Everybody BUT Lauryn Hill Has Something to Say About Rohan Marley’s Engagement

When news broke that Rohan Marley, son of reggae music icon Bob Marley, was engaged to Brazilian model Isabeli Fontana entertainment blogs, Twitter feeds, and Facebook posts brimmed with comments about how Lauryn Hill got played. The common line of thinking? She let that man impregnate her with five kids, only to watch him marry someone else.

While I don’t pretend to know or understand the inner-workings of Lauryn and Rohan’s roughly fifteen-year ordeal, the fact that so many have rushed to call Lauryn every negative name in the book simply because her ex chose to wife-up another woman with her own set of relationship baggage seems quite unfair.

Never mind that we have no clue about what actually happened in their relationship, but to automatically assume that Lauryn 1) wanted to get married to Rohan in the first place, or 2) isn’t already involved with another man is quite presumptuous.

But I get it. We like to throw stones. For many Lauryn Hill was an iconic figure who seemed to be on the cusp of greatness. Her music, her budding film career, her intelligence—it all seemed to go to waste when she began birthing babies instead of dropping albums.

Silly me. Here I thought motherhood was one of the most important roles a woman could have. But I guess that’s not really true when you have a few Grammys stuffed in your closet (and you wonder why Beyonce is making a quick beeline back to the stage).

Lost in all the talk about how sad and tragic and dumb Lauryn is to have missed out on such an obviously stellar catch as Rohan Marley is her sense of agency. L-Boogie has never been conventional. She dropped out of Columbia to pursue her career, she outshined the fellas in her crew, she fell in love with married men, and she had five kids with a man she’d been with for years without feeling the need to rush down the aisle.

While Lauryn Hill’s life in the public eye has been filled with ups and downs, learning that her ex and the father of her children has decided to get married in the Motherland is probably not causing her as much grief as many might think.