ET spoke with the 'Wild Side' singer backstage at the 2021 Soul Train Awards, which aired on BET.
Normani fans are in for a treat next summer! During her big night at the 2021 BET Soul Train Awards, the singer told ET that her fans waiting for her debut album should be on the lookout because the "summer is going to be lit."
"I wanna tell you that summer is going to be lit," the singer said when asked about her debut. "We're doing everything! I’m ready to perform, I miss performing."
The 25-year-old singer won big during the awards show on Sunday, taking home a trophy for Video of the Year for her song, "Wild Side," with Cardi B. Despite sharing that giving acceptance speeches makes her nervous, Normani told ET why she was happy to pay homage to musicians that paved the way for her success in her speech, as well as her tribute performance for Ashanti.
"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," she told ET. "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 [Jackson]. I wanna dance like Ciara. I wanna be like Beyoncé.' 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."
"Like I said [onstage], for Black women like myself it's not been an easy journey being a woman in a male-dominated field on top of being a Black woman. But, you know, that's my super power," she added, sharing all the people who have been with her during her journey including choreographer Sean Bankhead, "Wild Side" director Tanu Muino and Cardi B.
"Wild Side" -- which the singer recorded with Cardi B and first dropped in July -- has a special significance for Normani. As she explained to Power 106 at the time, it was important for her to work on, record and release new music amid her mother, Andrea Hamilton's, battle with breast cancer.
"This past year, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer," Normani said. "For me, this work that I was able to put out into the world really saved me, to be completely honest."
"Even just being on FaceTime with her as she's going through her chemo and her radiation, and just wanting me to update her on how this video is going, and how the music is coming, it really got her through that," she added. "It got my family through the darkest time of our lives."
See more from the 2021 BET Soul Train Awards below.
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