The Story of Brandy Norwood: THEE Vocal Bible
The Story of Brandy Norwood: THEE Vocal Bible
Brandy Rayana Norwood was born on
February 11, 1978 in McComb, Mississippi. Her mother Sonja Norwood worked as an
HR specialist and her father was an established gospel singer. So, it was no
surprise where her musical traits came from. At an early age, she started to
sing in the church. The Norwood’s realized their daughter was musically gifted
so they relocated to Carson, CA at a better chance of discovery. She would be
booked on a number of talent shows and would often perform songs from her idol
Whitney Houston. By the time she reached her preteens, she was ready to shop
for labels to sign. Her parents tried nearly every label but they said no, for
one reason or another. She got her big break at a National Black Reunion where
she performed the Greatest Love of All. She was discovered by Ricky Minor.
Around that time, she was hired to sing background for an upcoming R&B kid
group named Immature. Chris Stokes, who was managing Immature at the time
wanted to manage Brandy as well, but Sonja wasn’t down with that as she felt
that Chris would treat her as a second priority. Chris did get her first acting
role on the show We Are Family, but nothing came much of it.
Brandy attended Hollywood High. She
wanted to attended a performing arts high school as she wanted to hone in her
skills. But it wasn’t a time for her. Being in a performing arts school, they
would get casting call from bigtime productions to fill in roles. Brandy would
never receive those calls. One incident, her guidance counselor got a call
about a potential role which could’ve been perfect for Brandy. But the
counselor shunned her by saying “You’re cute, but not drop dead gorgeous”.
Brandy would wind up leaving the school after just one year. Patience paid off
when Daryl Williams, an A&R for Atlantic asked Chris Stokes to give a look
at some of his artists. Williams quickly got an eye for Brandy and he set her
up for an audition for Atlantic and their head Sylvia Rhone. For her audition
she sang the Greatest Love of All which she nailed. But it came down between
her and Deborah Cox for the contract. They chose Brandy and the rest is
history. For her manager, Sonja made a sacrifice. She quit her job to become
her full-time manager.
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Her recording dreams were finally
becoming true. But before, or perhaps while, working on her debut album. She
was casted on the show Thea. Starring Thea Vitale, it’s about a single mother
raising her four kids. Show started off well but didn’t end that way as it only
ran for a single season. Also, it was alleged that Thea and Brandy, and to an
extension Sonja, had tension on set. But with the show ending, it allowed
Brandy to focus on music full-time. On September 1994, she released her
self-titled debut album. Her first single was “I Wanna Be Down” and that song
reached #1 on the R&B charts, #6 on the Hot 100. Her next single was “Baby”
and that song was even more successful, it reached #4 on the Hot 100 and #1 on
the R&B. Her album went quadruple platinum. At the end of this album cycle
she was nominated for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance
for Baby.
On her debut, she had a song called
Brokenhearted. Originally a solo, someone thought of an idea to make this a
duet. So, Wanya Morris, whom Brandy had a crush on for years, was recruited and
was pushed as the final single for the album. Brokenhearted went to #9 on the
Hot 100 and #2 on the R&B charts. What became was a relationship between
the two despite a six-year age difference. But Wanya had wondering eyes, and
one month before her 19th birthday, he called off the relationship.
Wanya eyes wondered to Freak Like Me singer and Brandy’s labelmate Adina
Howard. Sylvia Rhone became aware of this Love Triangle and told Adina to focus
on music and not her relationship with Wanya. Adina was said to be blackballed
from the love triangle.
1996 would be an interesting year
for Brandy. She got involved in soundtracks. first on Waiting to Exhale, she
recorded the Babyface written tune “Sittin Up in My Room”, the song reached #2
on the Hot 100, only being held out by the massive One Sweet Day. Later that
same year, Brandy teamed up with rising star Tamia and R&B vets in Gladys
Knight & Chaka Khan on the song “Missing You” which made its appearance on
the Set it Off soundtrack, fun fact Brandy was approached to be in the movie
but backed out likely due to scheduling conflicts. Only reached #25 on the Hot
100, #10 on the R&B charts. While Brandy was on tour, her father received a
phone call from Ralph Farquhar. He wrote a pilot for a new show with Brandy in
mind. The show would be called Moesha, a show about a teenager and her
navigating through her family, school, and her peers. But Brandy’s first
reading didn’t go well. Since Ralph really want this show to get on board, he
hired Facts of Life/Living Single actress Kim Fields to coach Brandy. A pilot
was order for CBS. However, CBS pulled out last minute and the creators
scrambled for another network. UPN (now known as the CW), picked up the project
and after the pilot was ordered, UPN picked up the rest of the season and
Moesha was born.
Brandy obviously did the theme song
and it gave fans a new perspective for Brandy for those who didn’t know her.
Moesha was one of UPN’s highest rated shows at the time. Brandy won a NAACP
Award for her role and Moesha ran for six seasons, getting canceled in 2001. In
1997 Brandy made her film debut on I Know What You Did Last Summer. Then she
got the opportunity of a lifetime when she worked with her idol Whitney Houston
on the interpolation of Cinderella. The movie was known for its racially
diverse cast distributed by Disney. 1998 Brandy started to work on her second
album. A producer named Dallas Austin was writing a duet with another teen
R&B singer named Monica. The song would be called “The Boy is Mine”. Rumors
stated that personalities clashed during the recording of the song but things
came to ahead before the 1998 VMAs when Monica allegedly sucker punched Brandy.
Regardless of the negative publicity, the song became the pairs first #1 hit on
the Hot 100 and was the song of the summer for 1998. It won them a Grammy for
Best R&B Performance by Duo/Group. In June 1998, she released her second
album “Never Say Never”. Later that year, she released the song “Have You
Ever”. Written by Diane Warren, the song became her second #1 Hot 100 single.
Thanks to Have You Ever and The Boy is Mine Never Say Never went 5x Platinum.
Brandy got involved in another
relationship with Mase. But that soured and it led Mase to diss her on the song
Same N-words. Mase said the line “Then they wonder why I want no family
What I need a hooker for, getting'
head from.” Mase censored the last word but fans connected the dots because
family sounds similar to Brandy. By this time, Hollywood was taking over. She
was still doing Moesha but she teamed up with R&B diva Diana Ross on the
made for TV film Double Platinum. This was her first movie where she was the
executive producer.
In 2001, her sitcom Moesha came to
an end and she started to work on her third album. During the process she
started to date Robert “Big Bert” Smith. That same year she became pregnant.
And in June 2002 gave birth to a daughter Sy ’Rai Smith. In the midst of her
pregnancy, she released her third album Full Moon. One thing about Brandy, her
first two albums mostly held a family friendly image. Full Moon was a break
from that image as she was transitioning into an adult. First of such
transition was the song “What About Us.” The song reached #7 on the Hot 100.
Her next single was the title track and that went to #18 on the Hot 100. Full
Moon undersold her previous effort only going platinum and the critics were
mixed due to the direction but overtime Full Moon was deemed a cult classic
amongst fans.
The fans didn’t
have to wait long for the next era. Her fourth album Afrodisiac was released in
June 2004. Leadoff single what “Talk About Love” featuring and produced by
Kanye West. But the song only reached the top 40 on the Hot 100 and top 20 on
the R&B charts. There weren’t any more substantial hits as the album only
went Gold. After this, Brandy decided to leave Atlantic. In 2005 Brandy became
a judge of the first season of Americas Got Talent, but this would be her only
season of the show and she would be replaced by Sharon Osborne.
In 2006, Brandy was involved in a
car accident. Sources and stories differ on what occurred that day. But what
was is known, Brandy was driving at 65 mph (average for a highway) but was late
noticing a slowdown in the highway. This caused her to crash into a vehicle of
a 38-year-old woman, who would crash into a median and would also hit another
vehicle. The 38-year-old woman was taken to the hospital but would die from her
injuries. Brandy herself wasn’t injured nor was under the influence nor
distracted by her cell phone. Brandy was not charged for the accident but faced
a $50 million lawsuit from the woman’s family, which was settled with Brandy
giving the children of the deceased $300,000 each.
Did this cause a dent in her
career? Well, that was part of the reason why she left AGT but Brandy tried to
move forward. In 2008 released her fifth album, now under Epic, Human. The
album was mostly produced by Darkchild, who gave her hits back in 2001. It had
the single Right Here (Departed) and that song reached the top 40 of the Hot
100. But the album had no other hits and the album undersold despite mostly
positive reviews. Thus, Brandy would leave Epic. During this time, she would
unleash a rap alter ego named Bran-New. Bran ‘New made her debut on
Timberland’s compilation album “Timberland present’s Shock Value 2”.
Brandy would return to television
at this time. In 2010, she teamed up with her brother Ray-J on the VH1 reality
show, Brandy & Ray J: A Family Business. That same year, she was a
contestant on DWTS. On the show, she impressed judges and audiences so it came
as a shock that she was eliminated just before the finale. Many claim that she
is one of the greatest to never win DWTS. In 2011, she was casted on the show
The Game. Her character Chardonay started off as a recurring character but by
the next season promoted to the series regular. In 2012 she released her sixth album, Two
Eleven. It had the song Put It Down featuring Chris Brown. The song saw her
return to the top 10 on R&B Charts going #3.
In 2015, after her stint on the
Game had ended, she starred in the Broadway musical Chicago. The next BET gave
her, her own sitcom called Zoe Ever After. But the show only lasted eight
episodes when Brandy decided to move on from the project. In 2018, she appeared
on the show Star as Cassandra. Like with The Game, she was originally recurring
until promoted to series regular. In 2020, Brandy released her 7th
album B7, her first as an independent artist.
Throughout her career, Brandy has
been part of beef with Monica. Already mention some origins of the beef but
overtime industry politics pitted the girls against each other. But as they got
older, the women begin to heal old wounds. In 2012, they recorded a song “It
All Belongs To Me” and that song appeared on Monica’s seventh album New Life.
In 2020, Brandy and Monica did a Versuz battle on IG, and with 1.2 million
viewers at one point, it was the highest viewed Versuz at that point. In 2024
thanks to Ariana Grande song “boy is mine”, the pair appeared on the video and
eventually the remix, a remix that saw a Grammy nomination. In 2025, Brandy and
Monica announced the Boy is Mine Tour, with accompanying appearances from Muni
Long (Mya filled in for a few dates while Muni was suffering from pneumonia), Kelly Rowland and American Idol winner Jamal Roberts.
While her beef with Monica was
getting resolved, Brandy got involved in another beef with Jack Harlow. This
one started when Jack didn’t recognize Brandy’s vocals on one of her songs.
This led Brandy to drop a freestyle to Jack Harlow’s #1 hit “First Class” and
in the freestyle she kept plugging in the word Jack. Long story short, they
made amends when both artists performed together at the 2022 BET Awards.
As for her recent activities, she
appeared on the short-lived ABC show Queens. In 2024, she appeared on the movie
Descendants 4: The Rise of Red. There she reprised her role as Cinderella. It
was announced that she will reprise her role again in the Descendants 5. That
same year she announced that she be producing and starring in a Christmas
Lifetime movie with her daughter Sy’rai, who has since started her own music
career while getting her Bachelor’s in Entertainment Business. Overall, Brandy
has seen highs, been through lows, she gotten some yes, but had to go through
some no’s to get there. But in the end Brandy has establish herself as an icon
for the ages.
SOURCES
https://www.famousafricanamericans.org/brandy-norwood
https://kids.kiddle.co/Brandy_Norwood
The
Rise & Rise of Brandy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzOiz9utol0)
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/brandy-involved-in-fatal-california-car-crash-1055732/
https://www.theroot.com/the-history-of-brandy-and-monicas-messy-violent-feud-2000047075
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