Spice, known for her signature blue hair and bold dancehall persona, is entering a new era and opening up about the near-death experience that inspired it.
With new singles like “God Don’t Play About Me,” the 43-year-old reality TV star and dancehall artist, born Grace Latoya Hamilton, is embracing her “soft girl era” with a hint of gospel following a health scare in 2022 while she was in the Dominican Republic.
At the time, the “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” alum who hails from Portmore, Jamaica, developed sepsis, a severe reaction to an infection that required emergency surgery as it attacked her lungs, liver, and other vital organs.
“My body was becoming poisonous,” she told People magazine in a recent interview.
Ultimately, the “Go Down Deh” singer underwent seven life-saving surgeries back in the United States, concluding in 2024 with her final procedure. Through the ordeal, the mother of son Nicholas, 18, and daughter Nicholatay, 14 — whom she shares with her ex-fiancé — says her relationship with God, and in particular the song “You’re Bigger” by Jekalyn Carr, helped sustain her.
“I’ve always had a close relationship with God, and my near-death experience just brought me closer to Him,” she told the outlet. “The word tells you that you have to taste and see to know that He’s God. My testimony blew me out of the water because even the doctors themselves were calling families to tell them to come say their goodbyes to me. So not even they could believe the miracle that happened.”
She added that the new song, “God Don’t Play About Me,” with a music video featuring her in her Sunday Best throughout, reflects and celebrates both her survival and the many times her faith has been her bedrock.
“[The medical scare] brought me closer to God and I have a more spiritual connection,” she said. “I read my Bible more, I worship more, I pray more. I’m more strict with how I show up when it comes to worshiping.”
With “God Don’t Play About Me,” out alongside other new singles like “Soft Girl Era,” in which she declares a new aesthetic and attitude regardless of who doesn’t like it, Spice hopes her evolution inspires faith in others.
“I have a large platform and I want my fans to be able to get up and worship God,” the musician told the outlet. “Part of me wants to see them worshiping God the same way they would get up and sing any of my other songs.”
