Normani: ‘In Fifth Harmony we had a lot of things taken away from us’

When we speak on the eve of her 28th birthday, Normani is feeling wistful. Living out in LA, she is putting the finishing touches to her debut album, a diary of her journey “to womanhood”. Six long, hard years in the making, Dopamine is her ambitious attempt to reignite R&B’s glory days of big beats, big emotions and even bigger choreography. But as she embraces the feeling of a career milestone finally coming into view, her thoughts are back in Texas, where her family lives. She’s trying to get them to move nearer to her, but Grandma is proving hard to win round.

“We moved to Houston from New Orleans in 2005 [after Hurricane Katrina], so for her, even just being in Texas is still a lot closer to where her siblings are,” she sighs. “I don’t want to rip her away from that, but obviously, I’m still like: ‘Grandma! Come here right now so we can cuddle!’”

It is a reminder of the human behind the pop star: the dream of a SoCal family reunion that may help to establish the kind of peaceful balance that has eluded the artist for some time. Born in 1996, Normani Kordei Hamilton was primed for stardom at the age of three, when her parents enrolled her in gymnastics to help coax her out of her shyness. “If it wasn’t gymnastics, it was dance recitals, competitions, pageants. I had my hand in everything,” she says. “Performing is really what I’m most excited about with this record. The recording process, unfortunately, has kind of jaded things for me, on top of everything else that comes with the process of putting out a body of work. But on stage, connecting with fans … I thrive.”

While her athletic childhood taught her how to maintain a strong work ethic, an audition for the US X Factor in 2012 took things up a notch. Initially competing as a soloist, she wound up being recast as a member of girl group Fifth Harmony, who released their first single – Miss Movin’ On – when Normani was 17. Together, they placed third in the show’s finale, but have ended up being one of the franchise’s biggest successes, with a reported 33m records sold.

Normani is the first to express gratitude for her big break, but any decent pop scholar would note that her years in the girl group were often fraught. The only African American member of the lineup, she bore the brunt of toxic internet culture, with some fans choosing to defend their favoured member by posting elaborate, often racialised abuse about the other girls. When old posts surfaced in which bandmate Camila Cabello was found interacting with offensive Tumblr memes as a teenager, it felt like the final straw; for Normani, the call of intolerance was coming not just from their audience, but seemingly from within the house (Cabello left the band in 2016).

It was a traumatic period that she prefers not to dwell on (not least because the topic of racism has dominated her interviews ever since the group announced their hiatus in 2018), but with the members now on demonstrably better terms, she reflects that all five women struggled to find their voice within the reality show vacuum. “We were kind of told which one we were going to be within the group, which road to take and what songs to sing,” she says. “In spite of what our collective and individual experiences were, it really did shape me and teach me a lot. But we had a lot taken away from us, for sure.”

Echoes of that musical restriction showed up again when it was time for her solo debut. Against Normani’s own impulses, Motivation was her label’s choice for lead single: a bright, upbeat homage to 00s pop that positioned her as both passionate emulator and worthy peer. Over time, she has learned to appreciate its bubblegum sensibilities, but does feel that its more seductive follow-up, Wild Side (featuring Cardi B), was always a closer match to her intended interpretation of R&B. “When I think of the first moments that I fell in love with music, it was Aaliyah, Ashanti, Brandy, Monica, Tweet, Missy,” she says. “That’s the music that I genuinely feel most connected to.”

Over the years, Normani has stayed visible; collaborations with Sam Smith, Khalid and Megan Thee Stallion have marked her out as a strong team player, while appearances at Rihanna’s 2021 Savage X Fenty beauty show and in the WAP music video demonstrate her undeniable star presence. But amid it all, there has always been one thing glaringly missing from her résumé: a debut album. Despite publicly declaring its existence in 2018, updates have been infamously stilted, leading some fans to speculate on whether she was taking their attention for granted.

The truth was much more harrowing. After 19 years in remission, Normani’s mother, Andrea, was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in 2020. The discovery of her father Derrick’s prostate cancer came the following year, just as Andrea was completing chemotherapy.

Normani confirms that both parents are now “healthy, by the grace of God”. But in trying to juggle the urge to spend quality time together and the desire to finish a record that could make her family proud, she was contending with numerous other setbacks: a tough breakup, fears that she might have missed her peak moment, attempts to balance her perfectionist desires with the commercial pressure to have something timely to show.

Publicly, she kept things playful: when the album was finally teased for real earlier this year, the web URL rather humorously read wheresthedamnalbum.com. But no degree of self-deprecation can shake the feeling that there is something quite dehumanising about being dismissed as a flop, with no regard for what might be happening behind the scenes. “Honestly, it was just a reminder of all the questions I was already asking myself,” she says of how the scrutiny made her feel. “I’ve had to learn to grant myself some grace and forgiveness, because a lot of it was just out of my control. I did the best with what I could, and that’s on top of the business shifting, teams changing. It was a lot.”

A rollercoaster may have been a more literal interpretation of her journey, but on her album’s cover, she has plumped instead to depict herself astride a giant rocket, clad in shiny black lingerie, lips gently parted in concentration, poised and totally in control. A celebration of her “divine femininity”, she wanted it to visualise the sensation of stepping into “who I feel I’ve always been called to be … a sense of self-governance, I guess, and empowerment”.

We have been granted access to only six of the final tracks, but Dopamine feels primed to raise some unapologetic spirits. Big Boy is a maximalist celebration of Normani’s southern heritage, while Insomnia, All Yours and Little Secret are understated slow jams that recall the sleek sonic aerodynamics of 00s Timberland productions. Of the tracks that aren’t quite ready yet, she cites a collaboration with James Blake as Dopamine’s “most experimental” moment, allowing her the freedom of “not having to show up in a specific way … it is not Motivation, is what I’m saying. But I feel like I owe it to myself to be able to go there, you know?”

Her favourite track of all right now is Candy Paint. Teased among fans for some time, its bouncy, bad-girl anthemry layers steely percussion over regally dismissive quips: “When I’m finished / Baby you can have him back.”

“When you’ve listened to something a million times, it’s easy to second-guess, like: dang, is this still it? But that one still feels exactly like the first time I heard it. It’s a performance record through and through. When I’m in the studio, that’s what I try to make clear to anybody I’m working with. I think big: how are we going to perform this at the VMAs? Is this a record we could choreograph for a half-time show? Movement, for me, inspires everything.”

Slowly but surely, Normani is settling into the realisation that she can do it all; if the musical quality and commitment is there, it will all work out. With Dopamine ready to meet its audience, there is surely an immense relief in finally being able to talk openly, to show people the kind of artist she’s long been promising herself to be.

“Girl, you don’t even know the half of it,” she laughs. “I am, obviously, really excited for the fans to finally have this body of work. But for myself, I’m just looking forward to the freedom of this weight being lifted. It’s been beautiful, it’s been heavy … but I’m really excited to start from scratch.”

Dopamine is out now.