Really, her life looks a lot like what she envisioned when, as a freshman at Georgia’s Riverdale High, she wrote out her three-pronged approach for entertainment domination. First, she’d get discovered, which she did, signing with her first label, LaFace Records, at age 16, then release an album that would move at least 3 million copies. (Her 2004 debut Goodies actually sold 5 million.) “My third goal,” she detailed to Harper’s Bazaar last year, “was to have longevity.”
In the 16 years since her initial release, she’s put out an additional six albums, notched 13 Billboard Hot 100 top-ten singles, earned two BET Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, plus a Grammy. And yet her most treasured moments are entirely ordinary. Like, say, the time she placed Sienna in Future’s miniature Jeep-shaped bed and watched as he took care to protect her fragile head.
“There’s something really sweet about how they are, they’re so delicate but she’s so tough at the same time,” she told E! News of watching her brood. “So that’s been really amazing to see and experience—it is a difference you know. It’s hard to describe, but you feel it. It’s been really fun.”
