![]() Even her high-profile friendships slant toward ordinary. Her faith is a grounding bit of normalcy: She’s a devout Christian, frequently attending services in L.A. Lately, she’s been trying to prioritize the parts of her life that make her feel like she’s 23, like friends and dating. Today, she wants to try again, though it’s really an excuse for a self-professed introvert to get out of the house. Last month, she went go-karting for the first time, during a friends’ trip to Austin that otherwise mostly consisted of listening to the new Harry Styles album over and over. When I meet her one January day, at a go-kart track outside L.A., she’s dressed-down in black basketball shorts and a matching black Aaliyah shirt. Little-girl me would have never been able to even comprehend that.” Like, they actually respect what I do and want me to win. “I’m at a loss for words because it’s just all of the women that made up who I am,” she says. Normani was later named the lingerie line’s first brand ambassador. Rihanna tweeted, “Ugh why can’t I be you?!” after the star’s dance performance on the Savage x Fenty NYFW runway. Nicki Minaj called her “that bitch” while accepting a VMA. In 2018, she re-created Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” routine at the BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards, as Jackson looked on from the audience like a proud mom. She scored hit duets with Sam Smith and Khalid, and slowly found her own voice. She became the Beyoncé she wanted to see in the world, presenting herself as a type of performer who feels almost old-school at this moment in pop: a big-voiced dance machine with a flair for diva-like showmanship. Since then, much has changed: After Fifth Harmony ended, RCA Records signed Normani to a solo deal. “So many things start to go through your mind, like, ‘Maybe this is my fault? What could I have done differently? Am I not working hard enough? Am I not as talented? What’s wrong with my voice?’ ” ![]() 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. “She’s still scarred from that,” her dad says. 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 Harmonizers believed Normani had slighted Cabello by calling her “quirky.” Trolls posted Photoshopped images of her being lynched others sent death threats. In Fifth Harmony, the singing group that also gave the world Camila Cabello, she was the underdog. Normani’s perfectionism comes from a place of early-career trauma. “She was like, ‘You bugging just a little bit.’ ” The pair had met when Rowland served as a judge on The X-Factor a year after Normani competed on the show. “I literally sent it to Kelly Rowland before anybody else,” Normani says. Eventually, things got so bad that a member of Destiny’s Child had to talk her down. “I obsess over things like that,” she says. “She was really in tears at one point,” her dad, Derrick Hamilton, adds. Everyone loved the video - except Normani, who endlessly kept tweaking it.
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