It’s not every day that singer Lauryn Hill talks about, well, anything, but we just got a rare look inside her personal life. And what she had to say about her ex Rohan Marley might surprise you.
The comments came in response to a social media creator who recently shared their two cents about the former couple. Instagram user Mayowas World released a video explaining why she felt Marley was a tyrant in his relationship with the “Lost Ones” artist, citing a past interview in which he allegedly discussed how he got Hill to have five babies with him—only for him to end up marrying the next woman he got involved with (a Brazilian model).
“Her music sometimes seemed self-flagellating, like she was trying to hurt herself or something to be deserving of love. And when I watched this interview with her baby father, it made me realize, I feel like you [Marley] destroyed her,” she said in part. “I feel like he kept talking about how she kept getting deeper and deeper into religion…There’s so many lyrics that she has that so deeply encompass such a toxic, unhealthy, self-deprecating kind of love.”
Related: Lauryn Hill Reveals Why She Never Released Another Solo Album
She went on to say that Hill’s music carried the essence of someone who wanted to be loved and found irony in some of her lyrics that call out women for wearing weaves (a reference to her 1998 hit song “Doo Wop (That Thing)”) while she was being “done dirty” by Marley. Although the couple remained private about their decade-long relationship, it was clear that Marley may not have been the best partner. Speaking on their time together, Marley told Open Magazine in 2013 that while he loved her, he “faltered in expressing it to her.”
“It was my fault that she did not understand how I felt, and it was sad that we did not work out in that relationship sense. I was heartbroken for a long time,” he said at the time.
When the creator’s words eventually found their way to Hill’s part of the internet, she took the time to address the perspective and pushed back on the narrative that Marley mistreated her during their relationship.
“While Rohan and I were in a relationship, I was NOT being done dirty. My upset had layers; my upset with him had to do with his unwillingness to confront HIS trauma in order to grow and keep our family together,” she said in part. “We don’t meet people as blank slates. They have pasts and past hurts. Both of us were working through traumatic experiences, and we met each other trying to help uplift one another.”
She continued: “You may not think Bob Marley was a saint, but he certainly changed the narrative for generations of people suffering under oppressive paradigms. We should distinguish the baby from the dirty bath water and recognize that birth can be a messy process, but on the other side of it is life.”
She concluded by saying that while people may not be perfect, they can still use their struggles to create art and help free others. Hill said that she tries to give people grace at the end of the day.
Her comments come just a few months after she wished the Rastafarian businessman a happy birthday and cleared up rumors of infidelity, saying in part on Instagram: “For those who didn’t know better, @romarley never cheated on me! I remember the beginning when we were young, majestic, and uniting our worlds.”
