Classic story: wildly successful musical act tops charts and sells millions of albums, but it’s revealed years later that they barely saw a pinch of the millions of dollars being made off of them because they lacked proper representation. According to R&B Divas: LA star, Dawn Robinson, this is precisely what happened with popular 90’s girl group, EnVogue. During a recent interview with EBONY, the songbird-turned-reality-star confessed that she is partially responsible for stirring up trouble in the group, but only because she felt that they were being taken advantage of.
“Well, I’ve been considered a troubled artist, a troublemaker, a problem, a difficult artist over the years, and I have been. I agree! I’ve totally been very difficult because we only made two pennies per album. I think anybody would be postal if they were only making two pennies and everybody else was making millions every album for what their hard work manifested,” she explained to Ebony magazine. We’d work and everybody else was rich. So there was a problem and I wouldn’t sit down. I just couldn’t take it, watching everybody else making the lion’s share of the money and we did the lion’s share of the work. So I was the one,” she admitted.
“I’m the youngest one in the group, and they’re like, ‘Well, Dawn, you’re right, but we can’t fight the record company.’ Everybody thinks that the major labels and the corporations are so big, and that they don’t have the pockets to fight these labels. I’m like, ‘No! We have the power because we have the music.’”
Although she readily accepts the blame for stirring the pot amongst group members, one showdown she says she had nothing to do with was the legal dispute that broke out between she and her former grouper members over EnVogue name rights.
“First of all, that drama had nothing to do with me. I happened to work with Maxine [Jones], but that lawsuit was her. Cindy [Herron] and Terry [Ellis] sued her. I wasn’t included in that. It’s sad that this had to happen in the first place. We all worked hard for that name, we all built that name together.”
She also discussed the upcoming season of R&B Divas: LA, which premieres tonight on TV One.
“I will always represent EnVogue in a classy way. That’s why I finally decided to do this show, because I was under the stipulation that there was not going to be any drama. [A producer said], ‘I want this to be like a Waiting to Exhale situation where all the women are supporting each other and there’s love and there’s drama with your man and whatever, but you guys support each other.’ And I thought, ‘OK. If that’s the truth, then I’m going to do the show.’”
Do you plan on checking out R&B Divas: LA tonight?
