Jhené Aiko Grows Emotional Speaking About the ‘Dream Home’ She Lost to Fire

Jhené Aiko reflected on her difficult year while receiving her literal and metaphorical flowers at Femme It Forward’s Give Her FlowHers Ceremony on Sunday, Nov. 23. 

During the awards ceremony at The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, the “Pray for You” singer, 37, took the stage with her 17-year-old daughter Namiko Love, mother Christina Yamamoto, and sisters Mila J and Miyoko, to receive the Glow Getter Award. During her acceptance speech, Aiko spoke openly about losing her home during the Los Angeles wildfires that occurred earlier this year, followed by the deaths of loved ones.

“I was balanced and in a great place,” she began, “and then this year, I lost my dream home that I spent a few years renovating in the LA wildfires. And then I lost my cousin Justin who I was really close with. Then I lost my sweet little orange kitten.”

She continued, “It just seemed like back to back to back to back things, and I was just like, ‘Okay, God, what is the lesson in all this?'” She went on to recall a house fire from her childhood and spoke about her own mother’s poise during the harrowing event.

“I remember my mother, how she handled it with so much grace, and she never let us feel any type of sadness or any type of sorrow,” Aiko recalled. “We kind of thought it was cool because we got to live in the Embassy Suites [with] free breakfast, indoor pool. We were like, ‘Wow, this is nice.’ So when my house burned down this year. I remember how she handled that so gracefully.”

The mother of two — she shares Namiko with producer O’Ryan and 2-year-old Noah Hasani with longtime boyfriend Big Sean — goes on to say that she’s been “in a really dark place” this year, and it was her “village” of loved ones that helped her through it all.

“I honestly cannot accept these flowers,” said the award-winning artist. “These are their flowers.”

Aiko returned to her burned-down home back in April, three months after the wildfires tore through Pacific Palisades, destroying about 6,800 homes and buildings in a 36.7-square-mile radius. She shared images of what remained of the house on her Instagram Story at the time and wrote, “Sometimes a sigh is not enough…you gotta scream ‘F————!!!’ at the top of your lungs.”

For the final slide of the emotional series of images, she added, “Idk who needs to hear this, but you absolutely MUST cry about it…as often as the feeling comes.”

Weeks after the devastating wildfires, Big Sean spoke candidly on an episode of On Purpose Wwth Jay Shetty about the miscarriage he and Aiko experienced, hoping to encourage others to push past the difficult emotions that come with such a traumatic event.

“I can’t speak for a woman, their perspective is the most traumatic, but I can say that, first of all, you’re worthy. I don’t want you to think you’re not worthy,” he said. “I don’t want people to think that because they have a miscarriage that they’re inadequate or that they’re broken.”

Earlier this month, Big Sean said his piece on social media after breakup rumors circulated about the couple amid accusations of the musician having a new girlfriend.

The “Mercy” rapper, who has been dating Aiko for about 10 years, responded in the comments of an Instagram post of a clip that shows him passing by an unidentified woman in the background of a livestream hosted by 21-year-old YouTuber N3on.

“Yeah unfortunately i never met this person in my life lol,” he responded at the time, followed by, “This girl was standing next to @hitboy who is cut out the video. I don’t know why the f— she was so close to me though. I didn’t see it at all til I saw this video and can understand the frustrations. Smh 😂. But I don’t even know this person at all.”