Monica will release her third album, All Eyez on Me, on December 17th. All Eyez is the follow-up to 1998's The Boy Is Mine, which yielded the title track duet with fellow teen diva Brandy that spent thirteen weeks atop the pop singles charts and fueled rumors that the two singers' rivalry carried over into real life. The strength of that song and follow-up singles "The First Night" and "Street Symphony" boosted the album to triple-platinum status and garnered the singer a starring role in the MTV movie Love Song.

All Eyez on Me's title is fitting, as the album features her first-ever stabs at songwriting. "I was used to going into the studio with everything prepared, and I'd sing it and leave," she says. "Now it's totally different. Whatever happens I need to be there. I guess the kid, so to speak, is gone."

Working with longtime collaborators and producers Rodney Jerkins, Jermaine Dupri and Dallas Austin, Monica penned the lyrics for several songs. She had always written poems and delivered them to her team of writers as the basis for her songs, but for All Eyez on Me she used the poems themselves as sketches for her lyrics. "People were telling me [writing lyrics] is just another form of poetry and that if you can write poems you can write songs," she says. "I just had to get the idea of the song structure down."

Along with taking a more active role in the writing, there were other natural changes that come from growing up. The Monica heard on her debut, 1995's Miss Thang, and The Boy Is Mine is not exactly the Monica of All Eyez on Me. "With this album my voice is definitely a touch lower, a lot stronger," she says. "I can carry notes a lot longer . . . And when you write it, you sing from a more emotional place."

While the album does contain upbeat, accessible songs like the first single and title track, which features a sample from Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Monica did delve into more difficult subjects on this album. "Cry No More" is inspired by a friend's ill-fated romance. "She was dating this guy and found out that he had a wife and kids in another state," Monica says. "It was complex situation, but I had to try to make it plain enough to fit in the song."

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(December 11, 2002)