Brandy is revisiting one of the most painful relationships of her life in her new memoir Phases. In the book, the R&B star says her past relationship with Boyz II Men singer Wanya Morris began when she was a teenager, and she now believes he “took advantage” of her because of the age gap between them.

She writes that she was 16 when the relationship started, while Morris was in his early 20s. According to Brandy, what began as a friendship after they worked together on “Brokenhearted” in 1994 quickly turned romantic. Looking back, she says she now sees that period very differently from the way she did at the time.

“I was in over my head. Sneaking around with Wanya and lying to my parents had become a constant,” Brandy writes. “They barely liked the idea of me dating at all, and telling them about us was out of the question.”

She says the secrecy around the relationship was not only about hiding things from her family. “But it wasn’t just about upsetting — or disappointing — my parents,” she continues. “Wanya and I understood, with diamond-cut clarity, that public knowledge of our relationship would ignite scandal, potentially threatening everything we’d both worked for.”

Brandy says the two created a cover story to protect themselves from scrutiny. “So he and I opted for elaborate fiction: we would pretend patience and claim we were waiting until my eighteenth birthday before pursuing any romantic connection,” she writes.

The memoir also includes more personal details about how deeply the relationship affected her. Brandy writes that Morris was her first, and says that as the relationship continued, things began to feel more troubling. She recalls him comparing her to other women in the industry, including Mariah Carey, and says he became increasingly hard to reach, to the point where she had to page him before calling.

“These are the things that with hindsight you realize are wildly obvious signs of something wrong,” she writes. “Neon warning signs that I chose to ignore because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, or what he was doing with me. Just that I was in love — or what I believed was love.”

The relationship dates back to the 1990s, when Brandy was one of the biggest teen stars in music and television, and Boyz II Men were at the height of their fame. 

With the memoir now out, Brandy is finally putting her version of that story on the record, this time in her own words.