Singer Dawn Robinson, who rose to fame in the 1990s as part of R&B girl group En Vogue, told fans in a new YouTube video that she has been living in her car for the past three years. But people shouldn’t take pity on her, she said, as she’s embraced what she calls “car life.”
“It’s not ‘woe is me,’” she said. “I’m learning about who I am. I’m learning myself as a person, as a woman.”
In the video she posted on Tuesday, Robinson said people in her life warned her not to share her circumstances publicly, asking her, “What if they judge you?” She added, “I’m like, okay and what if? What if they judge me? So what? We’re all judged. Life is life.”
The 58-year-old artist said she was living in Las Vegas with her parents in 2020, which “was wonderful until it wasn’t.” Following a series of disagreements with her mother, Robinson explained, she decided to leave her parents’ house. She said she stayed in her car for a month, at which point her former co-manager offered her some space at his Los Angeles apartment — but when she got there, there wasn’t actually a room for her and instead her co-manager paid for a hotel where she could stay. A one-night fix turned into an eight-month stay while Robinson struggled to find an apartment in L.A. During that period, she said, she began researching “van life, car life, RV life” and was drawn to the community of people who have chosen that lifestyle.
“I loved what I was seeing,” she said. “I thought, Wow, these people … I can do that! I can do this!” So, on March 9, 2022, Robinson said, she left the hotel and began living in her car. She recalled immediately feeling “free.”
Robinson called the first night of staying in her car “scary,” but added that she “got to know what to do in my car … like how to cover my windows.”
But she said she doesn’t regret the past several years. “Be spontaneous,” she told viewers at the end of the video. “Do the scary. Fuck fear.”
