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Brandy Norwood, picture 1

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Brandy Norwood, picture 13

Early life
Brandy is the elder of two siblings born to Willie Ray Norwood, a pastor and choir director, and his wife Sonja Bates-Norwood, a former financial analyst, in McComb, Mississippi. She is the sister of singer and actor William Raymond "Ray J" Norwood Jr, and a cousin of blues singer Bo Diddley, and rapper Snoop Dogg.
Due to her father's work Brandy started singing at their minister, Curtis W. McCullom's Brookhaven church at an early age of two. By the time she was four, Norwood's parents moved the family from McComb to Carson, California, in hopes of jump-starting careers for their children. Inspired by singer Whitney Houston, Brandy began performing at many West Coast functions as part of a youth singing group and then, at 11, barely a teenager herself, met manager Chris Stokes who landed her gigs as backup singer for the group called Norment and more successful teen R&B trio Immature.
In 1993, while shopping around record companies, seeking a record deal, Norwood attended a party held by the Atlantic Recording Corporation. After performing in front of hundreds of people, an executive indicated interest in her persona and eventually offered Brandy a recording contract with Atlantic Records.

1994–1997: Early commercial success

Brandy with MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Yo-Yo in the remix video to "I Wanna Be Down" (1994).

After months of recording, including sessions with producers Daryl Williams, and Keith Crouch, Brandy's self-titled debut album was released on September 27, 1994. While the album debuted at a moderate number 20 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart only, Brandy soon became a quadruple platinum success thanks to heavy rotation on music channels MTV and BET and the singles "I Wanna Be Down" and "Baby" which both entered the top 10 of the official Hot 100 and became number-one hits on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Although the album's success was limited elsewhere, the album produced another two top 10 hits and made Brandy one of the most successful new artists of the year.
Subsequently the album earned Norwood two Grammy Award nominations for "Best New Artist" and "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance" (for her single "Baby"), four Soul Train Music Awards, two Billboard Awards, and the New York Children's Choice Award. Brandy continued to soar in 1995, teaming up with Lenny Kravitz for the Batman Forever soundtrack and scoring another hit with her number-two single, "Sittin' up in My Room" from the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack.
In 1996, Brandy teamed up with Tamia, Chaka Khan, and Gladys Knight, for the single "Missing You," released from the Set It Off soundtrack. Even with the superstar lineup, it was Brandy's least successful single yet, but was still a moderate hit, and peaked at number 25 on the pop chart. The song won Norwood her third Grammy nomination in the "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals" category.

1998–2001: Worldwide popularity

Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins consulted on the album Never Say Never, which was released on June 9, 1998 and became Brandy's most successful album worldwide. Norwood co-wrote and produced six songs on the album which yielded her first number-one song on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, "The Boy Is Mine", a duet with singer Monica. The song rose to one of the most successful records of the year, staying on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for thirteen weeks, and eventually garnered the pair a Grammy Award for "Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal". Critics rated Never Say Never highly, with All Music Guide's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praising Brandy and her team for wisely finding "a middle ground between Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige — it's adult contemporary with a slight streetwise edge".[6] Altogether the album spawned seven airplay and CD singles respectively, including Norwood's second number-one song, Diane Warren written "Have You Ever". [7]
For the next three years, Brandy completed the remaining three seasons of her sitcom Moesha and starred in a number of widely successful and critically acclaimed television specials and movies. She also landed a multitude of endorsement deals with CoverGirl cosmetics, which she represented for several years. Brandy was the subject of a major advertisement campaign for DKNY Jeans for three seasons, and modeled Candies shoes in an ad campaign photographed by David LaChapelle.
After a lengthy hiatus that saw the end of her Moesha television series, and a flurry of tabloid headlines discussing her bout with "dehydration", Brandy returned with a 2001 remake of Phil Collins' 1980s hit "Another Day in Paradise", a collaboration with brother Ray J. Released as the lead single from Urban Renewal: A Tribute to Phil Collins, the song became an instant international hit.

2002–2003: New image

During the production of her third studio album, Norwood became romantically involved with producer Robert "Big Bert" Smith. The couple quietly "married" in the summer of 2001 but their union did not become known until February 2002 – the same month Norwood revealed that she was expecting her first child. However, shortly after the birth of their daughter Sy'rai Iman Smith on June 16, 2002 – an event tracked by the four-part MTV reality series Special Delivery – Norwood "divorced" Smith. The "marriage" itself was later exposed as not of legal status but instead was used as a ruse to protect Brandy's image. [8] Norwood later stated that she regarded her relationship with Smith as a "spiritual union and true commitment to each other".[9]
Full Moon, Norwood's third studio album, was released in March 2002. It once again comprised a row of R&B/Pop-oriented songs with adult contemporary, many of them co-created with Jerkins, Warryn Campbell and Mike City. While its lead single "What About Us?" became a worldwide top 10 hit, the album's title track failed to chart or sell noticeably outside the United States and the UK, where it managed to enter the Top 20 of the single chart. Media reception was generally lukewarm, with Rolling Stone Magazine saying that, "... this interminable (seventeen-track) product is frantic, faceless, fake-sexy R&B."[10]
Still, the album was rather quietly and cautiously declared as a flop by the media. Brandy ignored the rumblings and instead settled further into motherhood. She began writing and producing for other artists, such as Kelly Rowland, Kierra "Kiki" Sheard and Toni Braxton, within the coming year.

2004–2005: Critical highs and personal lows

By the following year, Norwood had entered a relationship with New York Knicks guard Quentin Richardson. The couple soon got engaged in 2004 but Brandy eventually ended her 15-month engagement with the NBA player in October 2005.[11]
Returning from yet another musical hiatus, Brandy's fourth album Afrodisiac was released on June 29, 2004, amidst both her weakest promotional blitz ever and the well-publicized termination of her short-lived business relationship with entertainment manager Benny Medina. Norwood ended her relationship with Medina's Los Angeles-based Handprint Entertainment after less than a year of representation. Controversy surrounded Medina's handling of the lead single "Talk About Our Love", and failed talks of a purported co-headlining tour with R&B singer Usher Raymond that was instead handed to Kanye West, another Medina client, as an opening gig.
Despite the negative blitz, Afrodisiac (primarily produced by Timbaland) became Brandy's most critically acclaimed album to date,[12] with some citing the "more consistently mature and challenging" effect of Timbaland on Brandy's music,[13] and others calling it "very listenable and emotionally resonant", comparing it to "Janet Jackson at her best".[14] Nevertheless it became the least successful album of Brandy's career: While Afrodisiac debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling less than 500,000 copies domestically, it failed to chart or sell noticeably outside the United States.[15]
The singles also did not perform well: "Talk About Our Love" became a moderate hit with a peak position of number 36 on the Billboard Top 100 charts, while the follow-up "Who Is She 2 U" was a minor hit, never making it out of the lower half of the Billboard Hot 100. The title track "Afrodisiac", released overseas as a single, was a Top 20 hit in the United Kingdom. At the end of 2004, Norwood asked for and received a release from Atlantic Records. As a direct consequence she brought a collection of all of her singles, The Best of Brandy, on the market, before starting shopping for a new record deal under Knockout Entertainment.[16]

Article licensed under GNU License. Text from Wikipedia "Brandy Norwood"

Biography

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