![]() But 2008’s Human is a made-for-radio misfire that sullies Brandy’s beautiful harmonies with Auto-Tune. 2004’s Afrodisiac enlists Timbaland at the peak of his pop-deconstruction powers to inject new life in the Brandy formula, and even gifts us with a delightfully corny Kanye verse from the Pink Polo era (“When we met you was a V like Madonna, man”). Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope and TLC’s FanMail did the tech-R&B thing earlier, and better. (It has only 1.6 million spins! Fix this, y’all.) But overall the album has a lot of overproduced tracks trying very hard to sound post-Y2K, along with some forgettable ballads. The title track for 2002’s Full Moon, which wipes away the sad-sack baggage of Never Say Never with sultry confidence, is one of her all-time best performances. These are the two most-streamed songs on the album after “The Boy Is Mine,” for good reason.Īfter her second album, Brandy’s output gets streaky. “Almost Doesn’t Count” takes an acoustic guitar lick, usually a tool to brighten up an R&B jam, and makes it the driving force of a bitter breakup song (bitter in the sad, ambiguous, what-is-the-meaning-of-any-of-this way, not the cathartic, you-sure-showed-him “Irreplaceable” way). Instead of being driven by sentimental piano chords, “Have You Ever” uses Brandy’s agonizing harmonies as its main instruments in a tale of unrequited love. Simultaneously more restrained and emotionally resonant, the album has some of her most depressing and powerful music. The ballads on 1998’s Never Say Never are a different story. The adult-contemporary ballads that try to show off Brandy’s vocal range feel a bit listless by comparison, and largely haven’t caught on with the Spotify audience. These are the songs that best articulate what it feels like to be an anxiety-ridden teenager, and they’re also some of the album’s most-streamed songs. On 1994’s Brandy, she is, at best, nervously enamored of a guy who may or may not like her back on songs like “I Wanna Be Down” and “Baby.” The most secure relationship in her life is with baby brother Ray-J, who gets an enthusiastic endorsement in “Best Friend” (a 13-year-old Ray-J having a song dedicated to him on a multiplatinum album explains a lot about his subsequent exploits). Here’s the thing about classic Brandy: For being an R&B singer who rose in the shadow of totemic, bleeding-heart releases by Boyz II Men and fairy godmother Whitney Houston, her music is not exactly triumphant. Here’s a look at how the rest of their catalogs hold up. But there’s much more to these two singers arguing over Mekhi Phifer (whom they both dump at the end of the video). The result was one of the biggest hits of the ’90s and, today, the most-streamed song either artist has on Spotify. She called up Monica, the other ascendant teen R&B star of the moment, whom the press had already deemed her rival. Brandy and superproducer Darkchild originally wrote the song as a solo joint, but they decided the track would work better as a duet. “The Boy Is Mine” is a beautiful time capsule - for its now-outdated video, its signature silky-beat-plus-breathy-vocals ’90s R&B sound, and the performances of not one but two leading women of the genre. Brandy uses a corded phone to talk to Phifer and Monica. The titular “Boy” is Mekhi Phifer, he of great but nebulous ’90s fame. ![]() ![]() Have you rewatched “The Boy Is Mine” music video lately and reveled in its ’90s-ness? Brandy and Monica are using CRT televisions linked by magic, through which each controls what appears on the other singer’s screen - Brandy wants to watch Jerry Springer, while Monica is trying to watch American Bandstand or Perry Mason or some other old black-and-white show. How are today’s young people connecting with the legendary artists of yesteryear, and what does it say about the way these artists will be interpreted in the future? ![]() ![]() Pac or Biggie? Britney or Christina ? Destiny’s Child or TLC ? In the series Pop Battles, The Ringer will try to settle long-standing music rivalries using listener data from Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service. One of the most rewarding parts of being a music fan is picking a side and arguing for it to the ends of the earth. ![]()
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