ALAïA Highneck Jacket, Mermaid Skirt, Crossback Body, at maison-alaia.com/us CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN Loubigirl Raffia, at christianlouboutin.com CARTIER Trinity de Cartier Earrings, at Cartier boutiques nationwide. Jessica Madavo “Motivation” was dripping with self-assuredness; the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and music video signaled an aughts R&B revival with its airbrushed tees, low-rise jeans, and balmy 106 & Park allusions to Ciara, Beyoncé, Britney, and Ashanti (by way of J.Lo). The song hung around on the charts for ten weeks, was certified platinum by the RIAA, and was beloved by fans and critics; one Rolling Stone writer likened its buoyant, triumphant horns to the sound of a “pop superstar be[ing] born.” At the time, Normani was on tour with Ariana Grande, who co-wrote the song, and it seemed an optimal time to announce a first album. In September 2019, she went on the Zach Sang Show and suggested that the project was halfway done; a December cover story in The Fader said she was “just months out from the release.” Then: nothing.
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Five years later, Normani’s truancy has ossified into an online meme. It was like she’d taken to heart that line from Yukio Mishima’s Star, when a jaded actor plays hooky on his own 24th birthday: “A star is more of a star if he never arrives.” The sentiment that coalesced online was that she was letting her moment pass her by, that she didn’t care about her fans, that, soon enough, everyone would get bored and move on. “No idea where Normani’s motivation (no pun intended) has gone, but I just don’t see the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and same passion from her as I used to,” one fan wrote on Twitter back in 2022 in a since-deleted post. “Before y’all start, it’s not depression so don’t even go THERE!” “What happens when you’ve gotten comfortable and you’re not HUNGRY anymore,” said another in a quote tweet. Normani’s abbreviated reply, which still remains on her X account: “Just shut the fuck up.”
It’s not that she wasn’t working on music — she has revised Dopamine four or five times, injecting it with more of the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and southern hip-hop and smooth-R&B flavor she grew up on. (She held songwriting camps in New Orleans.) “I could’ve put three albums out by now in that duration. I’m not oblivious to that,” she says. “But I felt like I owed it to myself to be able to take my time, and reinvent, and be experimental.” Fifth Harmony had no artistic control over their own music, she says. They were simply given records, then told to sing them. In the aftermath, Normani resolved only to release music that she could stand behind. She initially hated “Motivation” and all its pop refulgence. “I didn’t feel like it represented me,” she says, “and I’d already known how that felt. But the label was like, ‘Sorry, it’s coming out.’” (RCA declined to comment.) She remembers compromising with the music video, of which there are 50 edits: “This needs to be Black as fuck.”
Dopamine is named for the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and emotional roller coaster of her last several years, the peaks and valleys of a life she has mostly kept private. In 2020, Normani’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time after being in remission for 19 years. The following year, just when Andrea had completed chemotherapy, doctors found a lump in her father, Derrick’s, prostate: He had cancer, too. Normani considers herself closer with her family than any of her friends. Suddenly, both her parents were fighting for their lives, while the public breathlessly demanded more pop songs. “You don’t even know the half of it. I was just like, ‘Fuck all of this,’” she says through tears. How does an artist craft shiny, escapist songs that make others feel sexy and invincible when their own life feels totally disconsolate? “I needed to be at home, with my family,” she says. She was living in L.A. at the time, far from her parents in Houston, but they both urged her to keep working on her album and not to defer a dream they’d all participated in since Normani was 3 years old.
“My mom was like, ‘I’m still going to be here the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and day you put that body of work out. I’ll be here at the end,’” she says. “And I held onto that.” ALAïA Sculpting Dress, at maison-alaia.com/us. JENNIFER FISHER 2” Kevin Hoops, at jenniferfisherjewelry.com. Jessica Madavo Normani Kordei Hamilton was born in 1996 to a mother who was a flight attendant and a father who was a union official. The family moved from Atlanta to New Orleans in 1999, and whenever her parents were away for work, her grandmother, Barbara, would take care of her. She was 3 when she fell in love with musicals. She remembers watching John Huston’s 1982 film, Annie, and turning to look at her mother, saying, “Mom, I want to do that, I want to be in the TV.” Her parents took her seriously and enrolled her in dance classes; it was Barbara who paid for them and sewed all of her costumes. By the time she was 8, she’d grown fond of the dance-focused music videos she’d see on BET’s 106 & Park and would do the choreography for Destiny’s Child tracks with her friends at birthday parties. (They were partial to “Soldier” and “Cater 2 U.”) Ordinarily, Normani was shy and quiet. But when she performed, she would become someone else.
She was 9 when the Milwaukee Brewers Contreras Yelich Signatures t-shirt and by the same token and newscasters started warning of a hurricane. Her father was in Tennessee for work. Her mom had just returned from a long trip. At first, the reports seemed extravagantly cautious. To live in the coastal South was to be terminally braced for disaster with those warm, tropical winds rolling endlessly off the Gulf of Mexico like a pleasant threat. “Nobody thought it was going to be that bad,” Andrea remembers. On August 29, 2005, under the star-studded tarp of the 3 a.m. sky, Normani said good-bye to a friend who was sleeping over, dropped her off at home without knowing when they’d see each other again, and left with her mother, great-uncle, and grandmother for a family friend’s home in another part of Louisiana. In the morning, decades of federal hubris and neglectful policy were thrown into sharp relief. They awoke to the news that the unfinished storm-protection system in New Orleans had failed; that the levees had broken; that the city was flooded with waist-high dirty water. News footage showed bodies floating down the street. The Hamiltons had purchased their home just three months prior.
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