Ella Mai is opening up! While promoting her “Did You Miss Me?” tour, the fiercely private London native gave a wide-ranging interview to KISS XTRA’s DJ Ace. The first third of the interview focused on the tour and her career milestones, before she gave the all-clear signal to discuss some very big changes to her life.
“We can talk about it… Guys, I had a baby,” Ella Mai said, smiling as she addressed the elephant in the room— the reason behind her hiatus from music.
Ella Mai welcomed a son with Celtics star Jayson Tatum in 2024. While the singer has never posted about the relationship or their child, Mai was seen holding the newborn in behind-the-scenes footage of the USA Men’s Basketball Team posing for portraits following their 2024 Summer Olympics gold medal win.
The singer shared that she was so focused on her singing career, she wasn’t sure marriage and motherhood were ever in the cards with her.
“Sometimes I just look at my son, and I’m just like, ‘I have a whole human being I’m responsible for,'” Ella Mai shared. “I wasn’t a super maternal person. I never grew up as the girl who dreamed of her wedding and dreamed of kids. Honestly, I was just like, ‘I want to be an artist.’ That’s all I ever saw. Even when it started to happen for me, I never saw past that. That was like my end goal. But now to see this new journey and like to feel this new journey and have it coincide with what I’m doing now that I’m back at work is incredible. It’s hard work, don’t get me wrong, but I couldn’t imagine my life, now that I have him, without him.”
While Ella Mai’s baby news wasn’t a complete shock to the public because she was spotted with a baby bump during her pregnancy, she explained to DJ Ace that keeping that part of her life private wasn’t as difficult as people might imagine it to be.
“Yes, there are cameras everywhere,” Ella Mai said. “But if you’re intentional with the way that you move, it’s not that hard to not be seen, honestly. One thing I stick by, and I think I’ve been this way for my whole career, I only really have to show people what I want them to see. If you don’t post it, it’s not there.”
Mai added that because her upcoming album ‘Do You Still Love Me?’ was recorded during important phases of her motherhood journey, she wasn’t in a space that required her to overshare with the public.
“While I was pregnant, I didn’t stay inside all the time. I was intentional with where I went because I knew that I wanted to keep my peace. I think you just have to be intentional, and you don’t have to show everything. A constant reminder that I tell myself is that everyone’s social media is what they want you to see. Also, this album process was so great for me, because I was pregnant and I was postpartum, and I think that my perspective changed so much in those two. I think it’s just—show people what you want them to see, and just because it’s not out there, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. I know what’s important to me, and whoever is supposed to know knows what they know, and I think that’s it.”
“In terms of my son, I think everyone gets a little bit confused because I never announced it myself, like, ‘Should we talk about it? Should we not?’ I would never be like, ‘No I don’t have a kid.’ Of course, yeah, I have a son, but I know how difficult it is to navigate fame, and I’m an adult. So, in the position that he’s in, I would like for him to be able to make that choice himself, whether he wants to be in the public eye or not. I think that I owe it to him to be able to make that decision. So I was just like, ‘we’re going to keep this completely private, and I’m going to keep my peace, and I don’t want anyone wishing negativity on me or him or whatever’. The internet is the wild, wild west, so I was intentional with where I went and what I posted, and I didn’t post at all, actually, but I also was in album-making mode, so it wasn’t like I was in full promo mode and had to be seen.”
Ella Mai did give a little glimpse into what her son’s future might bring when DJ Ace asked if Mai foresees her child having a future in the NBA or music.
“It’s giving a little bit of both right now,” the singer responded. “We might have a little singing hooper on our hands. Who knows? He could be a gymnast too? He might not want to be anything like us, but he can hold a little note. He is young, but he can hold a little something.”
After being asked about her latest single, “Tell Her,” Ella Mai also offered a few hints about her upcoming album ‘Do You Still Love Me?’, revealing that Destiny’s Child proved inspirational in the making of the project.
“During this album process all I did was listen to Destiny’s Child,” Ella Mai shared. “It happened from Mustard telling me to listen to one song on ‘Destiny Fulfilled,’ I can’t even remember what song it was and from there I just kind of went down the rabbit hole of listening to Destiny’s Child over and over and over and over again. It kind of just influenced the way I was making this album, in terms of ‘Destiny’s Fulfilled’ being like, it takes you on a journey through a relationship and I think that ‘Do You Still Love Me?’ does the same. In the same way people were saying, this is not me saying this, by the way, before anyone chooses my words, but how ‘Little Things’ was kind of a modern day ‘Cater to You,’ in terms of what I’m saying. ‘Tell Her,’ with the ‘Say My Name’ reference, it really is just an ode to Destiny’s Child. They are amazing and showed so many little black girls that it just doesn’t even matter what people say, you can do what you want to do.”
‘Do You Still Love Me?’ is scheduled for release on February 6, 2026
