Brandy Norwood is pulling the veil back on her personal and professional life in her newly-released memoir, “Phases.” As you might expect when it comes to a tell-all from a star who started off a teen sensation as both a talented singer and actress and continued on to be an even more successful artists, her book is filled with captivating details and memories.
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But perhaps one of the biggest things of all that’s been revealed is her controversial past relationship with Boyz II Men member Wanya Morris. Now why would that be controversial, you may ask? After all, they both were in the music industry around the same time, they both were relatively successful, they both had a lot going for them. It wouldn’t be too insane to imagine they’d cross paths or that there would be some sort of romantic connection, right?
Yeah, that would be all fine and dandy if Norwood wasn’t 15 at the time she met him and no soon after quickly began dating a 20-something Morris who she initially looked up to as her “mentor.” In an excerpt from her book published by Entertainment Weekly, she described how their relationship went from simple check ins and advice giving as friends and evolved into her admiration for him being “weaponized.”
“What had begun as admiration had transformed into something else. It seems to me that he weaponized my admiration, shaped my friendship into dependence, my respect into desire. I felt swept up in a current I couldn’t control,” Norwood wrote.
She went on to share that their chemistry deepened after they filmed the music video for her 1994 song “Brokenhearted,” recalling that they had an “unspoken energy” that kept drawing them closer to each other despite their best efforts to keep their distance.
“The attraction was subtle yet undeniable. It lived in the pauses between conversations, and it lingered in the charged atmosphere surrounding us,” Norwood said.
She then revealed that, for whatever reason, after the two of them had become an item, Morris allegedly kept bringing up the fact that his “girlfriend was 16” when they were alone together. Though puzzling, she shared that she thought it was a “reminder to himself, a whisper to keep the illicit nature of our connection in view.”
“‘My girlfriend is sixteen.’ I don’t remember when he first said it. But those four words started rolling off his tongue whenever we were alone,” Norwood said of Morris. “I couldn’t tell if this refrain was meant to soothe his own conscience or temper the questions shimmering in my gaze. Perhaps it was his way of tethering himself to a boundary, even as he quietly edged past it. Or maybe it was simply a reminder to himself, a whisper to keep the illicit nature of our connection in view. Regardless, I was under the impression that we were madly in love — or at least what I believed love to be at sixteen. A grown man’s version of love, designed to serve his needs.”
What’s even more revealing is that when Norwood broached the topic of their sexual relationship, she described it as something that “lacked the specialness I had painted in my mind, because it wasn’t about me at all.” She also admitted that what the both of them were doing “was wrong. And yet, my attitude was, ‘This was special. This was real. People just can’t understand.’”
Sadly, despite whatever rationale she was trying to convince herself of, it didn’t negate the reality of her experience with Morris, specifically as it related to her thinking that losing her virginity and sleeping with him would cement their connection and make him happy.
“[I was] too naive to realize that deep down inside he did not see me as special. I think he saw me as conquerable. As someone whose boundaries could be negotiated away. I was in over my head,” Norwood wrote. “I was young and inexperienced, and thought that following my heart meant following his lead, that what we shared transcended ordinary rules and limitations…And so, I told myself I was ready. That this was my choice. But the truth is I felt like I had no choice. I felt like saying no meant losing him.”
What’s more is that even with her making that decision, she and Morris decided to concoct “an elaborate” fiction so as to stave off potential public blowback should the nature of their relationship have been exposed. And yet, despite all of that, Norwood later explained that Morris allegedly cheated on her while they were together which caused them to eventually part ways.
While Morris has yet to respond to Brandy’s book, during a January 2021 Instagram live session, he spoke about the nature of their relationship and made it clear that they were both young when they developed their closeness and “fell in love.” He also clarified that there was “no lie” happening and that people needed to “relax on what they think they know.”
“Brandy and I were really, really close. 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. Now we were young, that’s what happens. You’re young and you fall in love, you know what I’m saying?” Morris said at the time. “Especially when you have the ability to be around somebody a lot. You begin to know things about them and they know things about you.”
He continued: “Now when you’re young, you make decisions based on your youth. You don’t make decisions, moral decisions, that put you in a whole position where you know that this is going to be for the rest of your life, you’re learning through everything.”
The Root has reached out to Morris’ team for comment on these new revelations.
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