Brandy Proves The World Is Never Ready To Believe A Black Girl To Be The Victim.

Culture/Book Review

Brandy Norwood

Recently I wrote about Brandy and how some of us have been having an issue with her needing to take some time to see the doctor during the concert she had with singer Monica and I made mention how sad it was to realize that given the recent passing of singers Angie Stone and D’Angelo, I asked how would they feel if something serious had happened to Brandy?

Little did we all know that Brandy did in fact go through something urgent upsetting and life altering. The fact that she too was another black girl coming up in the entertainment industry and got caught in it’s devastating whirlwind. Now as a lot of you all know, I’m a big fan of Brandy’s because she’s one of the very few black girls that I actually grew up with since we’re only a year apart from one another. And I had almost all of her posters on my bedroom wall in competition with my car posters.

I Raced To Get Her Memoir

So when I heard that she was putting out a memoir called Phases, I hurried up and got it and listened to the audio version in her own voice, I love hearing authors reading out their own life stories, somehow, you can tell the emotions they’re going through as they retell things that went on in their lives.

[embed]Phases: A Memoir|Hardcover bull; INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! •The iconic, multiplatinum, Grammy Award®-winning performer Brandy…www.barnesandnoble.com

Caught Up In The Pomp And Circumstance Of It All

One of the things that I was sadly but fully aware of was the fact that Brandy spoke on her statutory rape relationship with fellow singer and Boyz 2 Men member, Wanya Morris. What I truly disliked was how many of these entertainment based relationships were downplayed through the same pomp and circumstance we normally get put through all because these people were our favorites and we didn’t see things for what they really were but more importantly,

they weren’t talked about and had the air of importance that they have now that’s the main thing that I hated, maybe if we all had Brandy’s back, Aaliyah’s back or Lisa Left Eye’s back perhaps those that were really at fault would’ve been held accountable and placed behind bars a lot sooner and maybe both Aaliyah and Lisa would still be here.

Aaliyah Houghton And Lisa Left Eye Lopes Instagram Pic

He Thought She Was Old Enough To Get It, But He’s Never Too Old To Be Held Accountable For It

That aside, looking back, I really disliked the fact that Boyz 2 Men went on the Breakfast Club acting like complete jackasses and laughing like Hyenas when talking about and trying their best to downplay Wanya’s relationship with Brandy, she was 16, he was 22. And the added insult to injury was that he made a snide remark during the interview saying that she was quote **“old enough to get it”. That made my stomach turn after hearing that. I am happy to hear that Kobe Bryant was one of the few gentlemen that really respected and liked Brandy and he ended up finding out what Wanya did and punched his lights out. Rest In Peace Kobe.**

Brandy And Kobe On Prom Night

The Boy Is Mine

I’m just glad that Brandy finally had the final say about what all she went through regarding her very messed up and inappropriate relationship with him. Side note, I didn’t really appreciate how Brandy was caught up in a so called love triangle between she, Wanya and fellow singer and Brandy’s former label mate, Adina Howard who by the way was around the same age as Wanya.

My question is why didn’t Adina herself find this weird and creepy and secondly, given how things ended up happening, it truly makes one wonder if that song **“The Boy Is Mine” was really low-key about Brandy’s situationship with Wanya and Adina? And just so you all know their birthdates: Brandy Feb 11th 1979; Wanya Morris’s July 29th 1973 and Adina Howard’s November 14th 1973.**

Brandy Norwood; Wanya Morris And Adina Howard

The Adults Were Always To Blame

I also wanted to point out that when it comes to women like Angela Yee joining in instead of speaking up for another woman especially Brandy who was under age, tells me everything about just how problematic Angela was and is, no different than Charlamagne the panty fraud.

And I hate the fact that people still want to place blame on Brandy when the blame lies solely on the adults involved, and that was Wanya Morris as well as Brandy’s parents, Mother Sonja B. Norwood and Father Willie Norwood who both allowed for a Wanya Morris to be placed in a 16 year old Brandy Norwood’s life only because of the fact that he was a well known singer from a popular black boy band and their image was somewhat squeaky clean.

Boyz 2 Men

Shocking Secrets

And Sonja because she was both Brandy’s manager and according to **Phases, Brandy was very hurt at the fact that her mother didn’t take the time to really just be her mother every once in a while, she hated the fact that she couldn’t just talk to her as her daughter instead of as a business partner. So that was very painful to hear about. Another painful and incredibly shocking revelation that I was not prepared to hear was the fact that Brandy had suffered from an eating disorder, bulimia.**

Now it may have been short lived but she did indeed suffer from this because she never felt beautiful or thin enough. I know right? If I could be as tall and remotely as thin, I’d be a happy little clam, no lie.” But yeah, she went through that trying to be already as beautiful as her peers in the industry.

And quiet as kept, life can be fucked up for us black girls sometimes, like for example in my late teens, I was going through some angsty moments and not feeling like I fit in anywhere, and because of that, I was battling depression and I began cutting on myself in order to feel something because I was tired of feeling fucking numb and empty inside.

It lasted for about three years but I eventually got help for it and recovered so when I heard that Brandy didn’t feel like she was enough, I automatically went back to that young, angry teenage girl who was catching hell from some of her school teachers to catching hell at home, it was definitely not a great time.

Wanya Wasn’t The Only One That Betrayed Brandy’s Trust

Another chapter of Brandy’s memoir she spoke on how the other males she had a relationship with had physically and verbally abused her, they let her know how much her hard work and icon status really rubbed them the wrong way, made them terribly insecure to the point they wanted to harm her and make her feel as low as they felt.

This pissed me off because it reminded me of the relationships I use to see growing up not to mention the emotional and verbal pain I went through with my own past relationships. But the main one that Brandy went through was when her own child’s father, **Big Bert aka Robert Anthony Smith decided to go on the Wendy Williams TV show to reveal to the world that he and Brandy were in fact not married, and that all of that was made up from her crew in order to help keep Brandy’s persona squeaky clean.**

Because heaven forbid a famous black girl showed herself as a human being with flaws, insecurities same as any other girl in the world. But the fact that she was in her 20s at the time and the fake outrage that she received made it all the more disgusting and hypocritical to say the least.

Big Bert aka Robert Anthony Smith And Brandy

Rodney Jerkins aka Darkchild & Beyonce

I want to address this because there’s tons of woodwork people coming out taking this opportunity to be the parasitic, parasocial stans of Beyonce that they naturally are especially when Brandy spoke only briefly about how her then music partner, Rodney Jerkins got tired of working with her and felt that the grass was greener on the other side by working with Bey and others, giving away their signature sound and he went out of his way to telling her this which he knew would hurt her because she was only expressing how she felt that she and

Rodney had something magical together the way that Kendrick Lamar has with DJ Mustard or Ryan Coogler has with Michael B. Jordan and she was only speaking on how they had the type of working relationship that was a lot like a tumultuous brother and sister relationship, when it’s good it’s great but when it’s bad, it’s over.

Top from left to right, rapper Shaunta, DarkchildÕs Lashawn Daniels, DarkchildÕs Harvey Mason, Jr., and rapper Da Brat. Bottom from left to right, Fred Jerkins III, Brandy and Rodney Jerkins at Darkchild Recording Studio in Pleasantville Tuesday, July 13, 1999.

Which explains why whenever Rodney tries calling Brandy nowadays as she says, she no longer answers her phone and I don’t blame her! Rodney thought Brandy wasn’t good enough when compared to Beyonce which would understandably make anyone in the industry feel a way.

Truth Be Told

And as much as I like Beyonce too, the truth has to be told and the truth is, it’s the music industry’s fault for crowning Beyonce as the one and only woman to be the biggest and best in the world when there are so many others out there that are just as good if not greater and yes, there was maybe a sprinkle of others that came along around the time Beyonce came but nobody else were allowed to come through that door of success and be as big as she is since.

Definitely not Chloe and Halle and for sure not her former Destiny Child bandmates Kelly Rowland or Michelle Williams and those that came before them. And everyone else that was already in the industry or trying to fulfill their dreams are left with using Bey as that measuring stick for their success. It’s incredibly unfair but none of her stans will be honest enough to say this out loud.

I loved things back when there was variety, like we had Michael, Prince Madonna, Janet; Jody Paula; Mariah, Celine and Whitney; Mary; Toni and Faith just to name several. And they all coexisted at the same time and in a lot of cases, collaborated. You really mean to tell us that there’s only room for one? That Brandy can’t be seen as the best in her own right too? In an article I wrote previously about Brandy I said that she was my Beyonce, and considering how the industry treats Bey like she’s the only one, Brandy was the only one for me as well and still is. She’s not called the vocal Bible for nothing.

Rodney Was True To His Surname Of Being A Jerk

But back to Rodney, because he was so willing to throw such an awesome work relationship with Brandy away like that proves one, someone probably put a battery in his back to do so just to break up such a dynamic duo, but that it also may not have taken that much in such a cut throat world and secondly, certain people with that kind of mindset who would do that, are not good friends and for damned sure not good business partners. I’m big into karma so when I ran across this article below, it made me think what goes around most certainly comes around.

Phases Proves The World Is Never Ready To See The Black Woman As A Victim

The sad thing from reading her memoir, Brandy basically told us that she too was yet another black girl who despite her having a successful career, she went through some very difficult trenches and her traumas were not treated as important as they should’ve been. And given how some who have already read her book and how they cherry picked her speaking on the stans fave, in order to come out and downplay and reduce what she said and purposely misunderstanding what she said proves that many of you all have a serious inability to see things objectively.

And if it was your fave instead who came out with her memoir saying how she was treated, groomed and manipulated and victimized by people that she too trusted in the music industry, you’d throw a damned shit-fit over it, you’d be going balls to the fucking walls defending her, believing her and more importantly, humanizing her. Well guess what, Brandy is a human being too who went through some really horrific and inhuman things. Kindly set aside your parasitic nature and bring back that empathy, sympathy and compassion that you’d want for someone to have for you if God forbid something happened to someone you love if not yourself.

[embed]Former Darkchild Recording Studios site turning into funeral home Former Darkchild Studios is turning into a funeral homepressofatlanticcity.com

Regardless Of It All, The Only Thing That Matters Is..

Regardless to everything that Brandy has gone through, the thing she cares about and is most proud of is being a momma. It made me tear up a bit because a good many little girls and boys out there don’t always have a mother who is joyous and cut out for being one. She spoke on how when she discovered that she was pregnant, she wanted to shield Sy’rai, and protect her in a way that she wasn’t.

She mentioned how people who were upset at her being an unwed mother was only because they wanted her to be a template for their daughters to follow which is why she fabricated her story between she and Robert to somewhat satisfy the masses. But at the end of the day, no one was perfect, not Brandy, not you or I. And that’s what matters most, strangely enough, not to strive to being perfect but to be true to who you really are. To being perfectly imperfect, a constant work in progress.

Brandy With Daughter Sy’rai Smith