The Best of Brandy

Born in McComb, MO, in 1979, Brandy Norwood was raised in California, first attracting attention singing with area youth groups. From there she moved on to a series of television award shows and specials. Multimedia phenomenon Brandy rose to superstardom in the '90s while only in her mid-teens, and was one of the decade's most successful new talents. Her string of smashes soared to the heights of the R&B and pop charts, as did her top-selling albums. There always was something relatively mature about her voice that set her above and beyond most others in her age range. A decade later The Best of Brandy collects as many of her key cuts that can fit on a single CD, and serves as the Brandy album to own for those who want the highlights. With a couple of exceptions, the tracks are presented in chronological order, and the earlier tracks clearly benefit from fresh remastering.

All of the big hits that burned up the R&B sometimes the pop charts are here. The set opens with Baby, which sounds great. When you listen to how Brandy breaks it down towards the end of the song you can hear how future big groups and artists like Destiny's Child were influenced by Brandy. From the first album are Best Friends, Brokenhearted and I Wanna Be Down. From the surprisingly mature bump of the latter to the slinky sass of Who Is She 2 U, Brandy's musical prowess is shown. The smash song The Boys Is Mine is here as are both of the singles released from her second and third albums Full Moon and Afrodisiac. The soundtrack cuts are also here, you will find Sitting Up In My Room, from the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack as you will find Brandy's version of Rock With You, which was featured on a Quincy Jones project. This set also includes songs that weren't available on the original albums such as the single version (a duet with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men) of Brokenhearted, her and her brother Ray-J's cover of the Phil Collins classic Another Day In Paradise and the saucy remix of I Wanna Be Down featuring MC Lyte, Yoyo and Queen Latifah. It's really a wonderful album and Brandy's latest songs What About Us, and Talk About Our Love, really fit into it.

Brandy always stuck out with her husky, yet strong voice and hook laden grooves. She has never been one of typical soul divas nor has she been a pretty all dancing/some singing R&B puppet princess. You can definitely see that from her debut that Brandy grew with each outing, constantly working her voice from cute to sensual, and her music got funkier and more emotional. What this retrospective shows is that over the last 10 years, she has used her warm voice with subtle and to excellent effect. Production on all of her albums has been sympathetic allowing her voice to almost "float" over the music at times giving it an ethereal quality. This is top notch contemporary pop/R&B album that plays well to Brandy's strengths particularly on tracks like The Boy Is Mine, Sittin' Up In My Room and Talk About Our Love. Musically as well as visually, Brandy transformed from a confident young girl to a confident young woman. Overall, this is a perfect music gift, especially for Brandy fans.