Brandy was 16 when she began a relationship with a 22-year-old Boyz II Men member, who took advantage of her naivety.
Brandy felt pressured into having sex, believing it would cement their bond, despite wanting to wait until marriage.
Brandy's memoir reveals how her admiration was weaponized, and she was unable to control the situation as a young star.
Brandy is being extremely vulnerable in her newly-released memoir, Phases, and opening up about the rumors that she dated Wanya Morris when she was just 16, and he was 22.
Source: Paras Griffin / Gabe Ginsberg
She released her debut self-titled album, Brandy, in 1994, when she was just 15 years old. The next year, she performed as the opening act for Boyz II Men’s II World Tour, which is what first fueled speculation that she was dating Boyz II Men singer Wanya Morris.
All these years later, the Moesha star is opening up about that connection, claiming she was “too young to recognize she was being used.”
Wanya Morris has denied rumors that he and Brandy began a relationship when the singer was a teen star for years, but Brandy writes in her memoir that her relationship with the Boyz II Men member started when she was 16 and he was 22.
The singer writes that Morris became her “mentor” first, but at some point in their professional relationship, he began to call and check in on her regularly, offering advice as an “anchor” and “confidant.” They got a lot closer once she joined Boyz II Men on tour.
“What had begun as admiration had transformed into something else,” Brandy writes, per Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and actress said that their relationship took a turn after they filmed the music video for their collaboration, “Brokenhearted.”
“We moved around each other like opposing magnets — as if actively trying to maintain distance even as we kept finding ourselves drawn into each other’s orbit,” she writes. “The attraction was subtle yet undeniable. It lived in the pauses between conversations, and it lingered in the charged atmosphere surrounding us.”
After that, their relationship quickly formed, and Brandy recalls being overwhelmed with the guilt of hiding it from her family and the public.
“‘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,” she writes of Morris, per EW. “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.”
Brandy also details her first time having sex with Morris, saying it “lacked the specialness I had painted in my mind, because it wasn’t about me at all.” She went on to write that the experience was tainted by “the influence of a man who seemed to know exactly how to make me question my own beliefs and boundaries.”
“And I hung in this strange balance,” she continues. “I was navigating that time in full view of the world, every move scrutinized, every choice dissected by people who didn’t know my heart. Part of me wanted to retain some semblance of ‘normalcy,’ but also I knew full well that what was happening between me and him was wrong. And yet, my attitude was, ‘This was special. This was real. People just can’t understand.'”
Brandy describes the sexual element of their relationship as Morris “getting what he wanted from someone too young to recognize she was being used,” adding that she 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.”
“I was young and inexperienced, and thought that following my heart meant following his lead, that what we shared transcended ordinary rules and limitations,” she shares. Brandy also says that she had wanted to wait until marriage but “also believed that having sex with him would cement our bond. Would prove I was mature enough for our relationship. Would make him happy. 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.”
