According to stereogum.com, Dawn Robinson was the most famous member of En Vogue, the hugely successful ’90s R&B group. Robinson first left En Vogue in 1997 and her career has taken some turns since then. Robinson has released one successful album with Lucy Pearl, the neo-soul supergroup with Tony! Toni! Toné!’s Raphael Saadiq and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

And now, Robinson has posted a YouTube video where she made the shocking announcement: “You guys, for the past three years, I have been living in my car.” In her 18-minute YouTube video, Robinson tells the story about why she is living in her car. The artist says that she was living with her parents in Las Vegas but she had to move out because of conflicts with her mother.

A manager invited her out to live with him in Los Angeles but he put Robinson in a hotel when it turned out that he did not have room in his house. That arrangement was not sustainable, so Robinson figured out what she wanted to do with the next chapter of her life.

“I told my assistant one day, I have been researching car life.”There’s a whole community of people that live in their cars and a whole community of people that live in their RVs, and a whole community of people that live in vans, van life, car life, RV life and I loved what I was seeing. I just thought, ‘Wow, these people.’ I could do that, I could do this, I think. And I ended up in my car. And it’s been, like I said, three years.”

Robinson says that the experience was “scary” at first but that she came to think of it like a camping trip or an adventure. She notes that “a lot of celebrities,” including Marvin Gaye, have lived in their cars. She insists that fans should not feel sorry for her: “Oh, my God! Poor Dawn! She’s living in her car and it’s terrible! Oh, woe is me!” It’s not that. It’s not. Like I 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 En Vogue, You’re going to be living in your car one day, I’d be 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 that we’re capable.”