Online Reporter
LOS ANGELES. — Few people in the world know the mystifying experience of being a child star as well as Brandy.
In “Phases”, the Grammy-winning celebrity opens up about fame, self-image, heartbreak, loss and the callous nature of the music industry from a woman who has often kept her cards close to the chest.
With the help of journalist Gerrick Kennedy, Brandy details her meteoric rise to fame as a teen while volleying ambition, exhaustion and self-doubt, moving through a predatory and tormenting industry and being misunderstood in the public eye.
Her whirlwind rise to stardom marked a turning point for a generation of Black girls, seeing a face like theirs on-screen.
From the success of the TV show “Moesha” and hit albums to stagnation flanked by controversy and, eventually, the gift of motherhood, the Vocal Bible digs deep.
Though Boyz II Men singer Wanya Morris has long suggested that a rumoured romance between himself and Brandy did not start until she was 18, she writes that the relationship started when she was 16 and he was 22.
Their connection started when Brandy was 15, she says, and Morris began to call and check in on her regularly, offering advice as an “anchor” and “confidant” to the up-and-coming star.
After she joined the group on tour, however, the pair got closer.
“’My girlfriend is sixteen.’ I don’t remember when he first said it.
“But those four words started rolling off Wanya’s tongue whenever we were alone,” Brandy writes.
“I couldn’t tell if this refrain was meant to soothe his own conscience or temper the questions shimmering in my gaze.”
Morris has discussed the relationship before, saying in a 2021 Instagram Live that the pair did not date until she was “of age” and that “her mother and father was a part of our relationship.”
He added, “You can ask Brandy and she will tell you the same story.”
But Brandy writes that the pair were “sneaking around” and that she hid the relationship from her parents, though they eventually grew suspicious.
She said she “knew full well that what was happening between Wanya and me was wrong.
And yet, my attitude was ‘This is special. This is real. People just can’t understand.’”
She writes that she lost her virginity to Morris, and she “genuinely believed it was true love.”
Eventually, Brandy says, Morris increasingly became critical of her and controlled her access to him. She would later catch him with his assistant. After confronting the singer, he confessed to sleeping around with different women, and the pair split.
“For years, I struggled with how I was treated in this relationship,” she writes.
“He saw a fifteen-year-old girl with rising fame and admiration for his talent, and I believe he deliberately took advantage. This was a twenty-two-year-old man who I believe knew exactly what he was doing when he pursued an under-age girl.”
Brandy writes of Morris’ “narrative” surrounding the relationship in the years since, expressing infuriation that the onus of the inappropriate relationship has been placed on her and being characterised as “dramatic.”
Brandy said she was “vulnerable to the attention of someone I idolize” and called the relationship a “calculated courtship.” — USA Today
