Almost Doesn’t Count for Brandy — the singer has called off her engagement to music executive Ryan Press.
“They are no longer together. The engagement is off, but the friendship is still on,” the R&B singer’s rep told Us Weekly on Tuesday.
The Game actress, whose full name is Brandy Norwood, and Press announced their engagement in December 2012. It would have been her first marriage.
“They decided to take a step back and reevaluate the relationship,” the rep said. “Brandy is 35 now — that’s what her whole #35 on Twitter is about, becoming her own woman.”
Indeed, the Boy is Mine singer turned 35 in February and has repeatedly used the numerical hashtag on the micro-blogging site. Break-up rumours began circulating that month when she hit the NAACP Image Awards non-televised ceremony without her engagement ring and went wedding-bling-free at her birthday party too, according to E! News.
The raspy-voiced Grammy winner has an 11-year-old daughter named Sy’rai with her ex, music producer Robert Smith, and would still like to get married and have additional children, the rep said.
“But she is working on so many other things right now,” the rep said, adding that she and Press “haven’t ended things on a bad note and they still speak all the time.”
Brandy also hinted at the split during a Tuesday appearance on VH1’s Morning Buzz Live when host Nick Lachey brought up the content of her upcoming studio album, according to People magazine. She also went sans engagement ring.
“It’s going to be a very personal album for me,” she told the host. “This album is just special for the whole therapy thing. I sing about my life and a lot of the things that I’ve been going through lately.”
However, she did not address the split specifically.
In recent years — since a 2006 car accident that killed one woman and embroiled the singer in years of litigation — the “Brandy and Ray J” reality star has built up her acting career. The Moesha alum had a stint on 90210, appeared in Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor and held a judging spot on America’s Got Talent.
Her last album, Two Eleven, was released in October 2012.
