‘I was a child. And he was an adult’: Brandy opens up about a past relationship that haunted her as a teen, one where the ‘silence ends here’
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The singer’s new memoir ‘Phases’ opens up about a number of dark subjects, from her 2006 car accident to how a record label started her feud with Monica and more.
In a whirlwind week in which Brandy received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a memoir that lays bare some of the darkest chapters of her life, the “Vocal Bible” isn’t shying away from her truth.
One of the chapters from her “Phases” memoir spotlights one of her earliest relationships, a late ’90s romance with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men. According to Brandy, the two began a relationship when she was 16 and he was in his early 20s. The two collaborated on the song “Brokenhearted” which appeared on her 1994 eponymous debut album and even as Brandy joined Boyz II Men for their national tour, her relationship with Morris had grown from being more than just collaborators.
“I was in over my head. Sneaking around with Wanya and lying to my parents had become a constant. They barely liked the idea of me dating at all, and telling them about us was out of question,” the now 47-year-old Brandy wrote.
“But it wasn’t just about upsetting — or disappointing — my parents,” she continued. “Wanya and I understood, with diamond-cut clarity that public knowledge of our relationship would ignite scandal, potentially threatening everything we’d both worked for, so he and I opted for elaborate fiction: we would pretend patience and claim we were waiting until my eighteenth birthday before pursuing any romantic connection.”
Among the admissions Brandy made in her memoir regarding Morri” was that she lost her virginity to him. As the relationship continuedcouldn’t admitted that he would compare her to other singers, such as Mariah Carey. Ultimately, the pairit’sled it quits after he admitted that he was”cheating on her.
“I believe he took advantage,” Brandy wrote.
In 2020, Morris told fans during an Instagram Live session that he didn’t begin dating Brandy until she came of age.
“Once she turned of age, we had been hanging around each other so much that there became to be some sort of connection. An intimate connection. We actually fell in love,” Morris said at the time. He later clarified that he was dating Brandy at the time she famously went to the prom with Kobe Bryant.
Despite Morris’ previous explanation, Brandy shared her feelings vastly differ from how Morris saw things.
“These are the things that with hindsight you realize are wildly obvious signs of something wrong,” she wrote. “Neon warning signs that I chose to ignore because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, or what he was doing with me. Just that I was in love — or what I believed was love.”
“The shame ends here. The silence ends here,” she added. “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. And he was an adult. And it’s time the world understood the difference.”
“Phases” is available now through Hanover Square Press.