When JoJo Siwa added alcohol to her Pride Fest performances, some fans may have raised their eyebrows –but the “Karma” singer had support from one of her biggest fans.
Siwa, 21, revealed on the July 8 episode of her “JoJo Siwa Now” podcast that her grandmother was partially responsible for the new element of her on-stage presence.
“This idea of doing this stemmed from, I was in rehearsals and we were starting a new routine [for] ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrow’s Today,’ and my 21st birthday had just passed,” Siwa explained. “I was like, ‘I wanna f–ing take a shot before this.’ And my grandma was like, ‘All right, JoJo. You should do it.’ And I was like, all right. Let’s do it!”
Siwa added that crowds went “absolutely ballistic” when they saw her drinking on stage during her recent run of performances in Los Angeles, London, New York, Miami and Chicago. She said that the first time she brought out a bottle caused quite a spectacle.
“I brought out a jug of Tito’s, and people were like, ‘Whoa. What are you doing? Is it real? Is it fake?'” she said. “And I was like, ‘B–h, it is what it f–ing is. It’s a bottle of Tito’s.'”
Sliwa has even gotten her dancers involved in the bit. She said that they’re the ones who choose the alcohol she will drink each show.
“It keeps me guessing,” she said. “However, I did decide that my dancers, if they’re gonna keep f–king bringing it out, they need to bring out a chaser with it.”
Siwa is trying to blaze her own trail as an artist. She told Billboard in an interview in April that she hoped her song “Karma” would help invent “Gay Pop,” before walking back her comments when others pointed out pop’s long history of gay performers and fans.
“I definitely am not the inventor of gay pop, for sure not,” Siwa told TMZ a few days later. “But I do want to be a piece in making it bigger than it already is. I want to bring more attention to it.”
“I’m not the creator,” she added. “I’m not the president, but I might be like the CEO, or CMO, chief marketing officer. I’m the CMO.”
The self-proclaimed “CMO of gay pop” will release her debut EP, Guilty Pleasure, on Friday, July 12. She will also reunite with Dance Moms creator Jeff Collins to create a docuseries about her life.