It’s not that always R&B artists get one other probability to win over their followers after a studio album failed to satisfy their expectations.
Monica and her J Data comeback album, Nonetheless Standing, proved to be an exception in 2010.
4 years prior, the vocalist’s profession gave the impression to be at a crossroads. She launched The Makings of Me, the successor to her first number-one album After the Storm.
The 2006 LP, notably the snapping lead single “Everytime tha Beat Drop” that includes Dem Franchize Boyz, didn’t essentially mirror the musical development that Monica had hoped to be recognized for as a then-ten 12 months veteran. She even cited the trend-chasing document as a “poor presentation of the album.”
Failing to yield a significant hit single as profitable as “So Gone” with The Makings of Me, Monica spent the subsequent few years looking for her place in a crowded style of contemporary voices (Keyshia Cole, Jazmine Sullivan) and established R&B titans (Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige), who have been all experiencing profession excessive factors. Her return to sheer greatness didn’t come with out an uphill combat and some novel moments.
For a begin, Monica needed to study the laborious approach that longevity doesn’t essentially imply that an artist is all the time a precedence for the label. A brand new artist can come alongside, dazzle tastemakers with a breakthrough hit and album, and trigger a seasoned artist’s tireless contributions to the music business to appear minuscule to these in cost.
Within the midst of Monica’s Makings of Me period, her label was seemingly placing all their bets on different acts. Recent off the discharge of her first stay album, Alicia Keys was prepping for As I Am: her subsequent award-sweeping album.
Fantasia, a label beginner, was rising into her personal together with her self-titled sophomore album, topping the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart with the one “Once I See You.” Additionally, on the heels of his award-winning position in Ray, Jamie Foxx was turning heads in Hollywood, as he closely promoted his Unpredictable album.
This fascinating notion of being neglected could have led to lots of the casualties Monica skilled because it pertained to the underperforming album gross sales of The Makings of Me.
Monica eagerly returned to the studio with Bryan Michael-Cox, Jermaine Dupri and Missy Elliott, to work on her subsequent album after issuing 4 singles between 2006 and 2007. Embracing the promotional hiccups of her fifth effort, Monica realized that her followers deserved music that felt true to her previous glories as an alternative of sacrificing her artistry for a microwave hit.
The largest problem for Monica throughout The Makings of Me album cycle was not having the ability to choose a becoming lead single. She strongly felt that the survival monitor “Nonetheless Standing” that includes Ludacris would make a powerful era-launching single. Nonetheless, J. Data thought in any other case and pointed her again to the drafting board.
Slightly than combat with the label in regards to the energy of the monitor, she and her group got here up with a doable resolution for her follow-up that concerned a rising obsession: actuality tv.
At the moment in tv historical past, lots of the music-driven actuality reveals (American Idol, Making the Band) have been principally within the enterprise of catapulting artists to superstardom. Only a few have been invested within the profession revival of artists who have been eyeing for a correct homecoming.
Though Monica couldn’t afford to probability inventive exploration on Nonetheless Standing, she did see room to learn the way tapping into the truth tv market might give her profession a reboot.
In August 2008, the Grammy winner partnered with Atlanta’s PeachTree TV to debut The Single: Monica. The one-hour particular chronicled the singer’s in-studio classes with Bryan Michael-Cox and J Data executives to give you her subsequent main hit (“Nonetheless Standing”) for her upcoming album, then-titled Classes Realized.
A 12 months later, Monica reissued the particular as a ten-part documentary for BET and known as it Monica: Nonetheless Standing. This present coincided with the resurgence of her music profession as she labored with varied hit-makers to place herself to take over the charts once more.
The sequence additionally took a deep dive on the closed-door conversations that many artists, notably R&B acts, have with their labels as they gear up for a brand new album, together with ongoing debates on the primary single.
Given the sleek working of her BET sequence, Monica placing out the iron-solid Deniece Williams sampled hit “All the pieces to Me” couldn’t be higher timed. Drawing inspiration from the massive ballads heydays, Monica upped the ante vocally and confirmed off her refined vary in a sublime approach that made for a compelling efficiency. She drove this indeniable level dwelling with each stay efficiency, particularly her late-night cease on The George Lopez Present.
Although its nostalgic-natured radiance made it a bona fide hit for the normal R&B radio circuit, the Missy Elliott and Lamb-produced composition proved successful on city radio. This positive single marched its technique to the pole place on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, marking Monica’s largest hit there since 2003’s “So Gone.”
Later that 12 months, Monica duplicated an identical chart-topping triumph on the Grownup R&B Songs chart with the heartfelt tune “Love All Over Me.” The competitors between the primary and second single lies within the songwriting. For the latter sappy ballad, it includes Mo’s frequent contributors Bryan Michael-Cox and Jermaine Dupri.
It additionally contains Crystal Johnson (a.okay.a. Crystal Nicole), a then-emerging songsmith who united her writing presents to Monica’s voice for the primary time. Its sheathed idea that expresses the indelible longing that one can really feel for a life accomplice makes for a respectively stronger document than its lead.
Do artists and labels generally drop the ball with singles? Sure, it’s inevitable that issues all the time go in line with plan with album rollouts. Monica’s in-need banger “Right here I Am” suffered the unlucky destiny of ball dropping when it was issued because the third single in fall 2010.
However the Ester Dean-helmed monitor had a number of problems that dated again to 2009, together with its untimely affirmation as a twin single with a scrapped tune (“Nothing Like Me”). It was additionally introduced because the second single however was rapidly changed by “Love All Over Me” after overwhelming fan responses.
It’s a disgrace that “Right here I Am” wasn’t given the crimson carpet remedy of its predecessors. This document might have carried Monica into the brand new 12 months as she began work on her follow-up. However its correct probability to grow to be her third respective hit was foiled by the pointless choice to power a remix together with her Trey Songz. This monitor nonetheless deserves justice.
Inevitably, Nonetheless Standing picked up a Finest R&B Album nomination on the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011. Curiously, this remarkably strong album is famous as the primary and solely full-length album by Monica to be acknowledged by the Recording Academy.
She additionally earned her first-ever solo nod for “All the pieces to Me.” Now, whereas she didn’t win both award, her first pair of nominations in 12 years confirmed clear indicators that the committee was a minimum of impressed together with her triumphant return.
What’s not typically talked about and shouldn’t be taken as a right in Monica’s comeback story is how Keyshia Cole’s rising familiarity reintroduced her voice to the R&B viewers.
By 2009, the Oakland native already had a string of number-one hits and three platinum-selling albums underneath her belt. Cole appeared like the right secret weapon that Monica wanted to get again on the radar.
Touchdown a function on Cole’s A Completely different Me album on a reworked model of the Simply Like You bonus monitor “Belief” put Monica again in duet territory. In contrast to her earlier duet (“The Boy is Mine”) with fellow R&B diva Brandy, the place the 2 competing vocally over a person, Monica and Cole went for a reassurance strategy and poised it as a timeless vocal efficiency.
The 2 R&B stars have been tapped to carry out the duet on the 2009 BET Awards. It’s no coincidence that Cole was on the efficiency lineup since she had seemingly grow to be a talent-favorite for the annual ceremony, with a main-stage presence on the three earlier awards reveals (2006, 2007 and 2008).
In a case of stealing the thunder, Monica handled her first-ever BET Awards efficiency as a possibility to arrange her return and present everybody that she hadn’t misplaced her means to command the room together with her passionate vocals. And it labored, too.
Trying again at this album ten years later, the title says all of it. Monica was Nonetheless Standing after a 15-year profession of highs and lows. Her grownup knowledge to return to the reminiscent sounds of her early days made for a wonderful album that distinguishes itself from her earlier works.
Was Nonetheless Standing a completely flawless album?
No.
It had just a few weak factors just like the dated “If You Have been My Man,” however, total Monica crafted a positive assortment of age-appropriate uptempo and downtempo R&B tunes. Reflecting totally on love, she masterfully fused songs about perseverance and self-importance on standouts like “Mirror” and “Believing in Me.”
If R&B fans and career-long followers had set excessive expectations for Monica’s Nonetheless Standing, she definitely exceeded them. Looking back, this gold-selling outing can now be referred again to because the turning level that helped breathe ‘new life’ into Monica’s once-big music profession.
Revisit Nonetheless Standing beneath.