Women
Shaping
The
Future
NORMANI
She’s a superstar in the making who counts Rihanna and Janet Jackson
as fans. Right now, she’s figuring out what it means to be on her own
By Brittany Spanos PHOTOGRAPH BY Campbell Addy
SOME POP STARS MIGHT GO THROUGH A FEW
different versions of the video for their first
solo hit; Normani went through about 50.
Written with Max Martin and Normani’s tour-
mate Ariana Grande, “Motivation” was a blast
of airy, sexy, rhythmically savvy pop. In the
video, released last summer, Normani romps
through scenes from videos she loved as a
child ( J. Lo, Britney Spears) while perform-
ing some truly sick choreography, including
a bit where she kicks, spins, and bounces a
basketball off her butt.
Everyone loved the video — except Norma-
ni, who endlessly kept tweaking it. “I obsess
over things like that,” she says. “She was re-
ally in tears at one point,” her dad, Derrick
Hamilton, adds. Eventually, things got so bad
that a member of Destiny’s Child had to talk
her down. “I literally sent it to Kelly Rowland
before anybody else,” Normani says. The pair
had met when Rowland served as a judge onThe X-Factor a year after Normani competed
on the show. “She was like, ‘You bugging just
a little bit.’ ”
Normani’s perfectionism comes from a
place of early-career trauma. In Fifth Harmo-
ny, the singing group that also gave the world
Camila Cabello, she was the underdog. As the
only black member, she often felt like “the
other one in the room.” She was targeted by
racist bullies online after a subset of Harmo-
nizers believed Normani had slighted Cabello
by calling her “quirky.” Trolls posted Photo-
shopped images of her being lynched; others
sent death threats. “She’s still scarred from
that,” her dad says.
In the studio with 5H, she sometimes felt
similarly disregarded, pigeonholed as “the
dancer.” When she was the only member
whose vocals were left off a song, she began
to question what the hell she was even doing.
“I was devastated,” she admits. “So many52