks of a new tour, but nothing materialized.

Watch Robinson’s full video below.

[GrtGzu]

I read about this the other day on CNN I think, and I have so many questions...

[carlo]

Yeah, definitely some mental health issues there. So sad.

[reese]

This is really sad. I last saw Dawn when she was on R&B DIVAS and I felt bad for her because some of the other "divas" sort of bullied her.

Given how Maxine recently reunited for a performance with Cindy and Terry, maybe they'll ask Dawn to rejoin as well.

[lakeside]

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[Spreadinglove21]

If she has serious mental health issues I doubt En Vogue would want her back until she's in better shape. Glad to see Maxine back. Let's see how long she stays this time.

Dawn's plight recalls Wanda Young of the Marvelettes and Estelle Bennett of the Ronnettes, both of whom struggled with mental health issues for decades.

[telekin]

If she has serious mental health issues I doubt En Vogue would want her back until she's in better shape. Glad to see Maxine back. Let's see how long she stays this time.

Dawn's plight recalls Wanda Young of the Marvelettes and Estelle Bennett of the Ronnettes, both of whom struggled with mental health issues for decades.

Interesting comparisons and I think you're right. Clearly there are some ongoing mental health issues there. She's rejoined and left En Vogue twice already which likely wasn't good for their business. Like so many, they are a nostalgia act now that makes their living on the road and anything that gets in the way of that, can't stand.

I keep seeing some posters in other forums who want nothing more than the original five, but those days are clearly passed. It would be unfair to their newest non-original member Rhona Bennett who has helped keep the act afloat for years now - in other words, kept them working when Dawn has not.