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"I'm glad I'm me"

Brandy is back. Or rather, "Brandy is Back," the name of the official campaign mounted this month, courtesy of a fansite called Brandyland.com and Atlantic Records. In case you hadn't noticed, Brandy Norwood recently took a break from the celebrity business. Following a string of r&b-pop hits ("Sittin' Up in My Room," "Almost Doesn't Count," "The Boy Is Mine"), years of touring, a few movies (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Cinderella [with Whitney as her Fairy Godmother], Double Platinum [with Diana Ross as her mother!]), and six seasons of Moesha, she temporarily "retired."

Not that she exactly gave up the entertainment industry entirely: she helped her dad Willie Norwood with his gospel singing career (he released his first solo album, 'Bout It, in October 2001), and she appeared occasionally with brother Ray J, maybe hosting an awards show. And oh yes, she voiced an animated human cell in Osmosis Jones in the summer of 2001. But for the most part, Brandy apparently worked on having a life.

It's actually a little frightening that this concept seems so odd, that someone stepping back from a busy career is so unusual, especially someone so accomplished at such a young age. And of course, the snipers have noted that at the time, her career was not exactly at its high point, what with Moesha's cancellation (and the rise in popularity of the spin-off show, The Parkers), the relatively smaller sales numbers of her last album, Never Say Never (1998), and her fainting spell while on tour the following year (she was dehydrated, according to press releases, as rumors of anorexia spread). Still, it was the right time for a break, to forget the naysayers. At 20 years old, Brandy had already made her name as a multi-threat performer, and then some.

Now, turning 23 on 13 February, and by all accounts luminously in love with a man she's reluctant to name (according to the gossip mill: Robert Smith), Brandy is, well, back. She hosted TRL on 25 January, is the subject of Lifetime's Intimate Portrait on 28 January (this would be a grown-ups' show, for sure), and provides the cover story/interview for February 2002's Sister to Sister. All these promo events have been making the case that Brandy is back, but different. And yes, she does look different. She looks grown. Gone are her longtime braids, which put her on the cover of any number of Black Hair magazines over the years (not to mention providing the inspiration for the Stylin' Hair Brandy doll, still available at Kay-Bee). Instead, she's working a lustrous, refined hairstyle, banged and feathery, with hints of red. Plus, she's got a whole new makeup thing going on, dark-berry lipstick, dark-rimmed eyes, and yeesh, all that leather and fringe.

The new look, she tells MTV's Gideon Yago, "comes from a place of truth." You want to believe her, because she's Brandy and she doesn't lie. She's spent so much of her life growing up in public (at 15, she was nominated for a Youth In Film Award for her work in short-lived sitcom, Thea, and it was shortly afterwards that she got Moesha), that it's hard to think that she's done so much more of it off screen. You want to believe that she's not just putting on a comeback show, adopting the latest style in order to reinsert herself into the fiercely ego-bruising competition sometimes called the music industry. Oh no. Brandy's return is sincere, premised on her own maturity, evolving talents, and future career plans. It's about art and self-expression, not on the fact that the soul-pop-girl genre that she helped to popularize such a short time ago has also evolved, and has absorbed influences from other genres (hiphop, soul, and jazz, for starters), as well as opened out so that it's no longer much like it was way back in the era of "Sittin' Up In My Room" (way back, that is, in 1996).

Now the field is somewhat overpopulated and generically overstuffed, with artists ranging from Mya, Monica, and Destiny's Child to Alicia Keys and india.arie. TRL continues to change the shape of the pop music arena, and if you're young, tuneful, and attractive, you are fair game. You have to be serious to even think about keeping up, and not only in terms of selling records (though this is one pressure that's just about impossible not to feel). And, no matter how much you may love Brandy's earlier stylings -- the girly soulness, the "new jill swing" -- you have to know that change is inevitable. And, of course, it's been happening for some time already: there's a world of difference between "Brokenhearted" and "U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)."

And so, the "Brandy is Back" campaign is in high gear, even if it doesn't really look like news. The motions must be gone through: though the album isn't due out until 5 March, Brandy has a fast-moving single, "What About Us," up from 40something to 20something on the Billboard Chart last week. Produced by her frequent collaborator Rodney Jerkins, the song highlights Brandy's slightly deeper vocals (a natural function, says her publicist, of her maturing); it also features a harder, more insistent, vaguely hiphop beat than much of her earlier work, to go with its defiant, angry "independent woman" attitude.

As part of the whole "Brandy is Back" business, the single is also coming with a surprisingly hard, ostensibly angry, and not very adventurous video, directed by Dave Meyers. It's actually not so far from the image of Brandy you saw in the remix video for "U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)," where she was getting all Matrix-y with her dance moves, egged on by everyone's favorite collaborator, Da Brat. Still, as much as you love Brandy and want her to do well, and as much as you're pleased to see her host TRL with such completely appealing self-assurance, you have to wonder at the strain, the visible exertion, that marks this video. It's not even Brandy's so-called grown-up look, her sultry hip-sways or "edgy" costumes (and the word "edgy" comes up in all the promotional material surrounding the single, and that in itself is distressing, the overuse of such a clumsily commercial word). The strain is both more basic and less important than that: call it "image anxiety."

Brandy tells the invisible Making the Video interviewer (invisible because the conceit of the show is that the artist and crew speak directly to you, dear viewer), that "What About Us" is about "capturing my moments as a performer," about "beauty, fashion, edginess, hip." To that end, she adds, it speaks for all girls who've been wronged by selfish, evil, bad boys. "The hurt and the pain songs really, really work," she observes, because the feeling is so common. She's articulating the pain of "women, from 15, or 13 on up . . . they have crushes and they get hurt." At the same time, this "universal" address is also very personal. The video is all about "showing the world a new side of me," she says, "I'm glad I'm me." You're glad she is too.

But this comes at the beginning of Making the Video, and you haven't seen the video yet. "What About Us" opens with a dramatically (and not so effectively) digitized long shot of Brandy standing atop a literal heap o' men, a pyramid of kneeling, taut, buff men, all holding up little Brandy on her pedestal. The one man we see in close-up appears to roar in agony, like some tragically punished human in Greek mythology. Clearly, these guys are paying a severe price for some shameful wrong that's been done to Brandy. The camera closes on her, and you see Brandy placing mementos of her now-dead relationship in a chest, including a "promise" written on parchment, a watch on a chain, a teddy bear. "Why don't you return my calls?" she demands. "Why you trip out where I be? / You don't ever come to see me / You say that you're too busy / What!?" Weird trees on little islands float in the sky. The guy in the pyramid agonizes. I'm still stuck on that teddy bear. Good riddance to Mr. Corny.

From here, Brandy is whisked off to several other sites, where she acts out her rage while wearing a series of tough-chick outfits: fiery red, black leather with fringe. According to Meyers, the video's lack of a storyline is purposeful (indeed, it's "edgy"). On the shoot, Brandy's second location is against another green screen, but in the completed video, she looks like she's in a wind tunnel, where she wields a bat against what Meyers calls "flying male objects." That is, cell phones and two-way pagers, the instruments that men use to get over on their women. "I thought you said you were different / Was that what I heard you say? / Said that you'd love only me / Thought that you'd be all I need / What happened to promises? / Said that you were a better man / Your words have no way with me / Cause you're counterfeit, I see." After she slams a couple of these electronic objects, here comes an actual male object -- a man -- flying by. Quick-thinking Brandy grabs off his sunglasses. Ha: the worm has surely turned. The girl has confiscated the phallic bat and the sporty eyewear.

No matter what they say, girlfriend, men are never different. "I don't need this bullshit," she sings. "I won't put up with it any longer." In this digital universe, all swirling skies and intensely hued backgrounds, it appears that growing up means you can express your anger and independence using cuss words. But Brandy is deeper than that. Her growing up has been a public process, and she's always been remarkably self-assured and smart about it. She hasn't ever seemed as anxious to please as the blond girls who came up so fast on her heels, and you can only hope that you're not going to see Brandy in pseudo-sex-orgy videos any time soon. You know that all that catfighting that supposedly went on with Monica -- you can't even imagine that either of those girls would bother. And as difficult as relations may have gotten on the Moesha set, well, maybe there were good reasons, and besides, everyone learned from the experience and the series was something to be proud of. With three albums behind her and the fourth on the way, with all her work in front of and behind cameras, Brandy has earned her right to grow up in a way that suits her.

Maybe that's why the video for "What About Us" is so disappointing. The growing up angle looks so, well, counterfeit. When she spends a short minute on a little platform with two mostly naked men in collars and leashes, they're painted black, she's wearing red and doing the foxy hip-sway. In Making the Video, Meyers explains, "She's looking like a bad motherf$@%$*$! Oops!" The Viacom bleep patrol grabs up this cuss word, but you know what's up: Brandy looks crazy-mean and vengeful, and sexy too, sexy like a motherf$@%$*$. Yet the men-with-collars idea isn't really so vengeful. It even looks a little silly.

In her last big scene -- remember, there's no storyline, just Brandy in her various "moments as a performer" -- she appears in a lowrider, amid a sea of lowriders, all colors and sizes (a convention perhaps?). Ray J cameos in a shot or two (apparently the cars are his great passion, not his sister's), and she looks up at the camera from the passenger's seat of her vehicle. Message: Brandy is in control. In fact . . . she's working the controls to the lowrider!

No doubt, there's a subtler metaphor to be worked concerning Brandy's emotional and professional development over the past three or four years than this strangely abstracted car or the floating trees or the men in collars. Perhaps this will come in time, too, a sense of self-security and trust in consumers to appreciate nuance and nicety in representation. And perhaps this sense will develop in label executives, agents, and handlers, as much as in Brandy Norwood herownself.