Her career catapulted when she was just a teen, and like many young singers, JoJo had to face off with her record label about her image. When she was 13-years-old, her song “Leave (Get Out)” became a hit record, but for years JoJo didn’t release new music. She was an undeniable talent on the R&B-pop scene, but years went by and still, JoJo claimed her label refused to put out any of her tunes. The reason? The singer now says it was because of “the way I looked.”

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JoJo sat down with UPROXX for an in-depth interview where the singer revealed that when she was 18-years-old, she was so eager to release music that she even restricted herself to a 500-calorie per day diet in an effort to lose weight. “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,’” the 29-year-old shared.

“I was like, ‘I’m actually the picture of health,’” JoJo said. “‘I actually look like a healthy girl who eats and is active. And I don’t think this is about my health. I think that you want me to be really skinny.’ And he’s like, ‘No, I wouldn’t say that,’ blah blah blah,” she added. “But I ended up getting put with a nutritionist that had me on a 500 calorie a day diet, and I was on these injections that make you have no appetite.”

“I was like, ‘Let me see how skinny I can get, because maybe then they’ll put out an album,” JoJo continued. “Maybe I’m just so disgusting that no one wants to see me in a video and they can’t even look at me. That’s really what I thought.” Soon, the singer admitted that she began to spiral out of control.

“So, I started getting really f*cked up, drinking, making out with strangers, looking for validation and attention and looking to feel pretty, looking to feel good, to feel worthy,” she added. “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.” 

It wouldn’t be until 2014 that JoJo was finally released from her contract with Blackground. Watch JoJo’s interview below.

Ice Cube is one of hip-hop’s most prolific songwriters to ever pick up a pen or reach for a microphone. His writing ability singlehandedly helped the west coast rise to prominence in the late ’80s and he’s also responsible for penning one of the greatest diss tracks in all-time in “No Vaseline.” However, as of the two decades, the Los Angeles-based lyricist has become a media mogul producing his own movies and running his very own professional basketball association in the BIG3. 

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Recently, the gangsta rap pioneer made his way to the Uproxx office as a guest on Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh’s coveted podcast entitled the People’s Party with Talib Kweli to discuss his legacy, his impact on the culture, the success of the BIG3, and more. 

With hip-hop purists being cognizant of his pen, the discussion of Ice Cube’s songwriting influence during N.W.A’s early days arose to which he revealed the inspiration behind writing Eazy-E’s most popular song, “Boyz N The Hood.” Cube revealed that he had initially written the cinematic song for a Queens-based rap collective called, Homeboys Only, but they were utterly confused by the context of the song as he described how Dr. Dre influenced Eazy-E to the deliver rhymes. During the interview, Cube said:

“The lyrics was foreign to them. ‘You talking another language, man.’ And I was. It was the sh*t we talk about out here. They didn’t understand what I was talking about so they rejected it and then Dre convinced Eazy to do it.”

The “Steady Mobbin” rapper then went on to reveal that the storytelling raps that he admired during that time influenced him to write the bars stating:

 “It was in the nature of (Ice-T’s) ‘6 in the Mornin,’ (Schoolly D’s) ‘P.S.K. (What Does It Mean?),’ so it was in that vein of telling a story. We was all fans of Slick Rick and fans of KRS(-One)… So those was my favorite cats at the time and so I wanted to make a rhyme that talked about what I knew about: Everything going on in the neighborhood.”

With the BIG3 continuously growing and Talib Kweli hoarding music the culture needs, both hip-hop legends have plenty of more to contribute to today’s rap climate. Also, with Ice Cube and Talib Kweli as charismatic of a unit as they are in an interview setting, this episode of the People’s Party has the potential to be one of the greatest pieces of content, Uproxx and Kweli have released to date. 

Check out the clip of Ice Cube revealing his inspiration behind writing Eazy-E’s “Boyz N The Hood” below and look out for the full episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli featuring Ice Cube dropping on Monday, Feb. 3.