JADE has recalled feeling “scared” to open up about her Arab heritage when she was in Little Mix.
The singer, who launched her solo career in 2024, has Egyptian and Yemeni ancestry from her mother’s side, and spoke earlier in the year about how she was now learning Arabic to “tap into my roots a bit more”.
Now, in an interview with Rolling Stone UK, she has spoken about how her mixed ethnicity has made her feel alienated at various stages of her life.
“I’d only ever seen negative stereotypes of Arab people in the press,” she said, “so I was scared to promote my heritage. I feel sad for my younger self that I could’ve been the representation I needed back then. I try to make up for that now.”
She went on to speak about the transition into being a solo artist and the friction she has experienced in doing so. “I didn’t know how to be a woman in my own right,” she explained. “When we first stopped, I was lost because I was like, ‘fuck, every decision I’ve made over the past decade hasn’t been my own’. It took me a minute to get my independence back.”
JADE has released two solo singles to date, in the form of ‘Angel Of My Dreams’ and ‘Fantasy’.
The former was described by the singer as “sort of rags to riches”, and was written in Los Angeles alongside Steph Jones, who worked on Sabrina Carpenter‘s ‘Espresso’, Pablo Bowman (Calvin Harris) and producer Mike Sabbath (RAYE). The song later received a “S.A.D. version” (slow, angelic, dramatic), adding a hauntingly poignant vibe.
JADE also revealed earlier this year on the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast how her former Little Mix bandmates helped wing-woman her during an “embarrassing” encounter with Prince Harry at the 2015 Royal Variety Performance.