Lauryn Hill Sentenced to Three Months, Says She’s Basically a Slave

Lauryn Hill has been sentenced to 3 months in federal prison for evading taxes. A judge sentenced Hill on Monday saying that in addition to the 3 months, she’ll have 3 more months on house arrest and 9 months of supervised release. Hill plead guilty last year to failing to file returns on the $1.8 million she made between 2005 to 2007.

Hill’s attorney told the media before the hearing that she had managed to scrounge together $970,000 to pay off her almost $1 million debt. Turns out that didn’t help. Asking for mercy because of her charity work and 6 kids didn’t help either. The judge told her to show up to prison by July 8.

As it turns out, Lauryn Hill has a flair for the dramatic and straight up compared her tax evasion with slavery.

“I was put into a system I didn’t know the nature of. … I’m a child of former slaves. I got into an economic paradigm and had that imposed on me,” Hill said.

She continued, “I sold 50 million units … now I’m up here paying a tax debt. If that’s not likened to slavery, I don’t know what is.”

Lauryn makes a lot of sense. You should get a free pass when you’re ignorant of the law. She’s the child of former slaves for god’s sake. You think they had time to teach her about taxes? Of course not. Her English teacher mom and computer programmer dad were too busy being beaten by their slave owners. Figuratively. Why, she almost didn’t even get to perform on Amateur Night on It’s Showtime at the Apollo when she was 13. Because slavery!

Can you imagine the shock she must have felt when someone explained that she had to pay taxes on the 50 million units she sold? The units she sold with her hard work, not the government’s. Why don’t you just chain her up and make her call you “mastah,” IRS?!