{"id":356799,"date":"2026-03-31T12:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356799\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T12:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:51:07","slug":"fainting-in-front-of-michael-jackson-and-feuding-with-monica-inside-brandys-jaw-dropping-memoir-autobiography-and-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356799\/","title":{"rendered":"Fainting in front of Michael Jackson and feuding with Monica: inside Brandy\u2019s jaw-dropping memoir | Autobiography and memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite a 30 years-plus discography and a slew of undeniable classics (Sittin\u2019 Up in My Room, The Boy Is Mine, modern R&B blueprint What About Us?) and deep cuts feted by the likes of Solange<\/a>, Kehlani<\/a> and Normani, there\u2019s a sense that Brandy<\/a>, the fan-anointed Vocal Bible, is still underrated. Her vividly told and occasionally harrowing memoir, Phases<\/a>, co-written alongside Gerrick Kennedy and out on Tuesday, goes some way to explaining why that might be.<\/p>\n

As well as detailing her formative years in Mississippi and later California, where she learned her trade singing in church choirs and at youth groups, and later her meteoric rise as a teenage superstar, Phases paints a picture of a young woman whose insecurities were often exposed and abused by others. It also spotlights issues around duty of care in the music industry; in 1999, while nursing an addiction to diet pills, and juggling her role on the hit teen sitcom Moesha with a relentless recording and touring schedule, Brandy suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of just 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe earliest dream I can recall is me standing on a stage,\u201d Brandy writes in the book\u2019s intro. Throughout Phases, she battles to keep that dream alive as she navigates a rollercoaster life.<\/p>\n

She figured out inspired ways to deal with bulliesBrandy (center) with the cast of Moesha. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive\/CBS\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Brandy\u2019s father Willie, a gospel singer and choir director, first noticed her vocal talents. \u201cYou have a unique voice, Bran,\u201d he tells her. \u201cLet\u2019s train it. Let\u2019s get it to where God wants it to go.\u201d While singing quickly became her happy place, she was constantly bullied at school; an easy target, she says, given her \u201ctoo-skinny frame and quiet demeanor\u201d. One bully, Shanice, made Brandy scared to go to school, to the point where she prayed to God asking for a solution. Shortly afterwards, Shanice was shot dead. Later, another bully is put in their place by Brandy herself when braided extension cords are transformed into a \u201cheavy, flexible whip\u201d.<\/p>\n

A clue as to where Brandy might have got her early bravery from arrives in 1993 when she tells her mum, and manager, Sonja, that she\u2019s having issues with her onscreen mother, the actor Thea Vidale, on the set of the sitcom Thea. \u201cShe grabbed a metal chair and pulled it up to the director and took a seat \u2013 all without breaking the gaze of my TV mother,\u201d Brandy writes of Sonja. \u201c\u2018OK, I\u2019m going to just sit riiiiight here today,\u2019 she said, drawing out her words nice and slow.\u201d The constant barbs stopped.<\/p>\n

She was a super fan prone to fainting around her musical idolsBrandy and Whitney Houston with the cast of 1997\u2019s family musical Cinderella. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most relatable aspect of Phases is Brandy\u2019s standom. Pre-fame, she finagles her way backstage from the cheap seats in the hope of meeting her ultimate idol Whitney Houston<\/a>. When that fails, she harasses the gospel legends BeBe and CeCe Winans until they call Houston on the phone, only for Brandy to fall temporarily mute.<\/p>\n

Later, in 1995, after the success of Brandy\u2019s self-titled debut album, the pair finally meet backstage at the Nickelodeon Kids\u2019 Choice Awards. \u201cA scream erupted from somewhere deep in my chest,\u201d Brandy writes of that meeting with Houston. \u201cAnd then, inexplicably, I ran [\u2026] It was as if my brain short-circuited from the overwhelming voltage of emotion \u2013 anticipation, excitement, disbelief, joy \u2013 all colliding at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, she\u2019s introduced to Michael Jackson<\/a> in a recording studio: \u201cI actually blacked out. Legs turned to Jell-O. Down I went.\u201d While she didn\u2019t faint when meeting Diana Ross<\/a> on the set of the 1999 film Double Platinum, she did acquire some sage advice from the Muscles hitmaker: never chew gum (it\u2019s distracting and unprofessional), always sit up straight; and always keep your knees together \u201cbecause the cameras are always watching, even when you think they aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s keen to tell her side of the story about a toxic relationshipBrandy in promotional shots for Moesha. Photograph: Matthew Rolson\/United Paramount Network\/Getty<\/p>\n

By the time she was 13 Brandy was singing back-up vocals for the R&B boyband Immature. While hanging out at the band\u2019s manager\u2019s apartment, she says that a member named Half-Pint groped her. Brandy\u2019s angry reaction was mocked by his fellow bandmates until she angrily hurled a book and accidentally seriously damaging the eye of another member, Jerome. \u201cI learned a hard lesson that day about boundaries, about speaking up sooner, about the complex dynamics that can develop when children work in adult environments,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

Two years later, aged 15, Brandy met Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men. What started out as mutual admiration for each other\u2019s work quickly morphed into a secret relationship. \u201cMy girlfriend is sixteen,\u201d the then 23-year-old is quoted as saying when the pair are alone, perhaps, Brandy writes, as a way of \u201ctethering himself to a boundary, even as he quietly edged past it\u201d. A sexual relationship began before Morris confessed to multiple infidelities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a relationship that would be framed, often by Morris himself in various media interviews, as a naive super fan having her heart broken. In Phases, Brandy outlines her truth with clear-eyed anger and frustration. \u201cAt the time, it felt like a fairy tale,\u201d she writes. \u201cNow I see it as the beginning of a calculated courtship of a teenage girl by a grown man who knew exactly the effect his attention would have.\u201d Later, after detailing the reasons behind why she hasn\u2019t shared her side of the story until now (to protect her family, and his), she writes: \u201cThe shame ends here. The silence ends here. I was not a fast girl with a crush. I was not a dramatic teenager who couldn\u2019t handle rejection. I was not an unstable obsessive fan. I was a child. He was an adult. And it\u2019s time the world understood the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Boy Is Mine was her ideaBrandy and Monica arriving at the 1999 Grammy awards in Los Angeles. Photograph: Dan Callister\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Released in 1998, The Boy Is Mine, a playfully combative duet with fellow teenage R&B singer Monica, would go on to become Brandy\u2019s biggest hit, spending 13 weeks at number one in the US. Originally conceived by Brandy and producer Rodney Jerkins as a slower, sadder song, it was Brandy\u2019s idea to switch it into a duet. In her mind, asking Monica, a woman who the press had decided was her arch-rival \u2013 the street savvy opposite to Brandy\u2019s sweet-natured girl nextdoor \u2013 to be her fictional adversary would quash rumours they didn\u2019t get on. For context, at the time, one LA radio station ran a regular segment called Brandy vs Monica, featuring skits that displayed the teenage Brandy as \u201cfake, obnoxious, a saccharine-sweet facade hiding something sinister underneath\u201d. Needless to say, the song, complete with a video of the pair as feuding neighbours, only fuelled the fire.<\/p>\n

In Phases, Brandy says there was no real beef. She describes the pair, on a rare day off, riding rollercoasters together \u2013 a particular favourite pastime of Brandy\u2019s \u2013 and the initial recording session for The Boy Is Mine ran smoothly. Later, however, cracks appeared and tension seeped in; Monica re-recorded her vocals with her own producer, Dallas Austin, while Monica\u2019s label boss, Clive Davis, renamed her album The Boy Is Mine as a way of trying to claim ownership of the duet. Brandy didn\u2019t help matters when she performed the song solo on a US talkshow.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, by the time the pair perform<\/a> The Boy Is Mine together for the first time at the VMAs, they are barely speaking. During the performance, however, the clouds part: \u201cEven in a space where we\u2019d been pitted against each other \u2013 where we\u2019d allowed ourselves to become adversaries \u2013 we couldn\u2019t help but recognize our shared experience, our parallel journeys, our combined power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her involvement in a 2006 car accident nearly broke herBrandy. Photograph: Blair Caldwell<\/p>\n

Two years after the release of her then-underrated and now rightly celebrated fourth album, 2004\u2019s Timbaland-produced Afrodisiac, Brandy was involved in a fatal car accident. The death of a young woman haunted her: \u201cI no longer felt I had the right to continue living my life, or even to experience fleeting glimmers of joy [\u2026] Who was I to smile? To sing? To exist in a world where she no longer could?\u201d<\/p>\n

The guilt led to Brandy not leaving the house for months, and fantasising about an escape. \u201cIn my dreams, I floated free, unburdened by the tragedy that had swallowed my waking hours [\u2026] I sometimes fantasized about remaining in that twilight place forever. If I could just slip away and escape. Just vanish like morning mist.\u201d She writes that it was her young daughter Sy\u2019Rai who brought her back from the brink.<\/p>\n

Singing was like scaling a mountainBrandy receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles on 30 March 2026. Photograph: Matt Baron\/BEI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

While Phases is full of shocking moments \u2013 an abusive boyfriend; the father of her daughter selling her out on the Wendy Williams show after the pair lied about being married; her then-label forcing her to work with an uncooperative Kanye West as part of an elaborate ploy to get him to sign with them \u2013 there\u2019s also real joy in how Brandy writes about music. Obsessed with recording her voice and layering vocals from a young age after being given an old four-track recorder by her father, she sets about nailing her signature sound \u2013 the one that earned her the Vocal Bible honour \u2013 in the studio with Rodney Jerkins.<\/p>\n

After fastidiously working on stacking her backing vocals on the 16m-selling Never Say Never, when it came to its follow-up, another if-you-know-you-know classic 2002\u2019s Full Moon, Jerkins laid down a challenge to Brandy. \u201cDo you want to be the greatest?\u201d he asked. After flitting between studios while working simultaneously on Michael Jackson\u2019s Invincible, Jerkins broke down Jackson\u2019s approach to recording vocals; essentially more is more. Brandy got to work. \u201cSometimes we\u2019d stack sixteen separate takes of me singing the exact same note for just a tiny section of a song,\u201d Brandy says of working on the album. \u201cI attacked every single note like I was scaling Mount Everest, pushing past where comfort ended \u2013 then pushing even further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a 30 years-plus discography and a slew of undeniable classics (Sittin\u2019 Up in My Room, The Boy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-356799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}