Brandy Norwood

I needed to explore my talent and versatility and see if I had another side to me, another sound.

Music is passionate. It’s love for me.

I cried, I was so overwhelmed to meet Michael Jackson.

Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you.

I love basketball.

And I’m looking at him like, ‘Oh my God. This is Michael Jackson’. I fainted, blacked out – like seriously blacked out.

I guess my parents were strict. There were a few times when being with my friends and had bring my sister. It was just my parents best interests.

I am lucky because my family are comfortably off. My father has his own glass business.

There was a lot of charm in just living in a big family compound of a house. My two uncles, who were into jazz, lived in the basement, and one of them, Uncle Peter, taught me my first songs on the ukulele.

I owe much to mother. She had an expert’s understanding, but also approached art emotionally.

I’ve known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family liked everyone else but them. That hurts, and that’s as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I’ve known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how blues began – out of feeling misused, mistreated. Feeling like they had nobody to turn to. Blues don’t necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.

My #1 priority is being a mother as well and I can work too, so can you!

How do people make it through life without a sister?

How do you build a relationship when you’ve hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don’t see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?

What will your children be teaching your grandchildren?

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

I always sort of felt like the eight years that Barack was president, it was sort of like having the good parent at home. You know, the responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time.

They say that no matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.

Once I became a mother I knew that I was strong, but not ready to do what I’m doing now

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess – she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn’t be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.