It's been a long wait, but it was worth it.

For years we've been waiting for JoJo to return to the music scene and she finally has with three singles (tringle) -- "Say Love," "Save My Soul," "When Love Hurts" -- that are emotional, danceable and relatable.

But it hasn't been an easy road for JoJo to get to this point. The singer was embroiled in a multi-year battle with her former label, Blackground Music, which left her unable to issue new music commercially (she did release a few mixtapes and one-off singles). JoJo filed a suit against the label in 2013, claiming that they had essentially been holding her hostage for the better part of seven years, and in 2014 it was announced that she had resolved the issue and signed with Atlantic Records.

Although JoJo is in a good place now, the turmoil from the lawsuit did leave its mark on the singer.

"I wanted to express myself musically and the fact that I couldn't was the most frustrating thing ever," JoJo recently told us. "I was very depressed. It's not in the past; that's probably something that will stay with me and hopefully I won't be as down as I had been, but it really put things in perspective for me -- it made me appreciate things a lot more the second time around."

JoJo reveals that quitting music did cross her mind and that she was actually enrolled at Northeastern University to study cultural anthropology, but her previous label wanted her to make another album, which never happened.

"I got farther and farther away of being of normal college age, and so going to college was the only thing that was going to keep me away from music for a moment," she said. "But there is nothing that I love more than the high of connecting with people through music."

And now JoJo is back to doing just that, saying she wants to "impress my fans," with her upcoming album, which has her writing from a very "honest place."

"I didn't want to harp on negativity and bring things from the past in, but I'm definitely writing from an honest place; I'm a pretty raw person period," she said. "I can't even help myself. I'll walk into the studio and be very on the edge of whatever it is I'm feeling and can't help but be affected by that. Singing is my favorite form of expression."