JoJo was a promising young pop star in the mid-2000s — and then she disappeared

35:22JoJo: The trauma of child stardom & how she lost control of her career

In 2004, Joanna "JoJo" Levesque released her debut single Leave (Get Out), which established her as one of the most promising pop singers of the decade. At 13, she was the youngest solo artist in history to score a No. 1 song on the Billboard Top 40.

After several more hits and roles in major studio films, it was undeniable that JoJo was on track for a massive career in entertainment — but then it all came to a halt and she seemingly disappeared overnight. Now, at 33, JoJo is opening up about her time as a child star in a new memoir, Over the Influence, which details the betrayals and label issues that derailed her career.

"This year marks 20 years since I put out my first single [and] first album, so I kind of wanted to make sense of everything that has transpired," she tells Q's Tom Power in an interview.

She adds that she was also inspired by Jennette McCurdy, who in 2022 released her own memoir about her struggles as a child star. "She inspired me to have the balls to think that I could potentially have a story worth sharing," JoJo says.

From a young age, it was clear JoJo was extremely talented, but unlike many other child stars, she says she was never forced into a career in entertainment. She describes her younger self as an "old soul" who was uninterested in school or hanging out with kids her age.

"Some kids had really ambitious stage parents who wanted to milk them dry and didn't really care about their well-being," she says. "That wasn't my experience…. All I wanted to do from a young age was work."

Both of JoJo's parents struggled with mental illness, addiction and financial instability. After her father relapsed, she saw him on and off while being raised by her mom in Los Angeles, where they moved at JoJo's request when she was 11. JoJo thought her talent would be the ticket to a better life for them.

"Maybe that was where the impulse to just work as much as possible came from," she says. "I did not want to be with my emotions. I did not want to be with my discomfort. So that seed was planted really young. I learned how to numb myself through work or distraction or boys or writing songs in my journal all day."

At 12, JoJo signed a major recording contract with Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah's uncle and the founder of Blackground Records. In the book, JoJo writes that the day she met Hankerson, he told her he saw Aaliyah over her shoulder. "It seemed that he meant that Aaliyah's spirit was in the room with us and that she was guiding him toward the direction of signing me," JoJo says.

Very quickly after that, JoJo started recording her debut album. "Barry had worked on Aaliyah's album when she was 13," JoJo says. "Then they put out her first album with R. Kelly when she was 14. And so he had experience with defying the odds and working with artists who were very young."

But the contract JoJo signed with Blackground Records would eventually lead her to losing ownership of her own voice. After the label lost distribution, she learned that she couldn't release new music or take on new projects without their approval. "Anything that I did in a commercial way, they had to approve," she explains. "They were no longer functioning. They would not respond. It sounds nonsensical and it was."

Having come from a humble background, JoJo says she and her mom weren't sure what to do next. She was advised to declare bankruptcy, but she didn't quite understand the process, and was concerned that people would think she was just "some idiot child star" who squandered all her money. Though her mom had taken steps to get JoJo the best contract possible, they didn't have enough leverage to negotiate the deal.

"I had no awareness about what was in the contract that I signed when I was 12 because it was ratified by the state of New York," she says. "There was a guardian ad litem. My mom hired the best lawyer that was available to us, which was a really powerful entertainment lawyer that she found in L.A. We were told this is the best case scenario 'for someone like you' — meaning someone who has no leverage, who comes from nothing."

Today, JoJo is in the process of regaining control of her career. Her advice to kids contemplating entering the entertainment industry is to rethink that decision if it's just about fame.

"Fame is not enough to sustain you and it's fleeting," she says. "I want people to like what I'm doing, but not everybody will. And I think that that's something that I'm just a lot more OK with as I get older."

The full interview with Joanna Levesque is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Joanna Levesque produced by Vanessa Greco.