"I love singing and I love what I do, but if it wasn't for the love that I have with music, I definitely wouldn't be in this industry," she said. "A

"I love singing and I love what I do, but if it wasn't for the love that I have with music, I definitely wouldn't be in this industry," she said. "A few reasons are, I got told when I first won the X-Factor at 19... 'Because you're Black, you are gonna have to work 10 times harder than a white artist because of the color of your skin.'"

She said she was also told, "'You can't have braids, you can't have an Afro... you have to have hair, for example, that appeals to white people.'"

"I got told to bleach my skin, and that was something I refused to do. Because it's just so absurd to me that somebody could even remotely say to someone, 'Bleach your skin, so that you could look whiter," she shared. "Still, 'til this moment, it breaks my heart that I was told that. I'm trying to hold back the tears, because it's really heartbreaking, the s--t that went on."

She added, "I was only 19 years old, there's only so much you can understand when your life [has] completely changed overnight. That was quite hard to digest."