00:03Issa Rae to the stage.
00:14Hi everyone. Hi Brandi.
00:20Nice to meet you. I'm so, so honored to be here.
00:24I've never said yes faster to a text from
00:28my publicist who asked me to be here on behalf of
00:32Brandi, to speak to Brandi. I talk about Brandi in all of my interviews.
00:37And they told me I have two minutes to talk about her, so
00:39I'ma get to it. I wasn't going to use the two minutes to just sing
00:44Have You Ever Loved Somebody So Much It Makes You Cry, but
00:48I won't do that in front of you or to you guys.
00:52The first time I saw Brandi, I had no
00:55idea how much I needed to see Brandi.
00:57I was in fourth grade
00:59when I Wanna Be Down came out
01:01and that single was the
01:03first tape I ever bought
01:04with my own allowance money, which
01:07was two dollars a week from Sam Goody.
01:10And
01:11when the Broken Hearted remix
01:13came out, I
01:15was singing my heart out like I had
01:16I had suffered the deepest pain
01:20on the school bus. I was so excited
01:22when it came on in the radio
01:24when it came on the radio and I was singing it
01:26and I was sitting next to my crush
01:29and he was like, who sings this song?
01:31And I was like, Brandi proudly.
01:34And he was like, then let her sing it.
01:38So that was my first heart break. Thank you Brandi so much for that.
01:43Brandi is a star for so many reasons,
01:45but her transition to acting
01:47was a game changer.
01:49While her first official role was as Thea's
01:52daughter in Thea,
01:53it was really Moesha that made me understand
01:55what was possible.
01:57It was the first show that I'd
01:59ever seen told from an ordinary black
02:02teenage girl's point of view
02:03set in LA, the same city I was
02:06born in and were moved back to that same
02:08year it premiered.
02:09Brandi made Moesha someone I wanted to befriend,
02:13the girl I wanted to be.
02:15At a time when beauty standards on television
02:18looked nothing like us,
02:20Brandi was the standard.
02:21The smile, the eyes, the braids,
02:24the way she carried herself.
02:26She was cool without trying
02:28and beautiful without apology.
02:30Moesha gave me confidence,
02:33overconfidence in some cases.
02:34You guys will never see those pictures.
02:36They will never see the light of day,
02:37but they're all because of her.
02:39And she made it all look effortless.
02:42Because she was putting in so much work,
02:44honestly, and you didn't know that
02:47from behind the scenes, but her,
02:48the most inspirational part
02:51of her career is just how she had no lanes.
02:54As her career progressed,
02:56so did her ambitions.
02:57Movies, the first black Cinderella,
02:59as you guys heard.
03:00Broadway, producing.
03:01She didn't need to stay in one lane.
03:06To me, Brandi was and is the blueprint.
03:13Without Brandi as Moesha,
03:15there's no Parkers.
03:17There's no girlfriends.
03:18There's no Insecure.
03:20And honestly, without Moesha,
03:22there's no me as a writer.
03:24Because at 11 years old,
03:26that show gave me the confidence
03:27to write my very first TV sitcom,
03:30which was so, so, so bad.
03:32But thank God I got better.
03:35Brandi, I just want to thank you
03:36so much for your impact.
03:38Thank you for showing a little girl
03:39from L.A. that her story was worth telling,
03:42and this star has always been yours.
03:45I love you so much.
03:45Thank you for all you do.
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