UB Celebrates: 20th Anniversary of Monica’s ‘After The Storm’ + The T M H Drama

Monica‘s official third album release “After The Storm,” was released 20 years ago today – on June 17th, 2003.

The album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart and exploded with her sixth #1 single “So Gone.”

The album also featured the hits “Knock Knock, “U Should’ve Known Better”, and “Get It Off.”

“I felt like my other albums were more a reflection of what other people thought because I never participated in the writing,” Monica stated to Billboard. “This time, I started off by bringing ideas and poems in and having people work around them. It grew into me writing.”

By early 2002 Monica had completed what was to first be the third album, entitled “All Eyez on Me.” The title of the lead single, was produced by Rodney Jerkins.

The up-tempo dance track sampled the instrumental of Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.” Despite the early buzz and hot production and vocals, the single flopped at radio and with audiences.

Monica returned to the studio with Jermaine Dupri, and released “Too Hood.” That single also failed to take off for the album release.

By the end of 2002, the album had been delayed more than five times.

For Monica’s part, she was becoming increasingly frustrated that the album didn’t reflect where she wanted to go artistically. “See, I could hear the sound in my head,” she stated to Billboard. “But I hadn’t found anybody who could bring it to life. I don’t play any instruments. So I could hear this old sound and this old feel in my head, because my voice is that way and the type of music I love is that way. But I couldn’t find anybody to really get it.”

“Missy knew exactly what I was talking about,” Monica stated. “She was pulling out and playing old records instead of constantly in there hitting synthesizers trying to come up with a new sound.”

Missy ended up with three songs on the reworked third album release, “Get It Off,” and “Knock Knock” and “So Gone” was that smash that Monica needed.

“The music is real and it connects with my heart,” Monica stated. “That means that people get a piece of me when they get my album, instead of getting a piece of everybody from the label or every different producer. So I’m totally happy with it.”

During the Monica “All Eyez on Me” pre roll-out, T M H’s (UBG) fansite “Monica’s World,” was named the official fansite by J Records.

We at the time ran & designed a slew of successful fansites, that included “Faith Evans Online” (which became her official website), “Shanice World,” Kandi’s World,” “Usher World,” etc.

In that process, we fell into a blame game with Monica’s team and J Records. Till this day we have never publicly spoke in detail on it. We have an upcoming project in development that we finally speak on this situation as well.

For those not familiar, here’s the breakdown; J Records sent us a 6 song advance of songs from “All Eyez on Me.” With that, we were to select three that would be the focus tracks on the website.

A week after those singles were uploaded to the site, the tracklisting of the full album was revealed on retailer websites.

On Monica’s official website, her lead single “All Eyez on Me” was being streamed from J Records server. In the early days of streaming, it was a hyper link you would see in your browser, like the website URLs.

Once the tracklisting was revealed, some fans changed the name of the “All Eyez on Me,” to let’s say “U Deserve” and bam the song would start playing. The entire album was uploaded to the labels media website, which we had access to and could literally see the files.

So that is what caused the album to leak, many say it’s the reason for the reworked “After The Storm,” while others say it was an excuse, because the album already had two failed singles. Regardless, once the album leaked due to one of Monica’s die hard local fans, we were blamed.

How the story goes; Monica’s former manager and aunt Melinda Dancil was approached at church by said fan. Who went on to say, the leak was our fault because we had the advance album and bragged about it online. Take in mind again, we had a 6 track disc.

For whatever reason, Monica’s management then decided to use us as the scapegoat and J Records, allowed them to do so by not admitting fault.

So with that, we decided to quit doing the fansite and notified J Record with a letter (email) stating why we were no longer working with them nor supporting them or their acts. Needless to say we were pissed! However, what made matters worse was Monica herself.

Monica was interviewed by Ron Hall, then admin of the fansites Monica2000 and the Monica Digital Network. A T M H hater (more on that in the upcoming doc), so he got the opportunity to interview Monica while this was going on. The excerpts are below (we also have the audio).

“In a special interview with UrbanFanWorld and the Monica Digital Network, Monica took the time to talk to the sites’ own Ron about her music, the demise of Monicasworld, her visible fans, and Christianity.

The day of the interview, a statement by TMHEntertainment made it clear he was no longer promoting Monica or any J Records artist, “…effective immediately we will not be promoting them or their artists on our site. Yes Monica has been replaced for June AOM with Beyonce.’” – but it had also been stated by fans in contact with Monica’s management AND J Records that both parties had terminated their relationship, meaning TMH would no longer receive any artist updates to even put on his site, raising questions.

Ron asked Monica how she felt about the TMH Episode in reference to Monicasworld.com. “He put out a mixture of good and bad….I felt like if somebody’s gonna work with me or for me, that there definitely has to be positive people that reflect the things I reflect, so, if they don’t, they just have to go.”

That was the problem from our stand point, Monica speaking on a situation she clearly didn’t have all of the facts about. She gave the interviewer exactly what he wanted and that disappointed us. Not so much, that we felt it was just plain wrong, but also disloyal. T M H only did websites for our favorite artists, the ones we felt deserved all of the shine possible. That started with our founder Aries who was the biggest Monica fan from day one.

So for Monica to speak on it in the way she did was disappointing that she sided with a culture vulture instead of black owned T M H, like current day with websites. Celebs like Monica are still doing the same thing, but on a larger level. But that’s another conversation for another time.

J Records took responsibility some years later and we resumed our relationship with them. They put Aries on Monica’s Top Friends list, on the at the time poppin’ MySpace as a good gesture.

It’s important to say, since as UBG we’ve covered Monica’s birthday party in Atlanta in 2009. Melinda and our PR representative arranged that.

So through it all, no love was lost in the end. We have since supported Monica on her musical journey (simply use our search) and plan to continue doing so.

She’s a rare talent, of strength, beauty and resilience.

Until this day, Monica nor her management have apologized.

The subject matter Monica chose to deal with on her all-important third record “…is quite serious. I think more adults will be comfortable with my music. The truth is, I’ve grown up.” Produced by JD, “U Should’ve Known” is “about a relationship where everything is positive until something negative happens and the guy gets incarcerated.

Monica stated, “it is a situation I have experienced…” In the same way, “I Wrote The This Song,” produced by Soulshock & Karlin is based on real life: “It took a lot of courage for me to write that one. It’s about my first love who committed suicide and the song was my way of sharing the intimate situation between us. Some days, when I think about what happened, I cry. Writing the song was like a healing for me. I knew if I could write about that, I could write about anything…”

Monica‘s “After The Storm” was her first album to debut at #1 and to hard-core fans, her best album to date!

Take A Trip Down memory Lane with “After The Storm!”