American singer, Lauryn Hill has come out to address her daughter’s comments about suffering terrible childhood trauma because of her.
The singer had been heavily panned on social media after Selah Marley her daughter accused her of being an abusive mother.
Marley, 22, stated that Hill, 45, used to beat her and her siblings up like slaves, adding that her father’s absence has negatively rubbed off on her relationship with men.
“She’s Lauryn Hill,” Marley said. “She’s getting attacked by the media. She was also going through her own sh*t. She had five kids with a man that — they didn’t really get to know each other. So they were always arguing, always fighting. I don’t think she realizes how much that sh*t affected me.”
Reacting to her daughter’s shocking revelation, the Grammy-winning singer, decried the heated criticism on social media, while blaming racism as the reason for disciplining her children. She added that it was one of the reasons she quit music because she wasn’t treated right by the public.
“To me, I am just me. If I am guilty of anything it is disciplining in anger, not in disciplining,” she wrote.
“The toxic venom I ingested for standing on principle, and confronting systemic racism far BEFORE it was the thing to say or do (everything you NOW celebrate everyone for!)—the people who called me CRAZY and have yet to apologize and say ‘oh yeah, we were wrong’, OF COURSE that seeped into my home, it was intended to.
“An entire operation trying to break an artist with a voice and knowledge of herself—way ahead of her time—was in motion. I was affected, my family was affected, my children were affected.”
Hill went on to state, that she took a walk from music to protect her children when she realised the pressure was becoming too much.
“When I realized that the pressure on me was so incredibly hypocritical and unfair, criminal even, that even my children weren’t allowed to be children, I stepped away. I wasn’t removed, I STEPPED AWAY. Weening myself and my family from the addictions that systems of control attempt to use through fame and celebrity is no joke. It’s painful and people were not above using my children to keep exploiting me.
“Keeping a child sober minded in the midst of everyone trying to seduce and bribe and coerce is an incredibly challenging thing to do. Sell a few million copies of a recording and see the wolves and sharks for yourself before you determine what’s appropriate and what’s not. The danger was REAL! And this danger I faced alone, unsupported as I should have been, and dumped on by the same people who only a few years before built a fortune off the same gifts they later tried to deny and then COPY. My life has been about protecting my children from all kinds of danger, and that’s only possible when you protect yourself from the danger as well.”
Hill further acknowledged that her daughter was right to feel the way she does. She added that she’s now focused on healing with her family.
Read the rest of Lauryn Hill‘s statement below.
