Normani always felt “very overlooked” in Fifth Harmony.
The 25-year-old singer starred in the chart-topping girl group alongside Ally Brooke, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jauregui, and Camila Cabello – but she admits it wasn’t easy being the “only black girl in a group”.
She shared: “For someone that’s always felt very overlooked and being the only black girl in a group, mentally was a lot for me. There were times that I didn’t feel seen, and felt unimportant, and my vocal ability wasn’t just as amazing.
“To come out of that, speaks to, I feel, my resilience, but also the people that have been riding with me since day one. I’m just so grateful for it.”
Normani is now loving life as a solo artist and she’s reassured fans that her new songs are all “coming in the summer”.
Speaking about her new album, she told ‘Entertainment Tonight’: “It will definitely be worth the wait. I hope you guys love it just as much as I do.
“I’ve obviously spent some years on it … I just hope that they feel closer to me, honestly. That’s the beauty in music. People can interpret it however they want, but once it’s theirs, I hope they enjoy it.”
Meanwhile, Normani previously claimed that her childhood heroes have paved the way for her success.
The ‘Motivation’ hitmaker hailed the influence of people like Beyonce, Ashanti, Ciara and Janet Jackson.
She said: “They gave me the opportunity to be the black girl that I am today and the black artist and woman that I’ve evolved into.
“It’s women like [those icons] and them giving me representation at an early age for me to be able to, when I was four or five years old, tell my mom and my dad, ‘I wanna be like Janet. I wanna dance like Ciara. I wanna be like Beyonce.’ What I’m seeing on the television is who I wanna be and it really opened my mind to the possibilities of who I’ve had the opportunity of becoming and for me that means absolutely everything.”