American singer and television personality K. Michelle has opened up about the permanent health toll of illegal silicone injections she received over a decade ago, saying she now knows she will never fully recover from the damage done to her body.
The R&B artist, who joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA) for its seventeenth season, broke down in tears during the show’s April 13 episode while recounting the physical and emotional consequences of the black market cosmetic procedure she underwent in Atlanta in 2012.
K. Michelle, 44, revealed that a man who was not a licensed medical professional administered what were marketed as hydrogel injections into her buttocks, a decision she made after learning that one of her favourite rappers had used the same individual. “He wasn’t a doctor. It was black market, it was these ‘hydrogel’ injections, that’s what they were being called,” she said.
The situation came to a head just before she took the stage at the 2025 Academy of Country Music Honors, where she was set to pay tribute to country music trailblazer Rissi Palmer. Backstage, her team discovered that the injections were leaking, forcing a frantic effort to manage the situation before she performed. “I was standing there in a bathrobe. Everyone was blow-drying me down, just to get me on stage to sing,” she recalled. After returning from Nashville, she was hospitalised and underwent a two-hour reconstructive surgery to remove infected tissue linked to a previous corrective procedure.
The singer was visibly overcome on camera as she processed the reality of her condition. “I just hate that I did this to myself. It’s the worst thing I ever did to myself, and I’ve paid for it for years,” she said through tears.
A physician told her that no number of surgeries will ever fully eliminate the silicone from her body. “The actual thing that has made me sick isn’t the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL). It’s the injections I got involving silicone,” she explained. “The hardest thing for me was learning that no matter what I do and how many surgeries, I will never get that silicone out of my body. It will be forever in me. I will never be fully healed.”
K. Michelle has now undergone over a dozen procedures across several years in an attempt to reverse the damage. At one stage in her recovery, she required two blood transfusions. The silicone spread beyond the injection site and migrated down her legs years after the original procedure, compounding her health challenges. Prior to the original injections, she had also undergone fat transfers from her stomach to her hips and rear, alongside breast augmentation and rhinoplasty.
Despite the ordeal, she has signalled her determination to keep moving forward, telling producers that she cannot allow the health struggles to hold her back.
