MadameNoire
Source: Instagram /@Get This Dance / Instagram /@Get This Dance
Johnniqua Charles captured the nation’s attention last year when she was arrested outside of the Diamonds Gentleman’s Club in South Carolina after getting into an altercation with the club’s security guard.
As she was standing with her hands behind her back, she started singing words that would not only make her famous but reunite her family: “You about to lose your job.”
Charles claimed she was being detained for no reason. And after the summer of 2020, people were debating what should become of law enforcement in this country. Charles’ impromptu song was perfect for the moment and showed up during protests and even during an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
Months after the song went viral, Charles told The Atlanta Black Star, that she was grateful the song brought her back to people she had previously isolated from her life.
“It placed people in my life that I probably turned away because of the habit that I had,” she said.
“I was in and out of the streets begging since I was probably 19,” Charles revealed. “I was at my wit’s end, I was at the bottom, the lowest, the deepest that you could be.”
While the reunion with her family didn’t come without its challenges, Charles was able to benefit from the $50,000 her sister raised via GoFundMe to help her turn her life around.
And according to a recent Instagram video, that’s exactly what she’s done.
Charles shared that she has been sober for year after going viral.
In the video, speaking to her followers, Charles said:
“Wow. It’s really been a year since ‘You About to Lose Yo Job’ went viral. And to me, it’s hitting different because on the 5th, I will actually be celebrating a year clean off of cocaine and clear off of those streets. Thank God. And it might not mean much to nobody else but it means everything to me because this is the longest I’ve ever been clean and off of those streets. And it’s just a blessing. Everything that came for me because of ‘You About to Lose Yo Job,’ everything that’s still to come, I am so thankful for it. And I am thankful for everybody that was in my corner and everybody that supported me through all of this, I am just grateful. And I just want to thank everybody. Have a blessed day.”
You can watch Charles’ video below.
Later, she shared more of her journey in a 30 minute Instagram Live. Charles shared that she stopped using cold turkey after she enrolled in centers and saw therapists but it didn’t work for her. She said, “To be honest, I’m surprised at my damn self because I never thought that I would ever stop…People always say you don’t know what that song did for everybody. But you don’t know what that song did for me. My family would probably be burying me or I would be so far gone to the point where they wouldn’t even know where I was at.
