Yesterday, the IRS filed charges against Lauryn Hill for failing to pay taxes from 2005 to 2007, and today, the singer signed up for Tumblr just so she could respond. The letter is a doozy! Here’s the first sentence: “For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground.†Here’s the second: “I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.†It goes on!
Most of the letter is devoted to condemning all the many corporate and societal evils (“over-commercialization,†“pop-culture cannibalism,†“greed,†“false entitlement,†“manipulationâ€) that made it necessary for Hill go off the grid and therefore skip her tax payments. Then there’s this key sentence: “I also embraced my right to resist a system intentionally opposing my right to whole and integral survival.†Aha! Hill notes that she totally did file her taxes all the other years, and that she tried to explain all these extenuating circumstances to the IRS but they weren’t having it. Anyway, the full letter is here; it’s better than the “no stamps†excuse, at least.