The haters were making Kehlani crazy.
On Thursday, Nov. 20, during an appearance on Big Boy’s podcast “Big Boy’s Neighborhood,” the 30-year-old R&B singer opened up about her ongoing mental health journey and the boundaries she’s built to protect her peace amid relentless online scrutiny.
The “Folded” singer shared that she was “very gratefully” diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses last year, a turning point that helped her finally access the treatment and medication she needed. She added that her healing has also required finding the right mix of therapy, structure, and daily practices.
“So, a lot of the things that would have really rocked me before don’t really rock me the same way,” she noted, while adding that situations that still impact her are “triggering.”
“It’s kind of like it hits these certain parts of my diagnosis that if someone wasn’t famous they would be incredibly triggered by, and now I receive it at such a mass level,” she explained.
She went on to say that fame often locks people into a version of her they’ve decided is permanent.
“Beyond that,” Kehlani said, “people will hold you to a part of your life that stuck out to them. And they don’t get to experience you to know how you’ve grown or where you’ve changed.”
Kehlani added that “a whole lot can happen in a year.”
“A lot can happen post-medication, post getting the right regimen and all the therapies and all the treatments,” she said.
Because of that growth, she said she no longer rushes to “clarify” herself online, especially since attempts to explain her intentions or provide context usually backfire and spark “a whole new problem.”
Kehlani, who first emerged in the mid-2010s, is no stranger to public controversy. Over the last decade, she’s weathered several incidents that fueled online drama and tabloid speculation, including her public mental health struggles, coming out as queer, backlash from the industry for her political stances, and custody battles with her ex-partner and the father of her daughter, Adeya.
While chatting with Big Boy, she reflected on the deeper internal work that has helped her move forward.
“Now I’m in this thing where I’m like, ‘People are just going to talk, Kehlani,’ and I just have to quiet the noise, and I just need to take a step back,” she said. “And it’s like, let me talk to my therapist. Let me talk to my best friend. Let me talk to the people around me. Let me talk to God. And let me just focus on that being where I receive the mirror that I’m looking for and that reflection that I’m looking for because the mirror is not the public.”
