Brandy talks about her nervous breakdown, new album, new husband and motherhood

Jet, April 15, 2002

After a three-year absence Brandy is back with a new album, a new husband, a baby on the way and a new attitude following a nervous breakdown.

The Brandy fans are heating now on her new album Full Moon is not the cute, old-fashioned girl from the hit TV series "Moesha." This Brandy is an independent, grown woman who's displaying spiritual and emotional growth. This growth is evidenced by the mature, edgy sound found in the first single, What About Us and the sensuous sound of He Is.

"Full Moon says I'm not embarrassed about life, not embarrassed about love," she said during a recent JET interview. "I want to talk about how I feel on so many different levels. I want to be in touch with all my emotions and share them. I've taken three years off for myself and got a chance to find things I like to do, things I don't like and things I want to change about myself. Now, I'm back with a new sound, a new album, a new look, new energy and a new vibe. It's all coming from what I've learned over the last three years."

Brandy, now 23, said she needed that time to reflect and take some introspective looks. "I needed to rejuvenate, get my creative juices flowing, balance my life with some privacy, to find my confidence, find my love of music again. I'm back with what I am--Brandy at 23. Brandy new and fresh. The music is fresh."

And she pulled a Janet Jackson on the public by getting married secretly and managed to keep it private until she was ready to let the public in on it. She even managed to keep it from her parents.

Last year she married Robert Smith, a New Jersey producer/songwriter. She said she had been acquainted with him for a few years but somehow their paths never really intersected. He is related to her longtime music collaborator Rodney Jerkins.

"We met in the studio because of my profession and his," she recalled. "It's sort of like it was meant for us to be, to meet and talk and be together. I just didn't know that we'd have one conversation and I'd fall in love. I didn't know that. We just spent some time relaxing and having a conversation. And the conversation touched on every aspect of life, love, God, children. That was it. That was all I needed. I knew. I could feel it."

Their union was totally about destiny, she pointed out. "I just never paid attention to his smile, never paid attention to the chemistry we had because when you're blind to love, you can't see it. But, when I look back on our encounters, he was always there. When I couldn't see him, he was always there. It's sort of like, if you look to the left (he's there). It was the kind of situation where it hit me and I went right away and did it."

Because both wanted to have privacy and normalcy for as long as possible, they decided not to tell a soul for awhile. Eventually, they let both sets of parents in on it. Then the public was informed. "The reason I made a statement about it was that it's a wonderful thing to share with everyone. People were speculating about my love life and I just needed to come out and share that."

And in mid-summer the two are expecting a baby girl. Even though she hopes for a healthy baby regardless of its sex, Brandy confided that she really had been hoping for a girl.

"I'm happy it's a girl because I'll get to do female things with her and just be an example and try to do wonderful things as a mother. There's nothing like a mother/daughter relationship. I love my mother to death."

When the baby comes, Brandy says there will be no bottles for her daughter. "I will nurse her myself." And she said she would take her everywhere she goes. "I'm going to be a hands-on mom." She's making plans for the nursery but hasn't come up with a name yet.

While promoting the album with an appearance on "Oprah," Brandy detailed some of the problems that caused her so much anguish over the last three years.

Initially, she told Oprah that she was superfearful that she couldn't live up to the successes of her first albums (Brandy and Never Say Never). "I always appeared to be happy and I was crying on the inside. I just stopped eating. I was very thin. I started abusing myself. All the work and the fame happened at once. I was 15 and lost myself in the shuffle."

Making matters worse for her was what she described as a bad relationship with a man whose identity she chose not to reveal. "Everything I thought about myself (negatively), he thought times 20," she revealed to Oprah. "It's just like, `You're nothing and nobody cares about you.' All those types of things. I did try to please him and be his everything."

The verbal abuse took a toll on her health and she ate even less. When she did eat, it was junk food of french fries and sodas. "I wanted to fit his standards of beauty (what she described as light skin and long hair)."

In addition, her successful TV series began to take its toll. She admits that pushing herself through her hectic music and promotion schedule and long hours of taping contributed to her breakdown.

She even began hating the character she portrayed on the small screen. "`Moesha was perfect and never did anything wrong." That day in 1999, she recalls having been fed up with the character and wanted to go home.