The album's title is taken from Norwood's birthday; it is also the day on which her idol and friend, entertainer Whitney Houston died eight months before Two Eleven's release.

Two Eleven debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 65,000 copies, becoming Norwood's fourth top-ten album and her first in eight years.

Human, was originally scheduled to be released in November but was delayed to accommodate last-minute recording sessions with American producer and close friend of Norwood, Timbaland.

[3] The records produced were ultimately omitted from Human's track listing due to Timabaland not being able to get his trademark vocals on the songs.

[7] Speaking of her new record deal during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Norwood commented: "I'm reinventing myself and I feel fearless, [Two Eleven is] mature, it's gritty, it's edgy.

"It's just gonna be a different album, but of course expressing the love that I feel now and the struggles and different situations that I've gone through in the past,... My music always tends to be the soundtrack to my life and definitely inspired by what I see other people go through as well—gritty, edgy, different.

[25] Throughout 2010, Norwood continued recording independently with a variety of musicians, including producers Danja, Clinton Sparks, The Jam, Corey Gibson and songwriter Stacy Barthe.

Some of this was chronicled on her VH1 reality series Brandy & Ray J: A Family Business, which originally aired from April 2010 to February 2011 and spawned a soundtrack of the same name (2011), on which some of the tracks were included.

[26] During early conceptions of the album, Norwood had wanted to reunite with Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins–her longtime collaborator who had executively produced Human (2008).

During one of the episodes when her brother Ray J announces that he wants to work with Darkchild, Norwood reveals that she felt the producer "did not put his all into the album", and that "was a personal issue between me and him."

[28][29] In September 2010, producer Bangladesh confirmed that he had been commissioned by Norwood to helm the production of the entire project,[30] though Norwood later expressed her intent to further connect with several producers, including Jim Beanz,[31] WyldCard,[32] newcomer Kevin McCall,[33] Lonny Bereal,[34] Rico Love,[35] production collectives The Woodworks and The Runners,[36][37] and singer Sean Garrett who worked on nine songs for the album.

[38][39] Hit-Boy who had previously worked with Frank Ocean on Norwood's Human album returned to production on Two Eleven with the ballad "White Flag", which discusses "emotional defeat".

[40] Norwood's collaboration with Drake was a song written by James Fauntleroy and produced by Noah "40" Shebib; however it failed to come to fruition.

[41] A press release from RCA Records announced that Breyon Prescott was overseeing the album with productions by the aforementioned producers as well as Mario Winans and writing from Ester Dean.

[43] During the album's listening party on August 20, 2012, at Germano Studios in Manhattan, New York, Two Eleven's executive producer Breyon Prescott revealed that there would be fifteen songs on the final track listing.

[40] Prescott stated that on Two Eleven, Norwood's vocals return to a multi-layered style like those present on previous songs "Angel in Disguise", "Full Moon" and "Afrodisiac".

", producer Danja's sole contribution on Two Eleven, works up an extended musical foreplay around a single mind-numbing groove.

[48] Built around an instrumental that was originally produced for Diddy – Dirty Money's 2010 album Last Train to Paris, it was re-constructed by Love for Norwood.

[49] The album's title, Two Eleven, is a reference to both Norwood's birthday and the day her idol and mentor, entertainer Whitney Houston, died in 2012.

[11] In November 2011, Sean Garrett announced through Rap-Up that he wrote and co-produced the album's first single, which he expected to be released before December 25, 2011, and was to feature a rapper.

[60] In October, Norwood performed the song on television shows 106 & Park, Good Morning America and Live with Kelly and Michael.

[62] On April 12, 2012, Norwood confirmed she was going to release "Put It Down", featuring fellow R&B singer Chris Brown, as the album's lead single.

[63] Produced by Bangladesh, Norwood described the song as "very commercial, but at the same time, it's got a dope hip-hop influence—it's club, it's radio, it's all formats [...] it's uptempo, it's really different.

[68] Serviced to urban adult contemporary radio stations on September 11, 2012, it peaked at number 68 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and was seen as a commercial failure compared to "Put It Down".

[74] Andy Kellman of AllMusic wrote that Norwood "took something of a risk by breaking from her norm and working with numerous songwriters and producers" and remarked that the strategy "paid off."

"[1] People declared Two Eleven "her best work since 2004's career high Afrodisiac" and wrote, "full of subtle, sensual pleasures, the album unfolds at a slow-to-midtempo pace and stays there for most of the time, even when incorporating hip-hop or electronica beats.

What's refreshing about this new work, though, is how it clears a place for her in the realm of forward-thinking urban music while also reaching back to clarify her distinctive position in the diva pantheon."

He called the record "the clearest portrait yet of Brandy's instrument", praising the "unusual tone [of her voice], its strange mix of warmth and cold, hard edges", and felt that the album revealed a "contradictory admiration for [...] Drake, Frank Ocean, and Kanye West circa 808s & Heartbreak".

"[83] Vibe noted that "experimentation can spell struggle for some artists, but Two Eleven finds Brandy cruising fluidly past the predictable.

[94] By November 2012, Two Eleven had sold 110,700 copies in the United States,[95] and went on to finish 52nd on Billboard's 2012 Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums year-end chart.