Lauryn Hill is gradually warming back up to the spotlight following years of shying away from the public eye, and she’s ready to talk about why she ducked out. Speaking with Fuse’s Touré at this year’s Rock the Bells Festival, L. Boogie shared that motherhood and public scrutiny forced her to hang up the mic.

“I wanted a real life as well, out of public scrutiny,” she explained. “I wanted to be able to live, to reclaim my private life, to reclaim my individuality outside of mass media scrutiny. I wanted that freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.”

Parenting and raising her children was Ms. Hill’s first priority. “Parenting, making sure that they had normalcy, privacy, and the right to be real people without the scrutiny and the pressure of the challenges that the media can put up sometimes… I wanted them to have a real childhood,” she said. “It’s some good timing. My youngest daughter is two-and-a-half now, so I was kind of a stay-at-home mom.”

The former Fugees member, whose recently liberated track “Repercussions” cracked the Billboard charts upon release, noted that she’s ready to express herself again through music—though she isn’t sure if she wants to put out a full-length album.

“Maybe [I’ll release] some new recordings, in terms of what type of context they come out in… I’m real free,” she furthered. “I think I’m ready to express myself again. You have to live life so you have something substantial to share or else it’s kind of pointless and vain.”