Singer Kiely Williams, 34, is known for being a member of the girl group 3LW alongside members Adrienne Bailon and Naturi Naughton. She quickly became the subject of jokes when a meme appeared, mocking her alleged infamous lisp.

A Twitter user with the screenname @chicitysoulstar reposted a meme in 2015 that included a picture of a younger Williams with the words “I’m getting a little tired of your broken promithes promithes.”

Last week, Williams appeared on Entertainment Tonight and revealed that she actually doesn't have a lisp at all, despite it sounding like she had one on the first verse of the group’s 2000 hit song “No More (Baby I’ma Do Right).”

In the first verse, she sings “I’m getting tired of your broken promises, promises. Looking at your pager seeing different numbers and numbers.”

But during a June 9 interview with ET, Williams explained what really happened and why it sounded like she had a lisp.

“A really long time ago, ancient times, before there was Pro Tools where you could just auto-tune on the machine, there was a plug-in and it was in a studio. It’s a plug-in box and it was called an Antares, and this machine, like all of new technology, was a little hinky. And when they went to mix my vocals, the Antares corrected the notes, but gave me a lisp. There’s no other explanation for it. If you turned the Antares off, I didn’t have a lisp, but all my notes were wrong. So they were like, ‘Which one is better?’” Williams said.

Later during the interview, Williams expressed how it made her feel when people mocked her for having what they believed to be a speech impediment.

“I have two separate feelings. Taking myself out of the equation, when people call me names or make fun of it, it doesn’t personally affect me, because I don’t have a lisp. However, people with actual speech impediments, I don’t think it’s funny to poke fun at that," she said.

"They do struggle with it, all the time. It’s not something that’s funny. They’re trying to communicate the same way that you are. So on that level, I’m like, ‘That’s not cool. Just stop.’ When it’s directed towards me … I wish people would stop because they hear me talk all the time,” she added.

Although Williams has remained out of the spotlight for some time since 3LW disbanded in 2008, she says fans will get to see her perform on BET Presents The Encore. The show spotlights former artists who are given the opportunity to live in the same house, write lyrics, record music, learn choreography and perform live all within 30 days.

Williams said that being on the show and performing live will be “nerve-wracking.”

“When you've kind of just lived a pretty relatively normal life for 10 or so years, to get back into that kind of element where you're opening yourself up to public scrutiny, that's just what it is. People are going to talk about it. It's a show, it's on television," she said. 

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