Dr. Cornel Fresh

“The shame ends here. The silence ends here, I was not a fast girl with a crush. I was not a dramatic teenager who couldn’t handle rejection. I was not an unstable obsessive fan. I was a child. And he was an adult. And it’s time the world understood the difference.” - Brandy writes about feeling taken advantage of by Wanya Morris, who was in his early 20s when he began dating her at 16 In her memoir Phases, Brandy reflects on their late ’90s relationship, revealing it began in secrecy as they hid it from her parents and the public. “I was in over my head. Sneaking around with Wanya and lying to my parents had become a constant,” she writes, explaining that they maintained the image of waiting until she turned 18 to avoid backlash. As the relationship progressed, she recalls noticing troubling patterns, including him comparing her to other artists like Mariah Carey and becoming increasingly distant. “These are the things that with hindsight you realize are wildly obvious signs of something wrong,” she writes. The relationship ended after she discovered he had been unfaithful. Looking back, Brandy challenges how it has been framed over the years, stating plainly, “I believe he took advantage.”