I prayed for the family that lost their loved one. I prayed for everyone else involved. And I prayed for me, because I really didn’t know what to do. I was in limbo for a long time.
Brandy’s tears are spilling freely. She’s recalling the fatal multicar accident she was a part of two years ago. We’re in a dark Italian restaurant. No one is around but the waiters.
“I prayed for the family that lost their loved one. I prayed for everyone else involved. And I prayed for me, because I really didn’t know what to do. I was in limbo for a long time. The things the media said about me and about the situation without even really knowing about it...it was very, very painful—I didn’t go outside for months.”
She says it again, even more slowly: “I didn’t go outside for months.” earlier that same day, Brandy is outside. And she’s beaming.
So the first tear of the day is unexpected. It escapes from her dark almond eye without warning. No quivering voice. No trembling lip. No choked sob. The wet trail down her cheek isn’t a product of pain.
“Her love feels like no one else’s love,” Brandy Norwood says, walking, maneuvering through New York City’s heaving Chelsea streets after her first press photo shoot in years. It’s all in anticipation of her powerful new album, Human (Epic), her fifth, and first in four years. It’s talking about her daughter, Sy’rai, though, that overwhelms her. Brandy’s words tumble into each other: “I like her as a person. She makes me laugh. So much insight comes from her. She’s 6 going on 18. We sing together. We crack jokes. We’re like best friends.”
The petite 29-year-old looks just how you remember her...almost. She’s still hanging onto those microbraids—today they’re pulled back into two tight Princess Leia buns. Her face is clean of the makeup from the shoot. Her skin is unblemished—taut. Her wide-set eyes are familiar. Older. Pretty. Hardened. They’ve seen some ugly moments. There’s no trace of naiveté or innocence left in them. Cutesy Moesha is somebody’s mommy. “I’m just so glad,” Brandy says, “that she’s mine.”
That glow was there before the bundle even arrived. It was apparent throughout the MTV reality series Special Delivery she filmed in 2002 alongside her then-husband—or so people thought—producer Robert Smith. While Brandy called it a “spiritual union,” Smith would later reveal that their marriage and subsequent “divorce,” two years later, was never legal. It was a strategic publicity move pulled off to protect Brandy’s image.
“It’s really nothing to it,” says Smith. He’s married now, with three other daughters. “We had a child. The relationship didn’t work out. The bottom line is the friendship. The common denominator is our daughter.... You can’t be so mad at somebody who gave you that kind of a gift,” he says with a chuckle.
“So all the hoopla, the quote-unquote ‘marriage,’ whatever you want to call it...at the end of the day, we have a beautiful child, and I’m the happiest man on Earth. That’s really the logistics of it. No drama.” The singer and her camp polished Brandy’s affable, wholesome appeal from the start.
She signed with Atlantic Records at 14. Skinny, sweet-faced, and managed by her mom, Sonja Bates-Norwood, a confident former tax consultant from Mississippi, Brandy wasn’t going for teen pop tease.
She was the nice girl. Her self-titled debut went quadruple-platinum on the strength of the huge singles “I Wanna Be Down” and “Baby.” A bouncy blend of hip hop and R&B was the perfect playground for Brandy’s raspy alto, which she could flip from tender to tough in a single note.
There was the six-season run as precocious Moesha on the iconic, Cosby-ish UPN sitcom, and even as she filmed that, there was her follow-up album, Never Say Never (Atlantic, 1998). On it she spun a rumored rivalry with Monica into their colossal, Grammy-nabbing single “The Boy Is Mine,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 13 straight weeks. Brandy Norwood has sold more than 25 million albums, and along the way, she managed to steer clear of the tabloids—her younger brother Ray J has that lane on lock, from the 2007 sex- tape scandal with Kim Kardashian to recent rumors that he’s dating Whitney Houston.
Brandy’s most sensational exploits? A 1996 prom date with future NBA superstar Kobe Bryant; a short-lived relationship with Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris; a bout with an eating disorder. Her “momager” at arm’s length for every mic check and makeover, rarely leaving her daughter’s side.
And now Brandy is as focused on being a mom as her own mother is. She says her social life has evaporated. Her last relationship, with New York Knicks’ swingman Quentin Richardson, ended with a broken engagement in 2005. “I’ve been single for three years,” Brandy says.
“I’m not dating. I have moments when I’m like, What’s going on? Oh my God, am I old?” she says with a laugh. “I think that’s why I’m so close to my daughter—because I don’t have a relationship to balance it out. I’m so clingy with her, she’s like, Mom, let me breathe.
Read the rest in VIBE’s December 2008 issue.
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