What About Us? (Brandy song)

After the end of the promotional tour for her second studio album Never Say Never (1998), the end of her UPN sitcom Moesha (1996–2001) and a flurry of tabloid headlines discussing her nervous breakdown in November 1999,^[2] Brandy went on a lengthy hiatus for personal reflection.^[3] In mid-2000, she re-dedicated herself to her musical career, contributing songs to albums such as Urban Renewal (2001), which introduced a scratchy, evocative edge to Brandy's voice, now having a deeper and warmer tone with a textured lower register and notably stronger falsetto.^[4] In late 2000, Brandy finally began conceiving ideas for a third studio album with her label Atlantic Records.^[3] While Rodney Jerkins, the main producer of her previous album, and his team, had been working on several new songs for the singer's upcoming project in hopes of recreating the winning chemistry of Never Say Never,^[5] Brandy wanted to make sure that she was gaining more creative control over the project and thus, arranged meetings with all her writers and musicians to discuss the lyricals topics and sounds she wanted for the album.^[3]

"What About Us?" was one of a couple of new tracks Jerkins worked on while he was putting the finishing touches on Full Moon in Los Angeles.^[6] After playing it to her, enthusiastic Brandy asked Jerkins to save the "offbeat, aggressive high-tech track" for the album: "I was like 'Oh my God, Rodney, this is it", she said in an interview with MTV News the following year. "This is exactly what the industry needs. We can maybe change the game with this.' He said, 'Yeah, this is what I'm going for'."^[6] She eventually consulted longtime collaborators LaShawn Daniels, Nora Payne and Kenisha Pratt to rewrite several lyrics on the song, saying: "I told them what I wanted to talk about. 'This is an aggressive record – it's edgy, it's sexy. I wanna sing about something that's sexy and edgy.' I revisited my past in my mind and kind of told them what I wanna talk about."^[6]

Brandy has noted that it took the team a while to get it because she didn't want "that sound that's already saturated the industry. It's important to me to be a trendsetter and change the game. It was a great feeling to see Rodney soar like that."^[7] Brandy co-wrote the lyrics with Daniels, Payne and Pratt, also setting the background track. The song was mixed by Paul Foley and Fabian Marascuillo at Darkchild Studios in Pleasantville, New Jersey, while Brandy recorded the song at the Hit Factory Criteria in Miami.^[8]

An electro-funk song,^[1] "What About Us?", was described as being "offbeat",^[9] due to its production which features a "chopping pace and snarky sound effects mugging in the background".^[10] The song is four minutes and ten seconds long and includes 12 instruments: Brandy's vocals, six different synths, two percussions and drums. According to the notes published on Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing, "What About Us?" features 96 beats per minute, which is a moderate tempo. It was written in C minor and ranges from the note C ₂ to Ab ⁴ .^[11] In the book Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2010), author Anne Danielsen analyzed "What About Us?", describing it as "very complex" and characterized by its multilinear texture and unstable groove.^[12]

Lyrically, the song features a protagonist describing the aftermaths of an untrue love, confronting her former lover with the current point of the one-sided attachment. "It was about being in a relationship that's not working anymore", Brandy said in 2005, adding that it "was a little more aggressive and different for me. I'd say it was a little bit ahead of its time..."^[13]

AOL Music hosted the exclusive global premiere of "What About Us?", starting January 2, 2002. The full song with a special recorded introduction from Brandy was first made available for streaming on demand on the AOL service First Listen, across AOL's Web Properties including Netscape, AIM, ICQ and CompuServe, as well as on its international services in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.^[14] The song was streamed over 750,000 times in one day.^[14]

"What About Us?" was remixed by several producers and DJs, also spawning respective versions with rappers Nas and Joe Budden. The Simon Vegas Remix was played on radios and television instead of the original version in some countries, including Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

"What About Us?" received a mixed to positive response from music critics, who complimented its production and compared it to Janet Jackson's "Control" (1986), which Brandy has cited as an influence on the song.^[15] Chuck Taylor from Billboard felt the track was "so striking [that] it's destined to one of those marked hate-it-or-love-it songs".^[16] While he criticized Brandy's "generic voice" over the track, he commended the complex but instant structure of the song, writing that "certainly, this is an effective way to let the world know that this charmer has returned and it's destined to be a monster at radio."^[16] James Poletti from Dotmusic called the song "disorientating brilliance" and felt that it was "Jerkins' most radical production for some time".^[17] Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine wrote that the song was "lifting Brandy's typically schmaltzy brand of pop-R&B to a new, edgier plateau [...] With offbeat "What About Us," an assessment of post-break-up collateral damage, [producer] Rodney Jerkins dresses up his signature bass-heavy production in gritty, oft-sadistic outfits."^[9] In his album review of Full Moon, Arion Berger declared "What About Us?" the "bright spot" on the album, "with its awkward, chopping pace and snarky sound effects mugging in the background".^[10]

Music Week felt that "this Rodney Jerkins production attempts to imitate Timbaland but does not quite pull it off."^[18] NME writer Peter Robinson praised "What About Us?" and wrote: "Brandy’s been off the scene for a while but 'What About Us?' rattles her back to life with the force and devastation of a tortoise being plucked from the airing cupboard and set on fire: this rocks hard, it's the tippest of the top, it gets better with every single listen, and it might well be Rodney's best work since 'Say My Name'."^[19] Somewhat critical of the song, his colleague Piers Martin found that it was "a slippery, twitching slab of computer funk that thrusts Brandy, fleetingly, into the 21st century",^[20] while Devon Thomas from The Michigan Daily called it "guaranteed mainstream club play".^[21] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine ranked the song among his three favorite tracks from Full Moon along with the title track and "He Is".^[22]

"What About Us?" debuted at number 42 on the US Billboard Hot 100 on January 26, 2002.^[26] It was the "Hot Shot Debut" of the week and marked both Brandy's first entry of the decade and her first appearance on the chart since "U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)" (1999).^[26] The song peaked at number seven, becoming Brandy's seventh top-10 single and staying on the chart for 18 weeks; it remained the chart's highest debut of 2002.^[27] On the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, the song debuted at number 44.^[28] It eventually peaked at number three, becoming her highest-charting song since "Have You Ever?" (1998).^[29] In addition, "What About Us?" peaked within the top five on the Rhythmic Top 40 chart and the top 20 on both the Mainstream Top 40 and Top 40 Tracks charts.^[29]

The song's music video was directed by Dave Meyers and produced by Ron Mohrhoff. It was entirely filmed at the Ten 9 Fifty Studios in Culver City, California on November 29–30, 2001, and features close shots and dance sequences using greenscreen technique.^[30][31] The video does not have a substantial plot but focuses on capturing Brandy's "moments as a performer," dealing with "different set-ups" and "beauty, fashion, edginess, hip."^[32] To that end, she added in an interview with MTV, it speaks for all girls who've been wronged by selfish, evil lovers. "The hurt and the pain songs really, really work," she observed, articulating the pain of "women, from 15, or 13 on up [...] they have crushes and they get hurt." The video was all about "showing the world a new side of me," she added.^[32]

Set in a science fiction world, the video opens with a digitized long shot of Brandy standing atop a pyramid of kneeling, taut men, which PopMatters described as appearing like the "tragically punished human in Greek mythology", all holding up Brandy on her pedestal. The camera closes on her, and depicts 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.^[32] From here, the scene switches into a futuristic wind tunnel, where she wields a bat against cell phones, two-way pagers, and a flying male, whose sunglasses she grabs off. While the video intercuts scenes of Brandy performing on a platform with two black-painted men in collars and leashes, it ends with her sitting in the passenger's seat in a lowrider, amid a sea of lowriders. The final scenes feature cameo appearances by Rodney Jerkins and Brandy's younger brother Ray J.^[32]

The final edit of "What About Us?" world premiered at the end of its Making the Video episode on MTV on January 10, 2002.^[30] It debuted on the network's Total Request Live top ten video countdown on January 25.^[33] The video entered the MuchMusic Countdown in Canada in the week ending February 8, and it peaked at number seven in the week ending February 22.^[34] The video generally received mixed reviews from critics, who called it "a surprisingly hard, ostensibly angry, and not very adventurous video" and compared it to Brandy's Matrix-influenced remix video for U Don't Know Me (Like U Used To)".^[32] It was nominated for the Viewer's Choice Award at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards but lost to Michelle Branch's video for "Everywhere".^[35]

Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Full Moon.^[8]