Put some respect on Brandy’s name!

The Grammy-winning R&B singer is shutting down long-running speculation about her past with former rapper Shyne and making one thing clear: she says the two were never a couple. In a post shared to Instagram, Brandy said Shyne’s claims are another example of “people telling their version of my story,” and connected the public back-and-forth to her upcoming memoir, “Phases.”

“In the late 90s, I had a platonic friendship with rapper Shyne,” Brandy wrote. “In an unfortunate turn of events, that friendship is now being mischaracterized as ‘we dated.’ Unequivocally, we did not! I’m not sure why an untrue narrative about a scope of what was a friendship more than 20 years ago is being reshaped during his current media interviews.”

Brandy said the book was written with a specific purpose: to “debunk many of the misnomers” tied to her life and career. And while she rarely weighs in publicly on rumors, she said this time she felt moved to address the record herself.

Brandy’s brother Ray J took it upon himself to respond in a way that Brandy wasn’t too pleased with. In a profanity-laced video posted to social media, Ray J told Shyne, “Keep my sister's name out of your mouth, and if not, I'm gonna slap the f*cking daylights out of you when I see you.” He also named “It Is What It Is” podcast co-hosts Cam’ron and Ma$e in the video as he reacted to the comments.

“I rarely make public statements of this variety,” she wrote, before distancing herself from her brother Ray J’s response to the situation. “While I love my brother Ray J, I don’t condone or support the messages he’s shared on social media and have not asked him to defend me in any form.”

Ray J’s comments come after Shyne, a former Bad Boy Records artist who later entered politics, publicly repeated claims that he and Brandy once dated. The topic surfaced again during Shyne’s recent appearance on the “It Is What It Is” podcast. Brandy’s response makes clear she views the narrative as inaccurate and unnecessary.

With “Phases” on the way, Brandy appears ready to tell her story on her own terms. For her, this is about reclaiming the narrative around her life, one detail at a time.