Normani Kordei Hamilton was born in Atlanta and spent her childhood in New Orleans and Houston after her family was displaced by Hurricane Katrina. She was trained as a gymnast, dancer, and singer, inculcating in her a flashy poise. In 2012, her rendition of "Chain of Fools"—groomed, loyal, and not too showy - won her a spot on the second season of the American version of "The X Factor." She was giving up within the next round, so brought back to create the group, Fifth Harmony, with four of the opposite competitors: Ally Brooke, Camila Cabello, Dinah Jane, and Lauren Jauregui. sort of a good number of engineered music groups, Fifth Harmony never quite coalesced into a unit with persuasive personality. The group's three albums of R. & B.-adjacent jingles were successful, which isn't the identical as being impactful.

Fifth Harmony's long dissolution was hastened by the gossipy departure, in 2016, of the de-facto lead, Cabello, who quickly premièred an inoffensive Latin-pop sound and never looked back. Normani stuck around until she and also the other remaining members disbanded last year. In interviews, she's talked, with wit and beauty, about her experience as a dark-skinned Negro in pop. She was the sole black member of Fifth Harmony, and also the just one who never sang lead; she was a target of online trolls and, in 2016, briefly deactivated her Twitter account to flee them. Normani recorded, "Love Lies," with Khalid, and "Waves," with 6lack, which won her a V.M.A. for best R. & B. video.

A single of emancipation, "Motivation" is elegantly coded in a way that strikes a chord in my memory of Destiny's Child's "Survivor." The chorus, "Imma break you off, let me be your motivation," maybe a form of ambiguity, with its veneer of flirtation masking an underlying message about professionalism. Her valorizing of labor and long days has won her admirers, perhaps because audiences miss the primitive shiver of watching an artist do something.

At the V.M.A.s, though, it paid off. Fantasies of competence are often destroyed on the awards-show stage; musical acts comfortable within the Instagram square have a tough time adjusting to the auditorium. Normani, though, was a dance captain in lavender short shorts, hitting each count, not even blinking when an outfit reveal got slightly botched. 

As a minimum of one fashion site seen, Normani's studded, asymmetrical red-carpet dress recalled the planning of Christina Aguilera, one in every of many pop phenomena that Normani must have absorbed as a lass growing up within the early two-thousands. it's a convention for brand new artists to call their inspirations, but with Normani there's special intensity to the activity.