During the duet's three-month reign on the Hot 100 - more specifically all of June, July, and August - Monica issued the like-titled album on Arista proper. The following May, the singer returned beside Brandy with "The Boy Is Mine," which topped the R&B and pop charts. Having appeared on the soundtracks for Panther (featured on "Freedom") and The Nutty Professor ("Ain't Nobody"), Monica made her biggest contribution to a film yet in 1996 with the Space Jam cut "For You I Will." Written by Diane Warren and produced by David Foster, the ballad became Monica's fourth consecutive Top Ten hit on the R&B and pop charts.
Band hit "Tell Me If You Still Care." Miss Thang later attained triple-platinum status. Monica also showed uncommon maturity on the Usher duet "Let's Straighten It Out," a vintage ballad that preceded the neo-soul movement by a couple years, and in a few collaborations with Tim & Bob, such as a cover of the S.O.S. Recorded over a period of three years, parent album Miss Thang arrived that July and was further boosted by "Before You Walk Out of My Life"/"Like This and Like That" and "Why I Love You So Much"/"Ain't Nobody," highly successful double A-sides made with the likes of Austin, Soulshock & Karlin, and Daryl Simmons. Signed to the former's Arista-affiliated Rowdy label, and managed by the latter, Monica debuted at the age of 14 with "Don't Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)." The Austin-produced single entered Billboard charts in April 1995, eventually crowned Hot R&B Singles, and missed the top of the Hot 100 by one spot. When she was 11 years old, a winning performance of "The Greatest Love of All," patterned after Whitney Houston's version, impressed a talent scout and led to connections with Dallas Austin and Queen Latifah. She started singing in church as a toddler and soon diversified by competing in talent shows. Monica Denise Arnold was born and raised outside Atlanta in College Park.
She has since gone independent with singles issued in anticipation of Trenches (2020), her ninth full-length.
COVER OF MONICA MISS THANG CODE
By the time Monica ended her major-label affiliation, following eighth album Code Red (2015), her catalog was deep and deceptively vast, ranging from Diane Warren-penned adult contemporary ballads to Millie Jackson-like broadsides, and from vintage-sounding slow jams produced by Missy Elliott to booming tracks straight from the streets of ATL. She put together four straight Top Ten albums, including the chart-topping After the Storm (2003), and each one involved established and emergent Georgians as producers, fellow songwriters, and featured artists. Just as she and early supporter Dallas Austin were key to the emergence of the Atlanta music scene in the '90s, Monica was a major factor in the city's dominance across the next two decades. Her follow-up, The Boy Is Mine (1998), also went multi-platinum, powered by the Brandy duet of the same title, which for three months topped the Hot 100 before it took that year's Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Like those peers, Monica proved to be no mere shooting star. She stood out with distinctly Southern grit and boldness, as well as unmatched maturity and versatility that belied her age. When Monica arrived in the wake of the new jack swing era with the multi-platinum Miss Thang (1995), the singer was among a class of teenaged pop-R&B newcomers with the likes of Usher, Brandy, and Aaliyah.
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