Brandy (album) - Background

Background

In 1990, Norwood's talent led to a binding oral contract with Teaspoon Productions, headed by Chris Stokes and Earl Harris, who obtained her gigs as a backing vocalist for their R&B boy band Immature. The same year, Stokes arranged the production of a demo tape which was handed over to Atlantic Recording Corporation executives. While they liked the material, they found Norwood too young at age 11 and told her to come back when she was 14. In 1993, amid ongoing negotiations with East West Records, Norwood's parents organized a recording contract with Atlantic after auditioning for the company's director of A&R, Darryl Williams. Norwood subsequently dropped out of Hollywood High School later and was tutored privately from tenth grade on.

During the early production stages of her debut on the Atlantic label, Norwood was selected for a role in the ABC sitcom Thea, portraying the 12-year-old daughter of a single mother played by Thea Vidale. Broadcasted to mediocre ratings, the series ended only eight months after its premiere. Norwood appreciated the cancellation of the show as she was unenthusiastic about acting at the time and the taping caused scheduling conflicts with the recording of her album, stating: "I felt bad for everybody else but me. It was a good thing, because I could do what I had to do, because I wanted to sing When Thea was canceled I was like, ‘Okay, I can now put all my focus into my album’." Atlantic consulted newcomer Keith Crouch to work with Norwood on the bulk of the album. Norwood noted that her collaboration wth Crouch "was very important for me as a young artist. At the time he was not trying to be like anyone else on radio. He was all about his own sound. But what I really loved about Keith is he gave me real music. He didn’t give me teenybopper records. It was age appropriate, youthful records, but it was still real music. We had a great connection." While Crouch would provide the core sound of the album, Norwood also worked with all-male R&B group Somethin' for the People and Damon Thomas on some tracks. A then 16-year old Robin Thicke scored his first co-writing credit on the album with "Love Is on My Side".