That experience informed the soothingly therapeutic, dusty-grooved sound and new-leaf narratives of 2003’s After the Storm, where her old-school influences received a 21st-century future-soul makeover from a team of producers that included Missy Elliott and a budding Kanye West. Monica’s soulful poise made her the perfect femme fatale to square off against Brandy’s woman scorned on the pre-eminent R&B cage match of 1998, The Boy Is Mine, and Monica’s multiplatinum album of the same name further mined the song’s tension between emotionally charged lyrics and sophisticated symphonic production. Shortly afterwards Dallas and then staff producers Tim & Bob entered the studio with Monica to start writing and producing her debut Miss Thang which was eventually released in July 1995 and scored number thirty-six on the U.S.
But at the height of her success, Monica was waylaid by tragedy, when she bore witness to the gunshot suicide of an ex-boyfriend in 2000. Monica’s soulful poise made her the perfect femme fatale to square off against Brandy’s woman scorned on the pre-eminent R&B cage match of 1998, “The Boy Is Mine,” and Monica’s multiplatinum album of the same name further mined the song’s tension between emotionally charged lyrics and sophisticated symphonic production. But even as her 1995 debut, Miss Thing, heralded the Atlanta native’s graduation from the church to the club-making her the youngest artist ever to top the Billboard R&B charts with two consecutive singles-those gospel roots were never far from the surface. Like her peers Brandy and Aaliyah, Monica (born Monica Denise Arnold in 1980) was a former choir kid who blossomed into a bona fide R&B teen queen.
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