Normani Kordei and her fans can finally celebrate the release of her long-awaited solo debut album, Dopamine.
Six years after releasing her official solo debut with her Khalid-assisted track “Love Lies” in 2018, Normani, 28, dropped Dopamine on Friday to the delight of fans who have endured a grueling wait.
One fan in particular, @dizzydorahoe, has been documenting their agony on X ever since the former Fifth Harmony singer tweeted that she knew her album title in 2018. For every year that had passed without a formal album announcement, Dizzydorahoe would fire off a new tweet to Normani, telling her “ur sick” each time.
Although Dizzydorahoe’s iconic “countdown” for what is now known as Dopamine has formally come to an end, Normani and her friends had to run the tweets back one last time to mark the occasion.
In a video circulating on social media, the “Candy Paint” singer is seen celebrating with a cake featuring Dizzydorahoe’s thread of tweets printed on the icing.
Shortly after the success of “Love Lies,” Kordei went on to release singles “Motivation” which she performed at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2019. A couple more false starts to the album came with the Cardi B collab “Wild Side” in 2021 and then droplet single “Fair” the following year.
In February 2024, Normani officially launched the Dopamine campaign with an appropriately titled website, wheresthedamnalbum.com, and official cover—albeit without a lead single or street date.
“This body of work really is just a representation of my resilience,” Kordei told Elle’s Samuel Maude in April. “I know what it’s like to put out music and records that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in. When we were in [Fifth Harmony], we didn’t have the opportunity to have a real opinion until the last project we did. I promised myself, 'If God gives me another opportunity to do things in my own way, I’m not going to take that for granted.'”
Normani emphasized that the long build-up to the project's release was not due to apathy.
“I think that there’s a false narrative that because of how long this process has taken, that means I don’t care, or that means I’m more interested in doing other things than putting this body of work out,” she added.
“Nobody wants this project to come out more than me. I think that at the end of the day, if I stand behind this wholeheartedly, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks.”
Dopamine is now available on all major streaming platforms.
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