Article from E!online
Brandy's Secret Marriage
by Marcus Errico
Feb 5, 2002, 3:45 PM PT
Brandy has hit upon a unique way to hype her new album: The R&B singer-actress announced Tuesday that she's pulled a Janet Jackson and was married on the sly last year.
"I've fallen in love with a very warm, gentle, understanding and focused person," Brandy says in a statement. "This summer we married quietly. A new experience, a new day for me--I couldn't be happier!"
She and her groom, producer and songwriter Robert Smith (no, not the guy from the Cure), married so quietly that nobody knew anything about it.
But wedding rumors went into overdrive last week, when New York radio stations began reporting the one-named, multihyphenate had gotten hitched. But, like Jackson (who secretly married producer Rene Elizondo Jr. and kept it hidden for nine years until their divorce), Brandy and her reps kept evading the question until Tuesday's announcement.
The timing of Brandy's bombshell just happens (wink, wink) to coincide with the release of her forthcoming album, Full Moon. She just happens to be currently making the rounds promoting the disc, which is due out March 5, and the album's lead single and video, "What About Us?" (The track ranked at number 13 on last week's Billboard charts and is in heavy rotation on MTV and BET.)
In fact, Brandy appeared on Total Request Live Tuesday afternoon to discuss her marriage--and the new album, her first in three years.
The erstwhile Moesha--who turns 23 next Monday--has said she did some serious maturing since her last album. "In the past three years, I've focused on getting to know who I am inside," she said in a January statement that strongly hinted at today's announcement. "I took a break to reflect on myself as a person and I've grown a lot...I've experienced some things and I've learned some lessons, good and bad. I'm a woman now."
Indeed.
Since UPN canceled Moesha last year, Brandy has been keeping a relatively low profile, which included taking classes at Malibu's Pepperdine University. She had cut back on her hectic schedule of singing, acting, producing and modeling after she collapsed from exhaustion in 1999 while shooting her UPN sitcom.
In addition to Moesha, Brandy (full name: Brandy Rayana Norwood) appeared in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Arachnophobia, voiced the role of Leah in Osmosis Jones and headlined the TV movies Cinderella and Double Platinum. Her self-titled 1994 debut album has sold more than 3 million copies and her 1998 followup, Never Say Never, has in excess of 5 million. She won a Grammy in 1999 for "The Boy Is Mine," her chart-topping duet with fellow R&B star Monica.
Unless she has been hiding more husbands from us, this is Brandy's first marriage. She previously dated Boyz II Men's Wayna Morris and went to the prom with all-world basketball star Kobe Bryant when he was still in high school. It is also the first trip down the aisle for Smith, who has worked with Michael Jackson and the Spice Girls.
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