Phases

In February 2024, Brandy Norwood stands backstage at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, her knees trembling before a performance at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. She is about to sing "Top of the World" alongside Afrobeats artist Burna Boy and rapper 21 Savage, whose collaboration "Sittin' on Top of the World" samples her original record, twenty-six years after her last Grammy stage appearance. The crowd's roar surprises her with its warmth, and the moment becomes the frame through which she introduces her memoir: a reckoning with three decades of highs, betrayals, and the slow work of reclaiming herself. In the preface, she connects her life to a piece of North African folklore about a lonely girl who loses her voice to sorrow until the Moon teaches her to release sadness through tears. The moon's phases, with their cycles of endings and beginnings, become the memoir's central metaphor.

Brandy grew up in McComb, Mississippi, a small town with deep civil rights history. Her maternal grandfather, Freddie Bates, was a civil rights activist who survived the bombing of his home in 1964 for his involvement in the McComb Movement. When Brandy was four, her father, Willie Norwood, a minister of music, moved the family to Carson, California, for a position at the Church of Christ in Inglewood. Willie recognized his daughter's voice as exceptional and trained her through scales, harmonies, and choir participation. The church's a cappella tradition became her foundational musical education.

Summers back in McComb offered sanctuary. Brandy and her brother, Ray J, rode bikes through town and sat between their grandmother's knees for braiding sessions that connected them to generations of Black women. In Carson, however, Brandy endured years of physical and verbal bullying that produced chronic anxiety and shaped her self-image. When she finally retaliated physically against a girl who humiliated her at drill team practice, no one in the neighborhood bothered her again.

By ten, Brandy was performing her idol Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All" at talent showcases across Los Angeles. She met manager Chris Stokes, who placed her in a short-lived girl group. At an Atlantic Records audition, artists-and-repertoire director Darryl Williams dismissed the group but singled out Brandy, telling her to return when she was fourteen. A seventh-grade drama teacher awakened her love of acting, and she won the role of Danesha Turrell on the ABC sitcom Thea, her first television job. At Hollywood High's performing arts magnet, a guidance counselor told Brandy she was "not drop-dead gorgeous" (85) and refused to send her out for a particular audition. Those words embedded themselves in her psyche for decades. Her mother, Sonja, quit her career as an H&R Block district manager to manage Brandy and Ray J full-time.

At fourteen, Brandy returned to Atlantic Records and signed a deal directly with label president Sylvia Rhone. Working with producer Keith Crouch, she reworked the demo for "I Wanna Be Down" into her debut single. The album became a breakout success, and hearing her song on a stranger's car radio for the first time left her screaming with joy in a drive-through lane.

Success brought Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men into her life. He was twenty-one when he called the Norwood home to congratulate fifteen-year-old Brandy. He invited her to open for the group on tour, and their attraction deepened into a secret relationship. Brandy lost her virginity to him despite wanting to wait until marriage, feeling that refusal would mean losing him. He began comparing her voice unfavorably to other singers and controlled their communication. Brandy now frames the relationship as an adult man deliberately pursuing an underage girl, writing that "the shame ends here" and "the silence ends here" (133).

Meanwhile, Whitney Houston, Brandy's childhood idol, became her most important mentor. After years of near-misses, they met at the 1995 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, where Whitney embraced Brandy and asked how she was handling fame. Whitney later invited Brandy to contribute "Sittin' Up in My Room" to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack and cast her as the first Black Cinderella in a television reimagining of the classic fairy tale, with Whitney herself playing the Fairy Godmother.

The sitcom Moesha debuted on the United Paramount Network (UPN) in January 1996, with Brandy in the lead role of a smart, headstrong Black teenager navigating adolescence in Los Angeles. Actress Kim Fields mentored her through the transition to acting, and Brandy internalized the character so deeply that fans began calling her Moesha instead of Brandy, a conflation that increasingly troubled her. Balancing the show with her recording career pushed her to the brink of exhaustion.

Her sophomore album, Never Say Never, emerged from a transformative partnership with producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. Brandy channeled her heartbreak over Wanya into the album's emotional core. The duet "The Boy Is Mine" with fellow R&B singer Monica became a historic No. 1 hit, and at the 1999 Grammy Awards, Brandy and Monica arrived hand in hand to accept Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group.

As fame intensified, so did Brandy's private struggles. Haunted by childhood bullying and the counselor's words, she developed a severe eating disorder that included obsessive exercise, bulimia, and diet pill use. She watched the numbers on the scale drop while compliments on her thinness reinforced the cycle. She then entered a relationship with a background dancer she calls "The Dreamer," whose initial tenderness curdled into verbal abuse and physical intimidation. Her mother mailed her a copy of The Verbally Abusive Relationship; after a particularly frightening night, Brandy opened the book, recognized herself on every page, and called Sonja: "I think I'm being abused" (255).

The accumulated pressure led to a mental health crisis. Brandy walked off the Moesha set and fell into a dissociative state. Her parents brought her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors treated her for dehydration and exhaustion. She began therapy, explored several spiritual traditions, and ended the relationship with The Dreamer. Her mother stepped back from management, telling Brandy that nothing was more important than being her mother.

After Moesha was canceled following its sixth season, Brandy recorded her third album, Full Moon, reuniting with the Darkchild camp. She fell in love with Robert, a producer and Rodney Jerkins's cousin. To protect her public image, they agreed to tell people they were married. Their daughter, Sy'Rai, was born on June 16, 2002. When the relationship ended, Robert revealed on the radio that the marriage was fabricated, and endorsement partners severed ties. Brandy describes the fallout as devastating but ultimately freeing, allowing her to "exist in the world exactly as I was—perfectly human" (304).

A fatal car accident on the 405 freeway in December 2006 sent Brandy into years of guilt and isolation. A woman died in the chain-reaction collision. Though no charges were filed, Brandy shut herself inside for months, with four-year-old Sy'Rai as her lifeline. Career setbacks compounded the pain: Her fourth album, Afrodisiac, was deemed a commercial failure despite critical acclaim, and she left Atlantic Records after eleven years. A reunion album with Rodney Jerkins on Epic Records also underperformed, and Epic terminated her contract. During a camping trip in the Ventura County mountains, Brandy and Sonja finally had the conversation they had avoided for years. Brandy told her mother she had always wanted their relationship without business. Sonja admitted she probably would not have been a manager if she could do it over.

On February 11, 2012, Brandy's thirty-third birthday, Whitney Houston died at the Beverly Hilton while Brandy was there preparing to perform at music executive Clive Davis's pre-Grammy gala. Two days earlier, Whitney had appeared at Brandy and Monica's rehearsal and coached them to sing from the heart. That evening, Brandy and Whitney spoke by phone for three hours. The loss was shattering.

The turning point came when Brandy accepted the role of Roxie Hart in the Broadway production of Chicago. She trained with punishing rigor, and Sy'Rai gave her a bracelet inscribed "God Can't Fail." On opening night at the Ambassador Theatre, Brandy felt the power of her voice again and released herself from years of fear and self-doubt. The standing ovation confirmed what Sy'Rai whispered to her backstage: "You were phenomenal, Mommy" (360).

In the memoir's epilogue, set in spring 2018, Brandy recorded her seventh album, b7, writing her own melodies for the first time with co-writer LaShawn Daniels. When LaShawn died in a car accident before the album was finished, Brandy retreated for months before returning to the studio to complete the project in his honor. Sitting on her bedroom floor surrounded by thirty years of photographs and journals, she reflects that no single phase defines her. She is, she writes, 'the through line that connects them' (366), and she declares herself ready for more.