En Vogue singer Dawn Robinson reveals she has been living out of her car for three years​on March 14, 2025 at 3:32 pm

As part of En Vogue, Dawn Robinson lent her voice to some of the biggest hits of the ’90s. But in an emotional video posted to her YouTube channel this week, the singer revealed she has been living out of her car for the past three years.

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“You guys, for the past three years, I have been living in my car,” Robinson, 58, said in a nearly 20-minute video. “I said it, oh my gosh, it’s out.”

The Grammy-nominated former R&B star told followers in the viral video that she moved into her car after she tried — and failed — to live with her parents.

“This is not like, ‘Oh my God, poor Dawn. She’s living in her car. It’s terrible. Oh, woe is me,’” Robinson said. “I’m learning about who I am. I’m learning myself as a person, as a woman. 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 said no … But we say we can’t do things before we know we’re even capable.”

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She alleged an unscrupulous manager tried to help her find an apartment, but she left after suspecting he was just “playing games.”

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“Sometimes people want to trap you and keep you in a situation where you’re vulnerable and depending on them,” she said of that business relationship. “So I got out of there.” 

Robinson said she is in the midst of a “growth period” and a “spiritual journey.”

“I’m glad that I made this choice because I needed to go through this fire,” she said in the video, which has racked up more than 192,000 views. “I’m in the trenches of this right now and I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t trade my experiences and what I’ve gone through for the world.’”

Robinson said she misses her family, “but I needed to do this alone… I needed to do this for me.” 

Robinson’s mother, Barbara Alexander, told the New York Times that the video was “hard to watch because that’s my daughter.”

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“I feel bad with her situation, but Dawn doesn’t have to be in that situation, that’s what she choose to be in,” she said.

Her mother said she thought it was “ridiculous” Robinson was living in her car.

“She doesn’t have to be living like that. Dawn has got music that she could pass on to Taylor Swift. That’s how great she is. So I just wish that she would get her life together and leave all her demons, or whatever she’s fighting, and move on,” Alexander said.

She added to the publication that she was hopeful the two could reconcile.

“If she was to knock on my door right now, I would grab her, I would hug her, and I would not even talk about what is out there right now. I’d move on past because it’s done,” she said.

Robinson said in her video that despite living in an older vehicle, “car life” has left her feeling “free” and called her new state of mind an “adventure.”

“I ended up in my car and it’s been three years … I felt like I was on a camping trip. It just felt like it was the right thing to do. I didn’t regret it. A lot of celebrities have slept in their cars. In the case of Marvin Gaye … he was living in a bread van.”

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But her new existence hasn’t been without its hardships. Robinson said her dog Max died in the car. “That was hurtful, going through that with him,” she said. “That was hard … Now, I’m really on my own.”

She also shut down speculation that she released the video to garner publicity and revive her music career.

“There are many things that people have done for publicity stunts,” she said. “Saying that I’m living in my car and actually not living in my car would be a stupid publicity stunt. But this is not publicity. I have all the footage from Vegas to L.A. to prove that.”

En Vogue, which was founded in the late 1980s with Robinson, Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron and Maxine Jones, had a number of hits in the 1990s, including the top 10 smash Free Your Mind.

Robinson left the group in 1997, but regrouped with them in 2005 and 2009. for several short-lived stints.

In closing her message, Robinson urged viewers to do something “scary.”

“Do things that you don’t think you were capable of, but wanted to do,” she said. “Something that’s been in your soul .. be spontaneous … People are gonna call you crazy, and that’s OK.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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