Because the way she’s written, she’s the glue that holds everything together, so I had to find this certain kind of swag that I don’t naturally have. I love the challenge of having to find a certain tone to become Xplicit. For Xplicit, it’s been Nas, Jadakiss, Cam’ron, Lauryn Hill, Nicki Minaj. I’ve been inspired all my life by hip-hop. I haven’t had much experience, but I’ve been rapping for a little bit and I’ve always wanted to push my instrument to whatever level it could go to. The rap from the ’90s has a distinct sound and lyricism, so how have you managed to find your own tone and cadence for Xplicit? Do you have any specific models or inspirations? These are edited excerpts from the conversation. In a video interview from Atlanta, where she has been filming the 13-episode first season of “Queens,” Brandy spoke about her biggest rap inspirations, the show’s exploration of womanhood and the possibility of a “Moesha” reunion. “Music is my first love, so to be a part of a show where I can actually sing, dance, rap, act - it’s like a dream role,” she said. She said that McGhee’s pilot script spoke to her more than any other she has read, given her personal experience with navigating single motherhood and rediscovering her voice after a time away from the spotlight. “I became obsessed with Brandy the human as a character and saw all of these things that were analogous to Naomi in the show,” McGhee said.īrandy finally signed on in March. He later came across a profile of Brandy in The Washington Post, in which she spoke openly about her struggles away from the public eye, that made him even more determined to bring her into “Queens.” McGhee received a production commitment from ABC last summer. For the cast, he wanted to find artists who could not only rap and sing but also felt authentic to the era, and he had two names in mind from the beginning: Brandy and Eve (who plays Brianna, who performs as Professor Sex). He enlisted the help of Sabrina Wind (“Desperate Housewives,” “Devious Maids”), who signed on as an executive producer, and Swizz Beatz, the rapper and co-creator of Verzuz, who is the executive music producer. The “Queens” creator Zahir McGhee, a longtime rap fan best known as a writer and producer on shows like “Scandal” and “For the People,” conceived the series with the specific goal of mining ’90s hip-hop nostalgia. “I remember how Broadway made me feel,” she said in a recent interview, referring to her acclaimed four-month run, in 2015, as Roxie Hart in “Chicago.” (She has since reprised the role on Broadway and in touring productions.) “I felt so good doing Broadway, and I was like, ‘If I could do something like this for television, this would be amazing.’” With its combination of melodrama and musical performances, “Queens” offered Brandy a chance to flex all of her performance muscles. The series centers on four estranged women in their 40s who reunite hoping to recapture the glory they had as the Nasty Bitches, a fictional ’90s hip-hop group. Then a few weeks later after that, she reunited with the singer Monica on the beloved hip-hop and R&B webcast Verzuz, in a battle that has garnered over six million views.Ĭoincidentally, last summer was also when producers began developing an even more high-profile project for her: “Queens,” a prime-time musical drama premiering Tuesday on ABC. The day after the record’s release, Netflix began streaming all six seasons of “Moesha,” the hit UPN sitcom that tackled social issues through the lens of a Black upper middle-class family and turned Brandy into a household name. But the summer of 2020 amounted to a kind of pop culture re-emergence for her.įirst came “B7,” her seventh studio album and first in nearly eight years. Brandy, one of the biggest music and TV stars of the 1990s and early 2000s, has stayed busy in the years since with a stream of singles, TV and movie roles, reality show appearances and the occasional Broadway detour.
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