Joanna “JoJo” Levesque didn’t hold back in her new memoir, Over the Influence, candidly chronicling her life, career and relationships.
JoJo landed her record deal at just 12 years old. Early in the book, it’s revealed that she almost got into the music business even earlier — with Britney Spears. After appearing on Kids Say the Darndest Things, a then-eight-year-old JoJo met Spears backstage and sang Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”
“‘Oh my Godddd,’ she drawled in that Louisiana twag I had heard so much of on MTV,” JoJo wrote. “Britney said out loud to the room that she was about to start a production company of her own and maybe we could do something together someday.”
Months later, JoJo and her mom received a contract from Spears’ attorney, detailing a deal that would make her first signing. “I was eager to get going, but Mom took time to process it and think about what it would really mean to let her child — who hadn’t even hit double digits yet — start making an album,” JoJo wrote. “She respectfully declined, and I was convinced that she was actively ruining my life.”
Despite the roadblock, a determined JoJo got a record deal with Blackground in 2003 and recorded her first album that year. While balancing her skyrocketing career, JoJo also navigated her tumultuous personal life while leaning on sex and alcohol.
Over the Influence is out now. Scroll down for the biggest takeaways:
The Beginning of Her Life
JoJo’s parents met in AA, and their relationship was rocky. After they split, she was often estranged from her dad who struggled with relapsing. JoJo’s mother, meanwhile, took on a manager role, but struggled with her own demons, with JoJo recalling more than one incident in which her mother threatened suicide.
Getting Her 1st Record Deal and Recording Her 1st Album at Age 13
JoJo signed her first deal with Blackground, a Black-owned and Black-operated record company, in 2003.
“[The label] brought up the idea of the ‘Great White Hope’ that we’d seen throughout music history, and he told me I was walking in the footsteps of performers like Elvis and Justin Timberlake. Barry also said that it was a fine line I had to walk-knowing that I’m clearly white but ‘sing Black,’” she wrote.
When it came to her first song, “Leave (Get Out),” JoJo admitted that she didn’t understand why her label wanted the tune to be a single — especially when the rest of the album had an R&B flare.
Touring With Usher
JoJo “felt a deep sense of guilt” when she went on tour with Usher. “Wait — so IS this OK for me to be doing? Barry and Vince assured me it was. As a white girl who performed what could be called both pop and R&B, the opportunity to open for a hugely successful, genre-crossing chart topping and iconic artist made me feel incredibly lucky. Validated. Embraced. ‘Invited to the cookout,’ as Vince said,” she wrote.
Feeling ‘Jealous’ of ‘Aquamarine’ Costar Emma Roberts
While reflecting on filming the 2006 movie, JoJo notes that costars Emma Roberts and Sara Paxton were “super lovely and kind” but they spent time together “more often than they did with me.” JoJo added their upbringings “couldn’t have been more different” from hers.
JoJo admitted that she felt a “little jealous” of Roberts’ lineage and “perceived ease with which she navigated the world.” She added, “How much better would my life have been if I’d been born with (what seemed like) a silver spoon? And a cheetah-fast metabolism?”
While JoJo noted that the girls could eat sandwiches “without gaining a single pound,” she felt like her jeans were fitting “tighter and tighter” and her cheeks were “getting chipmunkier by the day.” Years later, JoJo and Roberts became friends as they shared the “real-life s—” they were going through.
Reflecting on ‘RV’ Costar Robin Williams
For JoJo, filming RV was “a totally different kind of experience” than Aquamarine. She gushed that she was embraced by veteran actors “as a younger niece kind of figure.” JoJo said she “lived for the endless stories and jokes” that costar Robin Williams told.
“He spoke so intelligently and hilariously about any and everything, as if he was channeling from another planet (maybe that’s why he was such a natural for the part of Mork in Mork Mindy),” she wrote. “Robin was a class act; the first to arrive on set and the last to leave, and he knew everyone’s name and their dog’s name, too.”
When Stars Lost Their Virginity
Losing Her Virginity at Age 14
JoJo lost her virginity at age 14 to the first boy she kissed, 16-year-old soccer player Freddy Adu. “It wasn’t quite what I expected, nor did it live up to the hype people made about it, but I absolutely felt like — a whole new woman — the next day. I was one of the first among my friends to take it that far,” she wrote.
JoJo recalled questioning whether she was drawn to Adu “for the right reasons” but she “felt the bond between us grow so much closer” after their intimacy. “We were in the deep end, and I felt like now I might die without him,” she added.
JoJo claimed that her biracial relationship worried the label. “I was totally thrown off by the hypocrisy,” she wrote, alleging that a Black female executive explained to her the “nuances of racism and even colorism” and noted that she could “alienate more than one section” of her fan base because she was dating a Black man.
Experiences With Sexual Assault
JoJo recalled times in her late teens and early twenties where men “took the way I viewed sex as an invitation to try to have it with me.”
“I was propositioned more than once by people I was working with. And while I loved knowing I was desired, I didn’t want it to go farther than that,” she wrote.
JoJo alleged that a producer once locked the door during a session and wouldn’t let her leave while trying to get her to drink more than she wanted so she wouldn’t be able to drive. During another incident, JoJo opened up about being blacked out drunk with a DJ she met at Katy Perry’s New Year’s Eve Party before she woke up naked and alone in a hotel room.
After JoJo found a used condom in the bathroom trash can and was in “hysterics,” she said the man “sounded so surprised as he told me that I was essentially ‘begging him for it.’” Around this time, JoJo revealed that she began to self-medicate with alcohol and Adderall.
Feeling ‘Jealously’ Toward Selena Gomez’s Career
JoJo, who became friends with Selena Gomez through Francia Raisa, admitted that she felt “the occasional twinge of pain or jealousy” at the differences between their careers.
“She couldn’t go anywhere without security flanking her and fans mobbing her at every corner,” JoJo wrote. “It just seemed like there was no sense of freedom for her to explore the world and be wherever and whoever she wanted to be. I imagined that must be suffocating. It made me grateful for the relative anonymity I had whenever I walked down the street.”
Celebrating Galentine’s Day at Taylor Swift’s House
Thanks to her friendship with Gomez, JoJo once celebrated Galentine’s day with Taylor Swift, where she filled out a questionnaire describing her best and worst qualities, things they were looking for in a guy and reasons why they were single.
JoJo gushed that Swift was “so sweet and complimentary” and “seemed excited” that Gomez brought her as a plus one.
“She mentioned deepcut songs of mine she loved and kept saying how f—ed up the lawsuit was, the fact that I couldn’t put out music,” JoJo wrote, referring to her 2013 filing against Blackground to release her from her contract.
“I don’t remember if she already knew what was going on from social media or if I’d told her about the situation, but she was — in no uncertain terms — letting me know she was on my side and believed in me,” she wrote.
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Addiction to Love, Validation, Sex and Stimulation
In 2016, JoJo continued her unhealthy relationship with sex, drugs and alcohol — this time with a producer. “I was in a full-blown addiction to love and validation, sex and stimulation,” she wrote.
JoJo later began a relationship with a longtime friend — one of the first self-described nice guys she dated — but still debated putting her career first, admitting that she wasn’t “totally opposed” to the idea of a PR romance “as long as no one got hurt.” While her team tried to make something happen, JoJo recalled getting “cold feet.”
“I confided in my boyfriend that I hated the fact that I came so close to doing damn near anything to help my career. How gross. What the f— was I thinking???,” she wrote, adding that her boyfriend was “outwardly supportive.”
Cheating on Her Boyfriend
JoJo admitted to cheating on her aforementioned longtime friend-turned-boyfriend with one of ex Adu’s friends, a fellow soccer player. JoJo explained that the man had “kept tabs” on her for years, but they had “always kept things platonic.” JoJo slept with the man twice.
“I was feeding my addiction and biding my time before telling my man that I was the worst person in the world,” she wrote. “The sabotage switch flipped, and I responded to the athlete. I mean, at this point what was I if not a sucker for self-betrayal and overindulgence? Somehow, I convinced myself it didn’t matter.”
Suffering from Food Issues
JoJo admitted that she suffered from issues with food throughout her career. JoJo explained that she ate healthy during the day, but would “unhinge” herself when she was alone in her room.
“Sometimes, I wished I had the willpower and discipline to be anorexic,” she wrote. “Binge eating was counterproductive to my entire life structure, and yet, at the end of the night, I feel like a bottomless pit and wanted to gobble up everything in sight like Ms. Pac-Man, trying desperately to fill the void I felt from not being good enough.”
Engaged! JoJo and Dexter Darden’s Sweetest Relationship Moments: Photos
Moving On
After her affair with Adu’s friend, JoJo stayed abstinent for a year. She moved on with actor Dexter Darden — whom she does not name in the memoir, only referring to him as “my man.”
“We’d quickly become best friends and realized we both were ready for someone to share life with and were equally willing to put in the work to make our relationship last,” she wrote, adding that she “loved the day-to-day” of being with her man. “I no longer gave a flying f— what my personal life looked like to anyone else in the whole wide world. This was my man. Even though it was fast.”
He proposed to her on her birthday in December 2021, but the relationship began to unravel shortly after. “I didn’t realize it in the moment but, apparently, distance was growing between us,” she wrote. “Enough for another woman to take up space.”
While JoJo initially gave him “the benefit of the doubt,” she said they had a sit down conversation and the incident “highlighted all these other red flags and gut feelings” that she had ignored.
“I impulsively posted ‘Took the ring off my left hand and moved it to my right’ followed by the definition of a narcissist on my IG story,” she wrote. “Oops.”
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