The 'Too Little Too Late' singer details her 'incredibly upsetting' battle with her former record label, saying that she blamed her appearance for the label's refusal to release her new music.

• Feb 26, 2020

AceShowbiz - JoJo has gone through so much for fame. Getting candid about her past as the youngest solo artist to pick up a No. 1 hit, the "Leave (Get Out)" singer confessed that the pressure she put on herself to get skinny has made her turn to drugs and alcohol.

In a new interview with Uproxx, the 29-year-old blamed Blackground Records' founder Barry Hankerson for the problem. "When I was 18 I remember being sat down in the Blackground office and the president of the label being like, 'We just want you to look as healthy as possible,' " she recounted.

"And I was like, 'I'm actually the picture of health. I look like a healthy girl who eats and is active. I don't think this is about my health. I think that you want me to be really skinny.' He's like, 'No, I wouldn't say that.' "

The "Too Little Too Late" songstress went on to confide that the conversation led her to "working with a nutritionist who had me on a 500-calorie diet a day." She added, "I was taking these injections that make you have no appetite."

"I was like, 'Let me see how thin I could become because maybe then they will put out an album. Maybe I'm so disgusting that nobody wants to see me in the video and they can't even look at me.' That's really what I thought."

Things took a turn for the worst when she relied on drugs and alcohol to make herself feel "pretty" and "worthy." She shared, "There were definitely nights that I stumbled out of clubs and that I blacked out. I was just completely reckless, did not care. I needed to be buzzed to feel okay. I would go to the edge, stand on my tiptoes on the edge and then come back. I should be dead."

With a new album "Good to Know" waiting to be dropped in Spring, Jojo is ready to put her difficult past behind. "This journey has been a journey of learning how to love myself," she said. "I feel really lucky, really, really grateful for the longevity that I have and for the resilience that I do have. But I work on it every day. I want to create a life for myself and I want to create a legacy."