January 27, 2005 @ 9:49 pm

VIBE Magazine: Oct. '02 > Monica - Pain Is Love

Craig Seymour

Unthinkable tragedy and tabloid assualt pushed R&B singer Monica into temporary seclusion. But the elusive diva has bounced back

At 21, R&B star Monica has already experienced euphoric highs and unspeakable lows. Channeling life's lessons into her new album has helped her gain a sense of peace.

Monica Arno

At 21, R&B star Monica has already experienced euphoric highs and unspeakable lows. Channeling life's lessons into her new album has helped her gain a sense of peace. Monica Arnold is laughing. Emerging from a vocal booth at Jermaine Dupri's SouthSide Studios in Atlanta, where she's laying down the tracks on her new album, All Eyez on Me, the R&B singer looks relaxed and studio-fly in her powder blue Izod sweat suit and matching sneakers. Her chestnut brown hair has a new streak of blond framing her face, and she's wearing blue-tinted shades with a jewel sparkling on one of the lenses. Monica has just gotten off the phone with her dad, M.C. Arnold Jr., 54, who works at a local freight company. He called and asked what she was up to. "I'm in the studio," she said. "What are you doing there?" he asked, prompting her to crack up. If Monica's own father has forgotten what she does in a studio, he's probably not alone. More than four years have passed since the release of her last album, The Boy Is Mine, a triple-platinum-selling sophomore effort. The album yielded three No. 1 pop hits: the Grammy-winning title duet with Brandy, the funky "The First Night," and the dreamy "Angel of Mine." But while Brandy enjoyed a five-year run on Moesha, filmed several movies, released a new album, got married, and had a baby, Monica largely vanished from the scene-among the only signs of her existence being a poorly received MTV flick, Love Song, and the spunky one-off "Just Another Girl," from the 2001 soundtrack of Down to Earth. What sidetracked her? Was it the 2000 suicide of her longtime boy-friend, Jarvis "Knot" Weems, and the ugly public aftermath? Or perhaps her up-and-down relationship with former fiancé Corey "C-Murder" Miller, who has been indicted for second-degree homicide? These are only the latest questions surrounding Monica, who has been something of an enigma since her 1995 debut. When she released her booming, dub-heavy first single, "Don't Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)," many folks wondered where she got that deep, knowing voice. Monica wasn't coy or naive like other teenage ingenues. On the album's title track, "Miss Thang," she sang, "I meet guys that are my age / But they can't relate to me / Because I'm too much for their minds / And their young mentality." True to these lyrics, Weems was six years older than Monica when a friend introduced them. The then 16-year-old singer, who had only one boyfriend before Weems, was drawn to his smooth brown skin, football-player build, and constant smile. According to Monica, he was solid: "He wasn't into the hype. Jarvis was so not into the industry and wasn't caught up in what I did." She knew he was dealing drugs, but that didn't deter her. "Because they've maintained themselves in hard lives, it makes them strong men," she says of street hustlers like Weems. "I needed somebody who was going to be a pure spine for me." On the cut "I Wrote This Song," from her new album-the first Monica has had a hand in writing, and the first time she publicly acknowledges the depth of her loss-she sings: "It hurts so bad that I had to choose / If I want to live / Or die with you." For Monica, it was an emotional and artistic breakthrough. "I knew if I could write about that subject, I could write about anything," she says. "Anything else is like popping popcorn. I didn't water this issue down at all. I didn't change anything." Monica and Jarvis separated for reasons she doesn't want to share. But while they were apart, Inga Marchand (aka Foxy Brown) introduced Monica to C-Murder, whom she usually calls Corey. "Inga called me and passed him the phone," she remembers. "It was like I had known him forever from that one conversation." The romance quickly took off. After she collapsed onstage in Washington, D.C., from a minor heart condition, Corey helped care for her while she spent a month in the hospital. He eventually proposed to her on a sky lift at Six Flags Over Georgia. But soon their careers began to pull them apart. "Distance drove us batty," she says. "The most I saw him was when I was in the hospital." Corey wound up marrying a woman in New Orleans. And contrary to rumor, Monica claims her relationship with him ended. "I would never commit adultery," she insists, eyes widening and voice rising for emphasis. "When he was married, being together wasn't an option." After the breakup, Monica reconnected with Weems back home in Atlanta. They had a lot of good times, she says. Nevertheless, tragedy struck on July 18, 2000. They were together at the graveside of Weems's brother Troy, who had died in an automobile accident at age 25 in 1998. Without warning, Weems put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. To this day, Monica won't talk about Weems's suicide, but the ordeal landed her at the center of a media circus. Whitney Houston (who became a big sister to Monica when the two collaborated on the soundtrack to The Preacher's Wife) knew that the tabloids would pounce. "Some weak-minded person is going to put their love for you and Jarvis to the side in pursuit of money," Houston warned Monica. Within weeks, The National Enquirer ran a story headlined: "Pop Star Monica Watches in Horror as Live-In Love Kills Himself." It featured a photo of a distraught Monica at the funeral and one of Weems in his casket. The paper's source was a close family friend. "The most hurtful thing I've ever experienced in my entire life is knowing that somebody that I hugged and called by their first name would call the Enquirer," she says. Monica believes the article also convinced people that she wouldn't recover from her sadness. "Grammy-winning songbird Monica may never smile again," the magazine claimed. "People seem to be surprised that I'm doing okay now," she says. "I'm actually doing well, thank you." She hopes her new album will shift attention away from the tragedy and back to her artistry as a singer and a budding songwriter. "Monica's got a lot of great ideas," says Jermaine Dupri of her lyrical prowess. "And she's got a lot of stories. The way she tells them, it's like you've never heard them before." Clive Davis is just as enthusiastic. "She's just on fire, and this album is going to knock everyone out," says the industry legend, who took Monica with him from his former label, Arista, to his latest venture, J Records. "She's one of very few artists-Whitney is another-who can sing anything." The album, which includes production by longtime collaborator Dallas Austin, Dupri, and Rodney Jerkins, also marks a return to Monica's hip hop roots. The new set blasts open with "I'm Back," featuring the sinister bass thumps from the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize." "U Deserve" uses the beat from 'Pac's bell-ringing "Hail Mary." The thumping groove "All Eyez on Me" features a Michael Jackson sample. And "If U Were the Girl" nabs its beat from C-Murder's "Down 4 My N's." It's just another place on the album where life and art coincide. This track will undoubtedly have people wondering whether Monica and Corey are still together. Though she says they're not, she remains supportive of him and frequently visits him in jail. "I don't know what God holds for either of us, but Corey and I will be the best of friends until the day I die," she says. As for any current relationships, she'll only say, "Within the next three to five years, I'll be married with children. Let me work it out, and I'll get back to you." Despite the fact that she will always be compared to Brandy, Monica doesn't feel as if she's working in her duet partner's shadow. "I've never wanted to be a pop phenomenon," she says. "I never wanted a doll made out of me." But they're on good terms; although they don't talk often, Brandy did call after Weems died, and her Full Moon album is in rotation in Monica's Benz. For the moment, though, Monica's concentrating on her own work. Back at SouthSide Studios, she returns to the booth to finish up the ad-libs that Dupri will add to "If U Were the Girl." Over a pounding, bass-heavy track, she delivers a series of melismatic flourishes that start low, rise to gospel-worthy highs, then dig deep again. Few of us will ever experience the mixture of pleasure and pain that's audible in Monica's voice. "A lot of things that have happened to me have been out of my control," she reflects later. "But the most important thing is that I've controlled them in the end." To Read The Vibe.com Interview With Monica click here

Article tags: VIBE, Magazine, Oct, 02, Monica, Pain, Love 

Page printed from:
http://www.vibe.com/news/magazine_features/2005/01/vibe_magazine_oct_02_monica_pain_love/

Return to previous page