Dawn Robinson made headlines earlier this month when she revealed she’s been living in her car.
Days after publicly sharing that information, Jermaine Dupri weighed in on her situation, suggesting that she must have voluntarily 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 session.
Robinson addressed his comments during a conversation with 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.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Robinson further opened up about her decision to live in her car, which she said 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 continued, “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 pushed back against the narrative people have recently painted of her, calling her “‘homeless’” and “‘destitute,’” or that she needs 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 confessed in a YouTube vlog that she’s been living in her car for the last three years. Prior to that, she was living with her parents in Las Vegas, which didn’t work out—then her co-manager tried to help her look for an apartment in Los Angeles, which also fell through. She said she told her assistant she was interested in living in her car.
Robinson first tried living in her car in Malibu, feeling "a sense of freedom" in her decision. "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.”