*Brandy is setting the record straight and sharing the full story of her extraordinary life in a new memoir that is already generating serious buzz.
Titled “Phases” and co-written with Gerrick Kennedy, the book traces the singer’s path from singing in church choirs in Mississippi to becoming one of the most distinctively talented vocalists of her era. Despite a catalog exceeding three decades, many consider Brandy chronically underappreciated, and the memoir digs into the experiences that help explain why.
Some of the most talked-about passages involve her encounters with icons she once idolized. When Brandy finally came face to face with Whitney Houston backstage at the 1995 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, her emotions took over completely.
“A scream erupted from somewhere deep in my chest,” she writes, per The Guardian. “And then, inexplicably, I ran … It was as if my brain short-circuited from the overwhelming voltage of emotion – anticipation, excitement, disbelief, joy – all colliding at once.” A later introduction to Michael Jackson in a recording studio went even further off script. “I actually blacked out. Legs turned to Jell-O. Down I went,” she recalls.
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“Phases” also offers Brandy’s long-awaited account of her history with Monica. The 1998 chart-dominating duet “The Boy Is Mine” was Brandy’s own concept, born from a desire to publicly neutralize a rivalry the press had manufactured between them. Away from the cameras, the two shared genuinely warm moments. What unraveled the goodwill was a series of behind-the-scenes moves, including Monica recording new vocals with a separate producer and her label head Clive Davis rebranding Monica’s entire album around the song.
The memoir also confronts a nervous breakdown at 20, a fatal car accident that led to months of depression, and a teenage relationship with a significantly older famous man that Brandy now frames as predatory.
“At the time, it felt like a fairy tale,” she writes. “Now 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.” Later, she writes: “The shame ends here. The silence ends here. I was not a fast girl with a crush. I was not a dramatic teenager who couldn’t handle rejection. I was not an unstable obsessive fan. I was a child. He was an adult. And it’s time the world understood the difference.”
The memoir is currently available in the United States through HarperCollins, with releases set for Australia on April 1 and the United Kingdom on April 23.
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