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Tyler Perry Studios Grand Opening Gala

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Jazmine Sullivan’s new EP Heaux Tales is a masterful compilation of work. Detailing women’s experiences in love, relationships and sex through story and song, it paints a tragically rare image of the lives Black women lead behind closed doors but may be too afraid to share outside of their close sister circles.

Sullivan has been on a tour cycle promoting the project and recently stopped by Joe Budden’s podcast. Since the album is about truth, Budden asked Jazmine about the truth—or what fans may not know that has helped to contribute to the woman Sullivan is today.

“I had a horrible relationship that resulted in domestic abuse at the time. I came back with Reality Show. After that I started touring reality show. I had planned on taking a short break but time kind of got away from me. But I experienced my own point in time where I was just wylin a little bit. And I didn’t know at the time, why I was doing those things. But when I had some time to process, I was like, ‘Oh, I was still healing from that relationship that kind of through me for a loop. It was some things happening that I never thought I would experience. I let some things happen that I never thought I would and I kind of became a different person. And sometimes, you think you’ve healed and you haven’t and you’re going about your life and situations come up and you start acting out things from the past that you didn’t even know were still there. So that’s kind of what was happening and that played a part in the project itself.

And in the aftermath of all that stuff happening, I was just feeling some type of way about myself and the decisions that I made, feeling like I needed to give myself some grace and realize that I had been through some things, I had some trauma that I wasn’t fully healed from. And I’m okay. I may have done certain things I wasn’t proud of or acted certain ways I wasn’t proud of but I’m still good. I’m still Jazmine and that doesn’t make up the whole of me. And that’s what I want females to know. There are certain parts of your life that may not be cookie cutter or may not be the best, it doesn’t make up the sum of who you are. Just give yourself some grace and give the women around you grace as well.”

Amen!

I would remiss not to mention the irony of her having this conversation with Joe Budden, a man with his own history of abusing women. But hopefully, he took her words to heart.

You can listen to the interview in the video below.

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