Every morning before school, Kandi Burruss asks her two youngest children the same question: “Are you ready to conquer the day?!!!”
The point is to get loud. Ace, 10, and Blaze, 6, scream and holler their response before Burruss asks again, building the energy before everyone heads out the door.
It is a small ritual, but it says a lot about the kind of mother Burruss has become over the past 24 years: enthusiastic, encouraging, and determined to send her children into the world knowing they can handle whatever is waiting for them. It is also, quietly, the opposite of the dread that shows up in so many households at 7 a.m. — the mornings when a kid doesn’t want to go back to school at all.
Kandi Burruss has had the remarkable experience of parenting across several very different eras of her own life. She raised her oldest daughter, Riley, now 24, as a young single mother while her career was taking off. Today, she is raising two little ones while co-parenting with their father, all while mothering a grown daughter living in NYC (who, by Kandi’s account, does not call nearly enough…).
That range suits a woman whose own career has only leveled up with each passing decade. Burruss first broke out in the 1990s with the multiplatinum R&B group Xscape, then became one of the most in-demand songwriters of her generation, penning hits like TLC’s “No Scrubs” and Destiny’s Child’s “Bills, Bills, Bills” and taking home a Grammy in the process. In the years since, she’s built an empire far beyond music: a longtime role on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, a growing roster of restaurants, a thriving retail brand, and ventures across stage and screen, all while raising her family.
Here’s what more than two decades of motherhood have taught her.
Being three different mothers at once
Parenting a young adult, a grade-schooler, and a young child at once means being three different mothers in a single morning. And Kandi shifts gears accordingly.
What remains constant is the standard she’s set with her kids. “I definitely spoil them,” she admits. “But I believe in making sure they know that they have to deliver on their end as far as their schoolwork.”
With Riley, Kandi is navigating how to hand over the reins. These days she’s letting Riley pick up more of her own responsibilities “so she can appreciate things a little more.” But grown or not, Riley is still her baby. “She’s an adult, but I’ve still got to give her the affection that she needs from a parent,” Kandi says.
With Blaze, her youngest, it’s about saying yes to the fun. “Blaze is hilarious. She’s the life of the party,” Kandi says. When Blaze announces, “Mommy, we need a girls’ day,” Kandi makes sure it happens.
And with Ace, it’s about giving him room to be a kid while planting bigger ideas. He loves his video games and his friends. But Kandi’s also thinking ahead: “I’m kind of putting it in his head that he has to be class president one day.” That early push is no accident.
Raising go-getters
Kandi’s belief in chasing dreams early starts with her own. She credits her success in no small part to her mother, Mama Joyce: as a teenager, when plenty of parents would have said wait until after college, Mama Joyce backed her music ambitions completely. “That support meant everything and helped me accomplish my goals,” Kandi says. It’s the reason she refuses to make her own kids wait for permission to go after what they want, and why she still repeats her mother’s words to them.
If you can conceive the thought, you can make it happen.
The results already speak for themselves. Take Ace. At 10, he’s not just imagining a career; he’s building one. “He’s already started his acting career. He’s already been in movies and TV shows and gotten union checks,” Kandi says. “He’s definitely always trying to think of ways to make money, which is good.”
Then there’s Blaze, her budding artist. When the six-year-old gets creative, Kandi doesn’t just nod along; she turns it into a real venture. “One time, I made a whole art gallery of her artwork. I had it all blown up and had people bidding on it because she’s really into art.” A song idea gets the same treatment: “We should record that song that you’re thinking of.” Whatever her youngest dreams up, Kandi finds a way to make it tangible.
She poured that same drive into Riley, who was, in Kandi’s words, “definitely determined growing up.” These days that determination has taken its own shape: Riley is in New York building a business and a public life of her own as an influencer, exactly the go-after-it instinct her mother worked to instill — the same instinct behind so many of the businesses Black mothers are building. “I’ve always told her, ‘Hey, if this is what you want, you got to go after it,’” Kandi says.
What she’s learned along the way
While her drive has stayed constant, other parts of Kandi’s mothering have evolved. Ask her what’s really changed across 24 years and three kids, and the most honest answer is how much she’s loosened up. With Riley, she ran a stricter household. “I never let her sleep in my bed. I was very strict about it.” With Blaze, she’s eased off. Her youngest still climbs into Mommy’s bed, and Kandi lets her. “She’s the baby, so she kind of gets away with that.”
The same softening shows up in smaller ways. Kandi’s working on being more patient, catching herself before she snaps. “I’m trying not to be as snappy in the way that I speak to them,” she admits, the ongoing work of a parent who’s still adjusting as she goes — and a reminder that the phrases we reach for in the hard moments are a skill, not a personality trait.
Kandi has loosened her grip in bigger ways, too. If there’s one thing raising Riley taught her, it’s the value of not going it alone. Burruss raised her oldest largely by herself, making every decision solo. “I figured, ‘Okay, I can handle everything on my own. I don’t need his help,’” she says. Looking back, she’s candid about what she’d change: “I should have encouraged her father to do better.”
With Ace and Blaze, she’s built something different on purpose. Their father, Todd Tucker, whom Kandi divorced earlier this year, is an active presence in their lives, and she works to keep it that way. “I purposely am trying to be a great co-parent and make sure that he’s involved,” she says — the kind of deliberate, unglamorous co-parenting work that only reads as effortless from the outside.
That arrangement also means her younger two split their weeks between two homes, which has taught her not to take a single day with them for granted. “With the time that I do have, I want to make sure that we make the best of it,” she says. “It can be a little sad for me sometimes when I realize, ‘Oh, I’m not going to see them for a whole week.’”
So she leans into ritual: breakfast made the way each kid likes it (cereal for Ace, waffles and bacon for Blaze), backpacks packed, beds made. And once a year, the whole family takes a vacation together. It doesn’t have to be fancy. “It’s just about doing something where our adult kids can spend time with the family too,” she says. A week, every year, to simply be together.
Her advice to other mothers building something of their own
Ask Kandi how the businesswoman and the mother fit together, and she’s clear-eyed about it. “Kandi the businesswoman is very straightforward… a let’s-go, get-it-done type of person,” she says. “With my kids, obviously, I’m a little more patient, more loving, softer.”
She’s figured out that both versions of her are real, and the trick is knowing which one the moment calls for. Her advice to other mothers building something of their own is refreshingly practical, too. Early in her career, she and her friend Jing Jing traded off childcare so each could chase her own work, Kandi in the studio, Jing Jing in medical school. “If I had to be in the studio a lot, she would take the kids. If she had to study, I’d take both.” Their kids were always busy and having fun. “They didn’t realize how much she or I was working, which really was the perfect situation.”
Find your person, she says. Take turns. You don’t have to choose between your work and your kids if you build the right support around you — a lesson echoed by the women rewriting the rules of the C-suite.
The one thing she’s still figuring out
For all her drive, there’s one thing Kandi will readily admit she hasn’t mastered: making time for herself. Motherhood has quietly changed what success means to her. The woman who spent her twenties in constant motion, “work, work, work,” rarely stopping even for a vacation, is learning to make room for the things she used to skip. “Now I make time to do those things,” she says.
Still, she’s the first to admit the fuller balance is a work in progress.
I’m still trying to figure that one out, because I’m running ragged all the time.
“Between work and trying to make sure I have enough time for my kids and my family, it’s a lot,” she says. What she’s after now, she says, is “more time to just enjoy life as a mom, as a friend, and just for myself.”
After 24 years and three kids, that’s the real lesson: the figuring-out never fully ends, and that’s not a failure. It’s just what it looks like to keep showing up, keep adjusting, and keep choosing your family, one era at a time.
