She was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and raised in Brixton, London. Her mother raised her alone. Her father was a Somali aristocrat. She ran away from home as a teenager and lived in empty houses. She saw the Sex Pistols perform on her birthday in 1975. That gave her the idea to start her own punk band X-Ray Spex. She was an unusual music start because she wore braces, was mixed race, and dressed differently.