New York ? When Brandy plops down on a chair in her hotel suite, preparing for a morning of picture-taking and interviews, a sour look suddenly comes over her face.

It’s not the day ahead that’s upsetting her; it’s the baby inside.

Brandy's image on her new album, Full

“The baby’s turning and it’s making me queasy,” says the 23-year-old singer-actress, rubbing her protruding belly. A newlywed, she’s expecting her first child, a girl, in July.

The image of a grown-up Brandy as wife and mother is something new for those who remember her as the teen-ager who rose to music stardom with fluffy hits like “Sittin’ Up In My Room,” “Baby” and the Grammy-winning “The Boy is Mine.” Or as the good-girl title character in UPN’s first sitcom, “Moesha.”

But it’s clear that Brandy is no kid anymore.

Besides new family duties, the singer has returned to the limelight with a new album, “Full Moon,” which showcases her evolution into a young woman. The trademark braids are gone, and her look is sexier. (In the video for the disc’s first hit, “What About Us,” she wears tight leather and a plunging neckline.)

“She’s not a goofy teen-ager anymore she’s a beautiful woman,” says Emil Wilbekin, editor-in-chief at Vibe, which features her on its April cover.

Whereas once, Brandy talked like a schoolgirl, now she speaks with confidence and authority.

She says she finally feels comfortable in her own skin.

“I was very dependent on people, and there was a certain part of me that didn’t want to be dependent anymore,” she says. “I was very clinging, and I needed to just be my own person. I wavered in my decisions, I people-pleased … I was very insecure.”

Across the board

	www.foreverbrandy.com

Brandy Norwood first gained recognition at 14 as the smart, sassy daughter on the short-lived ABC sitcom “Thea.” When that was canceled after one season, the child star turned to her first love singing and scored instant success with a self-titled album that went platinum and helped create the teen music craze in the late ’90s.

Soon, Brandy would have another television show, this time centered on her. “Moesha,” which in later years featured her brother, singer-actor Ray J, debuted on UPN in 1995 and ran for five years. It created a spinoff hit, “The Parkers,” and further made Brandy a household name.

She also made commercials for Cover Girl, starred in TV movies like “Cinderella,” and made her feature film debut in “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”

But success brought self-doubt instead of confidence. Brandy wondered if people wanted to be around her just because of her fame.

In addition, her hit television show was the source of tension and gossip: Rumors flew that Brandy did not get along with some cast members. And she and her mother, Sonja Norwood, were criticized when they pushed to make the show more gritty.

“I would read comments about what people would say about the characters … and would bring that back to the writers,” says Brandy. “I didn’t have to be credited as producer, I didn’t have to have credit for anything. I just wanted to make the show that much better. … Certain people didn’t want to give that up.”

As for her mother who has been depicted as the overbearing stage mother Brandy says: “My mom has taken a lot of heat for things that she’s not guilty of. … She happens to not be intimidated by anyone. She’s not going to let you take advantage of her daughter or her son or her husband or anybody that she has love for.”

Sonja Norwood manages the careers of her daughter; son, Ray J; and husband, Willie Norwood, who put out his debut disc last year.

A wake-up call

In 1999, at the height of Brandy’s success, the star was hospitalized briefly for exhaustion and dehydration. Some reports had her collapsing on the set false rumors, Brandy says, that were spread by her co-workers.

“That’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t too happy on ‘Moesha,’ because there were a lot of rumors that were accumulating that weren’t true,” she says.

The hospitalization did cause the Norwoods to reassess Brandy’s hectic schedule.

“It was like, ‘No, it doesn’t matter how much she wants to do, from this point, she’s going to take a break,”‘ says Sonja Norwood. “But I don’t think I had to enforce that because she did it on her own. She decided, ‘I’m going to take care of myself.”‘

Brandy says she had been feeling “a lot of stress, and it almost killed me.”

The breakdown, she says, taught her that “it’s very wise for me to pay attention to what goes on in my body, as well as what goes on in my life, period.”

A vegan now, she doesn’t eat products that aren’t natural. And she tends toward the spiritual, talking about the importance of serenity and connecting with people’s “energy.”

It’s one of many reasons why Brandy considered “Moesha’s” cancellation a blessing.

“I would have been very disappointed if they picked it up again actually because I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now, which is my music.”

Finding her purpose in life

On “Full Moon,” her third album, Brandy reconnected with Rodney Jerkins, who produced her second album, the multi-platinum “Never Say Never.”

It took her a year and a half to finish “Full Moon,” which features the kind of sensual material she shied away from in her teens.

Jerkins called the difference between the two albums “night and day.”

“Now, she’s more verbal in what she wants to do and she’s more instrumental in her music,” he said.

Wilbekin, of Vibe, said the album’s “subject matter is more adult. She’s definitely been through a lot of kind of emotional growth, a lot of love and breakups, and I think that she has found herself more on this album.”

She also found her soul mate her husband, producer Robert Smith.

A cousin of Jerkins, Smith was working on Brandy’s album when the pair got to know each other as friends. They didn’t really fall in love until their second date, when they played a little game at the beach to see who could get the most phone numbers from the opposite sex.

“Of course I won,” she laughs. “But he was definitely on my tail, and I started to get jealous of the women he was approaching. And I’m like, ‘Why am I getting jealous? This is just Bert, this is nothing, why am I getting jealous?’ And that day I knew that it was something special.”

She says the pair wed privately last year, without even their families present.

Her mother says the elopement didn’t hurt her.

“Of course, every mom, I would think, would love to see their daughter in a big gown and have a nice wedding; it’s sort of like your own fantasy in a sense,” she says. “(But) the most important thing was to see her happy.”

“Just to see her learn who she really is has been the biggest positive point for me, and understanding that she has to make herself happy first.”

And Brandy says she’s found more than happiness.

“I know my purpose. I couldn’t say that before. Three years ago, I couldn’t say that I knew why I was here,” she says. “My purpose is to experience love and just be who I am, and whatever that is, that’s all I have to do. I don’t have to do anything else but be myself.”