Brandy Norwood debuted into the hearts of music lovers in the early ’90s, with her classic debut album that produced two Billboard No. 1 singles, “Baby” and “Brokenhearted.” Helping her navigate all of the accolades showered over the young singer (and the fame that came with it), was her mentor Whitney Houston, arguably one of the greatest vocalists to ever sing.
Houston, who had also become a Norwood family friend, met her demise on Feb. 11, 2012, crushing the hearts of fans worldwide. But few outside of her family reached the depths of bereavement that Brandy did. Ten years after her beloved idol’s death, Brandy has spoken in her own words — sharing publicly who she blames for the superstar singer’s death.
The multi-Grammy winner, who was pegged to write the foreword of journalist Gerrick Kennedy’s new book “Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston,” admits that after the tragic loss she wanted to blame “someone” for the death of her friend. Atlanta Black Star has obtained a copy of the book and notes that the “I Wanna Be Down” singer realized that there actually is a lot of blame to spread around.
“It’s natural for people to want to place blame. I placed a lot of blame on a lot of people too, when it came to Whitney,” she wrote. “We loved her so much and needed something or someone to attach blame to because it was so hard to accept that she was gone.”
Over the last decade, the star has grown to understand that no one in the world has an idea of what it must have been like to be Ms. Whitney Houston.
She penned, “We don’t really have the right to speak on anything that she had to go through in her life. No one knows what she was running from. No one knows what she was trying to overcome. No one knows the costs that came with being Whitney Houston. That level of fame, that level of expectation, that level of pressure.”
Outside of her work on the book that hit the bookshelves on Tuesday, Feb. 1, Houston has been on Brandy’s mind.
On Sunday, Jan. 30, at the Los Angeles Rams vs. the San Francisco 49ers National Football Conference championships at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, she invoked the history-making singer, who became the first woman to ever have an album debut on Billboard’s 100, spirit through song. Her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” left people raving.
Kelly Rowland tweeted, “AMEN BRANDY!!!”
Her cousin, Snoop Dogg, shouted her out on IG, with applause, fire flames, flower, and music note emojis. In affirmation, fellow belter Tamar Braxton jumped in the comments and said, “She sang that.”
In addition to giving a soul-stirring version of the national anthem, Brandy channeled Houston’s 1991 Super Bowl performance by showing up in a white tracksuit.
One fan summed it up perfectly, tweeting, “One thing about Brandy, she’s gonna always find a way to pay homage to Whitney Houston.”
More Stories from Our Partners:
Goldman Sachs Global Private Wealth Management Head Telling Clients to Embrace U.S. Stocks
