Mya's performance at Miami’s G5 strip club a couple months ago wasn’t what it looked like. The spin on the story was that she took the gig because she was broke, but that’s not exactly the case, according to a Juicy Magazine interview.

Mya was there promoting a new track called “Money,” which happens to be“specifically for trap, the cars, the whips, and the strip clubs,” so why not take it directly to her core audience? 

”The way the story was projected on the blogs, as we know, it gets crazy these days,” she said explaining how thing got blown out of proportion. “It’s just off the chain, and it’s hilarious to me, but the way they are going to project their headlines to drive traffic to their sites is, ‘Mya’s Broke,' or ‘Mya’s On Drugs,' or ‘Mya’s A Stripper Now.' You didn’t see me touch one pole, you didn’t see me take any clothes off. It’s the same dance break I’ve been doing for three-years to this song called ‘Earthquake’ featuring Trina, who happens to live in Miami, and I’ve performed at strip clubs since I was 18 years old.”

| MIXTAPE REVIEW: MYA, THE SWEET XVI EP |

A culture driven by cell phones and social media only made things escalate, said Mya. “If something is captured from a certain angle, not the professional camera, not the professional videographer from the front, or anything. It can be edited, it can look crazy, and they’ll use it and spin it because that’s the way things work nowadays.”

She also responded to the rumor that she’s in financial ruin. At 35, she has no debt, runs her own independent record label, and lives “below" her means. Mya credits her mother, who is also her accountant, with encouraging her to make good financial decisions. 

“I do quite well for myself but I live a simple life," she said. “And I don’t go overboard like a lot of these guys out here because I want to be free, and I don’t want to live a slave to any possessions that get old the next year.”   

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 (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images for Clear Channel)