The Grammy winner opens up on reinvention, motherhood and the will to keep pushing.
Kandi Burruss has spent more than two decades in the public eye, first as a member of Xscape, then as a Grammy winning songwriter, entrepreneur and reality television fixture. Behind the hit records and the headlines is a woman who has rebuilt herself more than once, from a 19 year old bracing for her group’s breakup to a mother navigating co-parenting after her divorce from Todd Tucker was finalized earlier this year.
A career defined by resilience
Burruss said she does not view her path as one of leaving old versions of herself behind, but rather one of staying true to her own instincts rather than conforming to what others expected. The one exception she points to with a laugh is her early fashion sense, which she has happily left in the past. Asked what she is most proud of, she pointed first to motherhood, calling it her most important role, before adding that every career move she has made has mattered just as much, since none of it came easily.
Success, she said, brought plenty she never anticipated. She grew up dreaming of hit records and acting, without much thought for what the climb might cost. Looking back, she counts sleepless nights, a wariness earned from encountering people with bad intentions, lost family time, and a near total loss of privacy among the tradeoffs. Building a thick skin against public criticism took time too, as did coming to terms with how many losses preceded each win.
Motherhood after divorce
Since her split from Tucker, with whom she shares two children, Burruss said her priorities have shifted around keeping her family functional despite the divorce. Even during tense stretches of the split, she said the two of them still gathered together for Christmas and rang in the new year with their younger children, determined not to let the holidays feel disrupted. She admitted that holding grudges usually comes naturally to her, but that her children’s happiness now outweighs her own feelings on the matter. She described actively working to remain a good co-parent, choosing to bring warmth to shared family moments with Tucker rather than letting old tension linger.
The moment that changed everything
Asked to name the most transformative period of her life, Burruss pointed to the unraveling of Xscape before its third album, a stretch that began right after she had bought her first house at 19. When a group member announced plans to go solo, panic set in over how she would support herself, having never held a job outside the group. That pressure led her and fellow member Tiny to pursue a duo songwriting project, with a plan to write their own demos so they could negotiate creative control with a label. One of those demos became the song No Scrubs, a turning point that reshaped her career entirely. She recalled label executives once laughing at the idea that the two of them could serve as executive producers, a memory she now treats as proof of how far she has come.
What she hopes to leave behind
Looking ahead, Burruss said she hopes to be remembered as someone who helped others succeed and opened doors, with her children carrying that same instinct forward. Asked what she would want her children and grandchildren to inherit beyond money or businesses, she did not hesitate. She wants them to have her ability to push through hardship, describing an unusually strong will to keep moving even when circumstances look their bleakest. That mindset, more than any single accomplishment, is what she considers her defining trait, and the one she hopes outlasts everything else she has built.