Dawn Robinson, a founding member of En Vogue who left the successful girl group for the first time in 1997, has been living in her car for three years, she revealed on social media.
“You may have heard of something called the dark night of the soul,” she said in a video posted Tuesday. “That’s when you go through like a period of isolation, a period of separating yourself from family and friends, and I’m definitely in the trenches of this right now.”
But she insists repeatedly in the video that she wouldn’t trade her experiences for the world.
Robinson explained how her homelessness happened: In 2020, she was staying with her family in Las Vegas, which “was wonderful — until it wasn’t,” she said. She had a falling out with her mom and left, spending about a month living in her car in Sin City. Then her co-manager at the time talked her into heading to Los Angeles where he was living, she said and said he would make room for her at his apartment. When she got there, it turned out he didn’t have any room.
She said she looked for apartments but couldn’t get him to sign off on any of them, so she wound up living for eight months in a hotel that he paid for. Finally, the singer said, she got too stressed out by him having to pay his rent as well as her weekly hotel bills, so on March 9, 2022, Robinson pointed her car toward Malibu.
She had done research on people who live off the grid: car life, RV life, van life, she said.
“That first night was scary,” the 58-year-old singer said. “But then as I got to know what to do in my car and how to do it, like how to cover my windows. You don’t talk to certain people. You’re careful of telling people that you’re alone, as a woman especially. 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’s celebrity has been real. “In some ways, Herron, Dawn Robinson, Terry Ellis and Maxine Jones are a funky reincarnation of the Supremes,” The Times wrote about En Vogue in 1992. “They combine beauty, glamour, sophistication, sassiness and scintillating harmonies in a way no female group has since the heyday of Diana Ross and company.”
In this week’s video, Robinson was making the case that car life wasn’t entirely awful.
“I felt free. That was a sense of freedom that I had. 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. A lot of celebrities have slept in their cars. A lot of people, not just sleeping, but lived in their cars.”
Robinson said she’s been learning about herself and who she is as a woman, and insisted that this was not a situation where people should pity her as “poor Dawn.”
“When I succeed again — because I will — when I’m on top again or when I have a resurgence of my career again, in the way that I want, getting to that point is only up to me. So from here, from my car into that life, is going to be amazing,” she said, pronouncing that last word as if it were two.
“Would I have an apartment now if I had a choice? I would. I’m not going to lie. But am I glad that I did this? Absolutely.”
En Vogue, which reconstituted as a trio after her departure, welcomed Robinson back for a tour in 2005 — she didn’t stay long enough to record another album — and again in 2009 to mark the group’s 20th anniversary. She and Maxine Jones, another founding member, left soon after.
“En Vogue is such a democratic unit that the departure of Dawn Robinson lacks the dramatic angst and impact of, say, Diana Ross’ split from the Supremes,” The Times wrote in June 1997 around the release of the group’s third album. “But the move is hardly insignificant, since this group is more than just interchangeable hot babes in haute couture. Robinson contributed greatly to the sizzling look and sound of En Vogue, and her absence is sure to have some effect. … The loss of Robinson is a blow, but En Vogue still looks unstoppable.”
The balance of the band, co-founders Terry Ellis and Cindy Herron-Braggs and longtime member Rhona Bennett, welcomed Jones back into the fold last month to perform “Free Your Mind” during halftime at the 2025 NBA All-Star Game.
Robinson went from En Vogue to “supergroup” Lucy Pearl, which also included Raphael Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné! and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest.
“I’ve always felt comfortable in a group situation. There’s so much you can learn by being in a supportive band,” Robinson told The Times in April 2000, the month before the band’s debut album came out. “Plus, the burden doesn’t fall only on you if the project isn’t a hit!”
She also appreciated the chance to join in creative decisions, which she hadn’t done much with En Vogue, she said at the time. “With En Vogue, our producers had the tracks ready for us,” she says. “I never saw musicians. To watch the process with Lucy Pearl was really amazing. When you’re the only girl in the studio, it gives you a thicker skin and makes you a better writer.”
Even with that thicker skin, she quit Lucy Pearl that October and was replaced by the singer Joi. Robinson released her first solo album a couple of years later.
Rumors persist that Robinson contributed to her departure from both groups.
After it all, Robinson retained her sense of humor in this week’s video, joking, “Just so you guys know, I have a gym membership and I shower there. … I’m a Funky Diva, but I’m not funky.”
“Funky Divas” was En Vogue’s sophomore album.
