60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Brandy and Monica—“The Boy Is Mine”

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

Rob explores R&B stars Brandy and Monica’s legendary duet “The Boy Is Mine” by discussing the extent to which the two singers’ purported feud was true and how, regardless of its legitimacy, it shaped a compelling narrative around the song. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Naima Cochrane Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen, in 2020, amid suffocating COVID-19 lockdowns, along with various political, cultural, and personal tragedies, we took our joy, we took our solace, we took our partially renewed faith in the resilience of the human spirit where we could find it. And so it was that on a Monday night, on August 31st, 2020, 1.2 million of us or so took solace in the spectacle of the mononymous R&B singers Brandy and Monica, first, arguing about and then harmonizing on a song called sideline ho. Monica's song, Sideline Ho, which for your reference starts like this. I'm all in on sideline ho already, frankly. Okay, so there we were, alone together, glued to our respective smartphones, on our respective groaning couches, munching on our respective sourdough starters on a Monday night at the ass end of summer 2020, which at the time felt like the ass end of world history. And we're nearly two and a half hours into the Brandy and Monica versus beat battle on Instagram live. I hope that if you're listening

to this even like three months after I'm recording it here in early summer 2021, I genuinely hope that you either don't know what a versus beat battle is or you've already forgotten. I don't mean that ugly. It was a brilliant idea. We desperately needed it at the time. My assumption that you might not know what I'm talking about is aspirational. I wish you didn't know so for 10 seconds, I'm going to pretend like you don't. So versus two major historical artists in R&B a rep. Trading classic songs, quick clips of classic songs for three hours or so on Instagram Live, Timberlin versus Swiss Beats.

That was the first one. The whole concept was their idea. The Rizza versus DJ Premier, Mani Fresh versus Scott Storch. Gucci-Mane versus Gizi. That was the wildest one. Erica Badu versus Jill Scott. was the best one. 20 rounds, song for song, lots of stories, lots of digressions, lots of beefs, squashed, lots of awkwardness, lots of charming technical difficulties, hundreds of thousands of captive

viewers, for starters, eventually a million plus. The battle was never the point, obviously. The virtual camaraderie, the resilience of the human spirit. That was the point. The comment section was the point. The only comment section you should ever read. Celebrities, politicians, fellow superstar, artists revealing themselves to be super fans, whatever. The Brandy and Monica Versus started with a video dedication from Kamala Harris, who'd been named as Joe Biden's VP pick earlier that August, and who was wearing a Howard University t-shirt, and who was of the opinion that in a few months everyone should go out and vote.

The comments section featured a heated argument between Solange Knowles and Tyler the creator as to where Monica was wearing pants or giant boots. The overall vibe was so wholesome, so celebratory. so necessary, given the scarcity of virtually any other form of human contact. We're all in this together. We're all riding out the awful tragedy of this present moment together by submerging ourselves in the warm bubble bath of the past. Golden hits and near hits of yesteryear.

That was the versus beat battle vibe in 2020. Revert to an idealized past. Not the noblest impulse, maybe. Tony Soprano once said that remember when is the lowest form, of conversation. But Tony Soprano never had to throw a Zoom birthday party for a nine-year-old. We all did the best we could. And many of us turned to unabashed nostalgia in this bizarre and terrible moment as a means of doing the best we could. At least one of us started a podcast about songs from the 1990s in this bizarre and terrible moment. However, speaking to you now at the onset

of summer 2021, we got vaccines, we got tentative social rebirth, we got indoor dining, We got parties. We got a new Lord single. We got better Lord Singles coming, I assume. We got the cover of the new Lord single. We got the horniest summer in world history on deck. We don't need Versus anymore. We are grateful for its service, but now we should forget it ever happened. It's better for the future if we confine versus beat battles to a comically arduous stretch of the recent past. Okay, sorry, sorry. Okay, so anyway, sideline home. Monica's fifth album, The Makings of Me, released in 2006, first during the Brandy and Monica versus the playful argument. Monica plays the song. Brandy wonders aloud if this song is too risque for her own young daughter, who is among the 1.2 million viewers on Instagram Live, and she further wonders aloud if Monica could just call it sideline blank, and Brandy chops the air with her hand to indicate where the paws would go to suggest the offending word without saying it. Monica, semi-playfully, totally rejects this suggestion.

My daughter is watching. I've been on my best behavior all day because they said this was going like all over the world. Not going to be sideline. No, see, that you can't feel the impact of. Right. But you felt it when I said, oh. A valid point by Monica. Versus beat battles do not have an official coherent point structure, but we are awarding the point to Monica anyway. Monica keeps singing, and then gloriously, Brandy starts harmonizing with her. You have to go, Oh!

Do it again. You felt it, do it again. You saw it, watch it, watch it happen again. Hold on me with the harmony. Sorry, baby. Ho. When to get in. How.

Genuinely, I hope you have forgotten how badly the world needed this moment in August 2020, how we reveled in the musical and metaphysical heart of Brandy and Monica in the same room together for the first time in eight or nine years, by their own estimation. The shaky but sincere reconciliation of this moment, even if it was fleeting. They bonded over what unites them. They're both multi-million albums selling multi-hyphenate R&B stars who started out as precocious teenagers, as pre-teenagers in the 90s. Their fathers both sang in a cappella groups. Both of these women have sung in the studio while pregnant. It feels different.

They're both currently on independent record labels. That too. They've both been through some shit, to put it mildly. They're both single in this moment, at least, basically. At one point, they were both on the urge of trash-talking Usher, but then they didn't. They're both mystified by the fact that the words dope and lit are no longer cool. They both acknowledge, in their own ways, that a song sung by a 12-year-old girl of course sounds, but also feels very different than that same song sung by a 40-year-old woman.

It was all tremendously heartening, and what a huge payoff, two hours and 55 minutes into this revitalizing experience. When they finally got around to playing the one song, they both knew 1.2 million people especially wanted to hear. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s, and that is the final fantasy menu screen-ass harp riff to the boy is mine. the 1998 duet between Brandy and Monica. That's a compliment. The first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for them both. A Grammy winner for Best R&B vocal performance by a duo or group. I love the Grammys.

For them both. The signature song for them both. And, unsurprisingly, a durable source of gossip and innuendo and Cold War superpower tension and outright hostility between them both. because no matter how splendidly their voices might blend together, and no matter how huge this song still is, it's clear that this town still ain't big enough for the two of them. You remember that show The Good Wife,

CBS Legal Drama, semi-prostegious, ran from 2009 to 2016. If you watched it, you know exactly why I'm bringing this up. If you don't know it, Julianna Margulies and Archie Punjabi played former best friends who had a falling out on the show so huge that the actresses themselves had a falling out in real life so huge that they stopped appearing in scenes together and in fact couldn't stand to be in the same room together even for their big dramatic series finale goodbye scene. So in this final scene, their characters are supposed to be drinking together at a bar.

That's it. But it's super obviously a split screen to disguise the fact that it's two separate shots filmed separately because the actresses couldn't sit next to each other in a bar. incredible. Let's just say I was relieved watching the Brandy and Monica verses. Whenever they did occasionally cross the plane of the middle of the screen and briefly make physical contact. They high-fived at one point. It was wild, awkward. It was fantastic. They were in the same room. I'm 99.9% certain. For all their career parallels, these are very different people. Brandy read several of her poems and was not dressed in head-to-to-fendi as Monica was. Monica appears to be quite

peeped to this day that she was not invited to contribute to the blockbuster soundtrack to the 1995 Whitney Houston vehicle waiting to exhale as Brandy was. Brandy overall is way more acting experience than Monica does. Brandy says she gets so fixated on a song's minor details that she worries she's suppressing a song's emotion. Monica says some of her best songs she sung in one take, no edits, no fussing over the details whatsoever. Brandy has, let's say, a goofier sense of humor than Monica does. They could not agree on a working definition of the word groan, G-R-O-W-N, as it might pertain to an R&B song. And when it finally came time to sing the boy is mine together, Monica didn't want to sing it. So she didn't. They hugged again at this point, not gracefully. And

Monica didn't seem like much of a hugger, or a brandy hugger anyway. Lots of memes and what have you. For a song in which two teenage girls argue over a boy who is clearly seriously dating both of them, Brandy and Monica do figure this out by the end of the music video, at least. The boy's mind is deceptively serene. They hardly raise their voices. It's like they'd be screaming at each other if they weren't stuck in a crowded library. Like they're trying not to wake up a sleeping baby. It's a knife fight with no knives, just side eyes. This is a cold war. This is liquid nitrogen incarnate. They trade off lines, but their voices intertwined so exquisitely that sometimes it doesn't feel like a duet at all. You remember that Wall Street Journal article from 2019 about the fight scenes

and the fast and furious movies where Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, and the Rock don't want to lose a fight? So it's basically written into their contracts that they can't lose a fight. And Vin Diesel's sister often stands there on set, counting how many punches Vin Diesel takes. So presumably he can then throw exactly that many punches. And if one guy throws another guy through a wall, then the guy who got thrown through a wall gets to immediately throw the guy who threw him through a wall through another wall. The boy's mind is like that. Neither Brandy nor Monica is allowed to win, which is to say neither of them can stand out. I like to imagine a sweating intern in the recording studio holding some kind of top secret high-tech malisma counter, like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, to make sure neither

singer out sings the other, even by one note, the serenity. The musical detente of this song is enforced only through the threat of unimaginable violence. Let's start with Brandy. Brandy's career started first. Brandy, in fact, co-wrote and co-produced The Boy is Mine and brought Monica in to help sing it, and she doesn't mind telling you that, or for that matter, she doesn't mind reminding Monica of that in the virtual presence of 1.2 million people. Brandy Norwood was born. in Macomb, Mississippi in 1979. Her younger brother is William Ray Norwood Jr., better known as Ray J. Pass. Her mother, Sonia, once told People magazine, I knew Brandy was going to be a star the day she was born. The family moved to L.A. when Brandy was four years old to help make Brandy a star.

In 1993, Brandy starred in the short-lived ABC sitcom Thea, led by stand-up comedian Thea Vidal. If you read any gossip blogs, you know that Brandy, and Thea will not be having a drink together at the bar, IRL, anytime soon. The show lasted one season. At one point, Brandy's character sang Aretha Franklin's version of respect in the family living room for not entirely organic plot-based reasons. Notably, that quick vocal run is flashier. It lights up the melisma counter more ostentatiously than a lot of the singing on Brandy's actual debut album, simply called Brandy, and released in 1994. She was 15 years old when this album came out, 15 and a half.

Keep that in mind. Relative to her friends and rivals in 90s R&B, Brandy, or Monica, for that matter, is not a belter, is not an octave-swooping, walking volcano diva la Mariah Carey. It's not a raging waterfall of defiant vulnerability a la Mary J. Blige. Pretty soon, both Brandy and Monica will meet and will be mentored by, and eventually will fight over who was closer to Whitney Houston. But even if they can both sing killer versions of Whitney Houston songs, they're not quite 9.0 earthquake-triggering Whitney Houston type singers either. What I hear most on Brandy's first record is the smooth and sultry and electrifyingly laid-back insinuation of Janet Jackson.

And I'm saying this as a person who loves Janet Jackson. It's a triumph of vibe. On her debut single, I Want to Be Down, it's a level of chill that burns hotter than the sun. Brandy, the album, sold 4 million copies in America and spawned three top 10 hits. Baby is the best. Though none of those charted quite as high as sitting up in my room, which appeared on, yes, 1995's Waiting to Exhale soundtrack and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

One spot higher than Mary J. Blige's Not Going Cry, also from Waiting to Exhale, and one spot below the permanently chart-topping Leviathan that was One Sweet Day. of Mariah Carey and Boys de Men. Brandy had found her niche. The chill was strong. In January 1996, Brandy starred in her own goddamn sitcom Moesha on the UPN network,

and Moesha ran for six seasons and cemented Brandy as an extremely famous person. Famous, but, as the first 15 seconds of the Moesha pilot may clear, relatable. They say the first love is the perfect love. Something I won't know for

two more months because my Amish father won't let me date or use electricity until I'm 16. But what's the difference? With this gigantic Zit on my face, no boy would want me anyway. So I had quite an emo moment recently with this photo of Brandy, a 17-year-old Brandy attending the senior prom for Lower Marion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia in the spring of 1996. It's a photo of Brandy and her prom date, Kobe Bryant, who is all also 17, who was a celebrity star athlete for Lower Marion High School, but was way less famous than Brandy outside of Lower Marion High School. Kobe already had a $2 million Adidas endorsement deal, but of course he hadn't hit the NBA draft yet. They'd met earlier in 96 at the Essence Award, so then later he asked her to the prom, his prom in suburban Pennsylvania, where Brandy did not live.

This was what kids in 1996 were not calling a flex. It's pretty dope, actually. Anyway, maybe you've seen these photos of Brandy and Kobe, all dolled up for the prom. Talk about reverting to an idealized past. They're standing next to a white limo. They're embracing gracefully. They're smiling, beaming, really, radiant. She's wearing a champagne-colored machino gown.

He's got his little boutonier. 17, both of them. Not as famous as they're going to get. Haven't gone through all the shit they're going to go through. haven't made the mistakes, the very public mistakes. Arguably, in some cases, the terrible and unforgivable mistakes they're going to make. Mistakes is not the word in some cases. Innocent is a ridiculous and overwrought word to use to describe two teenagers.

And if you want to find the darkness, the dark side of these photos, look at anyone else's face, bodyguards, other photographers, bystanders, all at that half-vigilant and half-dead look that people get around celebrities. The brutal divide between these two radiant people and much of the rest of the world is already apparent here. But still, this photo took me out, the sweetness of it, just the weight of everything these two 17-year-olds blissfully don't know. I'm so grateful on their behaves for everything they don't know. So then I'm imagining just Brandy and Kobe dancing at the prom. What did they dance to at the prom in spring 1996?

The answer is probably one sweet day by Mariah Carey and Boys Demen. Brandy actually dated Juan E. Morris from Boys to Men. I also went to prom in spring 1996, and don't worry, I'm not going to talk about it, other than to tell you that the one song I do remember dancing to is Shies If I Ever Fall in Love. So part of me wants to leave Brandy and Kobe on that dance floor. 17 forever, slow dancing to that. Okay, sorry, sorry, okay. Monica Denise Arnold was born in Atlanta in 1980.

She started singing in a traveling gospel choir when she was 10. To my mind, somewhat like Brandy, the real action in Monica's voice has always been at the low end, the darkness, the depth, the soul. Plus her comfort with rap music, or at least the beat-heavy propulsion of rap music, to rival Mary Jay Blige herself, particularly on Monica's debut single, Don't Take It Personal, Just One of Them Days. And the swagger also that's all over Monica's debut album, 1995's Miss Thang, the disconcertingly youthful swagger.

Monica noted during the Versus battle that she was 12 years old when she recorded the song like this and like that. Here in summer 2021, there's this ongoing critical kerfuffle over Olivia Rodriguez, right? And the bizarre spectacle of 30-something or 40-something music critics vibing too hard to music made by literally a teenage girl, but Monica's nowhere near close to getting her driver's license at this point. By the Moesha scale, she's got four years or so to go before her father will even let her date boys or use electricity. Ms. Thang sold 1.5 million copies or so in America. Don't take it personal peep at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

Bested only by Brian Adams, have you ever really loved a woman? Not Brian's finest work, as prom themes go, but okay, okay. Monica had another top five hit with the ballad for You I Will, which was written by power ballad queen Diane Warren and first appeared in 1996 on the Space Jam soundtrack. As Monica also noted during Versus, movie soundtracks just hit different in the 90s. They had harder.

So both these singers, Brandy and Monica, are poised to make huge leaps, artistic and otherwise with their respective second albums in 1998. And perversely, Thanks to what they both insisted was the mostly fake and media-generated feud already allegedly raging between them, they're destined to make that huge leap together. The Boy is Mine was written by LaShawn Daniels, then at the beginning of a pop hitmaker career for the likes of Destiny's Child,

late period Michael Jackson, and Lady Gaga, Rodney Jerkins, aka Dark Child, near the beginning of his own pop hitmaker and super producer career, Rodney's brother, Fred Jerkins, Jaff Tehada, and Brandy herself, who also co-produced the song with Dark Child and fellow Big Shot hitmaker Dallas Austin. Truly a mesmerizing moment. Two hours and 55 minutes into their verses beat battle when Brandy solemnly explains the genesis of The Boy is Mine and gracefully threads the needle of getting two points across.

One, this song wasn't the same without Monica. And two, this song did exist before Monica. What you brought to the song, it just, it just, it just, just took it to a different place. And that's why I punted you down and asked you to be a part of this song. Because this, the boy's mind was actually like my first single. But I couldn't, I couldn't release it because I knew that it was missing you. In 2017, my former ringer colleague, Victor Luckerson, wrote a piece on how Brandy and

Monica stacked up to each other on Spotify, statistically, in terms of play counts, in terms it hits in terms of lasting influence. At the time, Brandy had more than 111 million total streams, whereas Monica had a little under 105 million total streams, so still practically neck and neck. You can explain how tightly

bound to one another these two singers are still in numbers, or you can just listen to how tightly bound their voices are on what will forever remain their biggest hit for them both. They trade off lines during the verses on the boy's mind. They take turns going first. So in the second verse,

Monica starts getting extra heated just as the baseline gets extra chunky. But Brandy fires right back and takes advantage of the fact that whoever goes second gets to then show off over the chorus a little bit. But it's totally even. No one is allowed to win. No one is allowed to throw the other one through a wall. We don't generally like Thai games here in America. Shout out to Ted Lassow. And that tension or really that lack of cathartic victorious release, maybe explains the fascination some of us have with the idea that Brandy and Monica really don't like each other in real life. Both Brandy and Monica have worked very hard to dispel that idea. Monica in a 2003 book by Fred Bronson called The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, put it this way. Quote, we didn't even know each other. I had never even seen her before because I listened to a lot of gospel music.

From the time she was released and I was released, instantly people compared us and we never understood it. It's like they chose the two of us out of the bunch to put it odds. They never did it with me and Aaliyah or Brandy and Aaliyah. It was always Brandy and Monica. That's why we took the song and brought humor to a situation that people had tried to make so serious. We thought it would be really funny to show us feuding in the video

and then come together at the end because we wanted people to let go of the idea of us not liking each other, but of course they haven't. There are pretty good reasons why people haven't let go of that idea. The day of the versus battle in August 2020, Naima Cochran wrote a great piece for the medium publication, Zora, that broke down the decades-long timeline of Brandy versus Monica. We'll be talking to Naima in a few minutes here. So, yes, Brandy and Monica tried to record their parts for the boy as mine together, but that didn't work. They sounded too much like each other.

Monica, quote, I had toned it down a notch because I have a really strong. voice. Yeah, so Brandy recorded with Dark Child in L.A. And Monica recorded with Dallas, Austin, in Atlanta. And they blended the two recordings together. And the smiling through gritted teeth unease of that arrangement is audible, I think. Yes, Rodney Jerkins once said, they almost got into a fight so I had to remove them from each other.

It was reality TV before it happened. The Boy is Mine was released as a single in May 1998. the number one song in America for the entire summer of 1998, all of June through all of August. Brandy's second album, Never Say Never, came out in June 1998. The Boy is Mine was track three. Monica's second album came out in July 1998. The Boy is Mine was track two. Also, and this is important, Monica's second album was called The Boy Is Mine. Brandy was reportedly greatly displeased to hear this. Though in Monica's defense, Monica was reportedly greatly displeased when Brandy performed The Boy is Mind without her on Jay Leno's Tonight Show in May, featuring several backup dancers, one of whom was remarkably out of tune. In September, during rehearsals for their joint performance of the Boy's Mind at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Yes, Monica punched Brandy in the face backstage. Dallas Austin discussed this in some detail in a Vlad TV interview back in 2019. maybe too much detail. Monica never liked Brandy and Brandy now, you know, she was like, Monica's very ghetto when it came down to it. She was like, she's too proper and she's too this. And I think Brandy might have looked at her a certain way a couple of times and looked at her like the little, you know.

He says Monica didn't want to do the boy's mind at all, but he talked her into it. The label talked her into it. And that separate studios arrangement worked out just fine. When it came time for the VMAs, well, maybe they should have filmed it as a proto good wife split screen deal. And before they could even get to the stage, Monica decked in the face,

popped in the face backstage. And I'm like, oh my God, this is even before the performance. So everybody's trying out how we're going to have a performance that looked like they're not, you know, at war with each other. But it worked out because the song we were supposed to be at war with each other. So nobody could really tell the shit pushed in the face before the performance. The VMA's performance of the boy is mine is indeed a sort of architectural marvel. Brandy and Monica are isolated high up on giant platforms on opposite sides of the stage with giant staircases leading down and a dozen or so backup dancers and pajamas, I think, providing most of the movement.

It's like they're yelling at each other from third-story apartment windows across a highway from each other. The distance between them feels court-ordered. They both sing the hell out of the song, but that physical distance between Brandy and Monica is the main character of this performance. The song doesn't work if you don't believe that they can't stand to be even less than six feet apart from each other. When they finally do walk down their respective staircases and take center stage and risk getting within six feet of each other, it's an electric moment whether you know all the rumors or not. Monica sings, not yours. Brandy sings, but mine.

You decide what they're really saying. I should note that Monica late in 1998 had another number. one hit, all her own this time with the first night, and then another solo number one in early 1999 with Angel of Mine. I should note that Brandy had a solo number one hit in early 1999 with Have You Ever. I should note that Monica has put out six more solo albums and Brandy's put out five. I should note that in 2012, they did another joint single called It All Belongs to Me. It's not a sequel per se, though the vibe is definitely your shit is mine. That's actually really funny. It was isn't that good a song. Monica admitting in joint interviews with Brandy that she got physical with

Brandy that one time at the VMAs, that was sweeter music to some ears. Brandy live at the Essence Fest in 2018, changing the lyrics from The Boy is Mine to The Song is Mine, that was sweeter music to some ears. The Boy Is Mine is so good at depicting vicious interpersonal conflict that it manifested vicious interpersonal conflict between the two women who sang it. It's like a cursed artifact in a horror movie. But I'm hung up on another thing Brandy said in that Versa's battle where they patched it all up or pretended to anyway. And it just felt so natural, it wasn't forced. You remember we went to Six Flags and hung out and just, and you know, we just got to know each other.

It just, we clicked. And when you got on the song, it was just like the perfect, it was the perfect match. Brandy and Monica together at six flags. That's the idealized past I want to revert to right now. Let's get a famous photo of that. Two teenage blockbuster R&B singers side by side in the front row of a roller coaster as it crests a hill a mile high, hands in the air, united in their terror and their exhilaration,

securing everything they don't know, the best of friends forever. If they hadn't had a hit song together, maybe they would have been the best of friends. But if they'd been the best of friends, we wouldn't have gotten the hit song. Our guest today is music and culture journalist Naima Cochran, who specializes in Legacy Soul, R&B, and hip-hop through the storytelling series Music Sermon. Naima, thanks so much for being here today. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

So the day of the Brandy and Monica versus Battle, you wrote what for me is the definitive account of the Brandy and Monica feud, like the decades-long feud. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Thank you for that. As a starting point, is the boy as mine a song sung by two people who already didn't like each other? Or is this a song that later made two people not like each other? Like, which came first, the song or the feud?

So I think it was a little of both. It was a song that was sung by two people who were very different, even though they were the same age and they were peers. and both very young at the time. Let's remember, like, Monica and Brandy were young teenagers when they did the boy his mind. Monica and Brandy weren't the type of girls who would have been friends naturally. I think that Brandy thought Monica was a little hood,

and I think that Monica thought Brandy was a little bougie. And there was already a bit of tension between them, even though they didn't know each other, just based on comparisons. But by all accounts, the tension already existed on set in recording and on the video set. So whether it was from a real place or from a made-up place that became a real place, it existed as the song was coming into being.

Right. What qualities do Brandy and Monica share as singers and as artists? Are there more similarities than differences in their musical styles? The primary thing is Brandy and Monica are part of a very, very small R&B, class. Them plus Alia, plus Usher, who is the sole outlier, because he's the guy in the group, they all debuted within about a year of each other. And there's really nobody else, anybody else kind of around them is either significantly older or significantly younger. So part of the comparison was just the fact that Brandy and Monica debuted very close together. But I think the fact that

they did debut so close together, but their music was so different. Brandi was very like, good girl, sweet kid. Monica's album was literally called Miss Thang. Like she's posing on the cover. Right, right, right. It's sass. It's attitude. So I think that kind of started it from the beginning. Alia had her own lane. But I think with the two of them, it was very much like, the nice girl and the sassy girl, the sugar and spice that kind of kept things moving. But what is important to note about them is that they are both, you know, really talented

vocalists. They both had ranged beyond their years. But also that they both had in their first couple of albums, heavy pop popularity is redundant. But, you know, a heavy crossover popularity. Right. They were both pop stars. I think people forget because Monica has stayed in a very urban pocket later in her career,

especially now that she's an independent recording artist. But Monica had rhythmic dance and pop hits as well. Right. You know, Diane Warren hits, you know, like during her first couple of albums. Yeah. So that class of the mid-90s, if it's just four people, if it's Monica, Brandi, Leah, Usher, is there any, what's the common thread between them musically, you know, and why is it confined to just those four people now? The one reason is confined in them is just timing. Tevin Campbell would have been the closest, but he was older. Like a Tevin, Shanice, Tracy Spencer, they were all a little bit older. But the thing that was unique about them is that they were singing songs that

transcended just like kids' music. Right. This was not teeny bopper music. All of their first albums, Brandy's is probably the most age-appropriate, but, you know, this was before the split between mainstream and urban adult radio, but grown-ups were listening to this, right?

And buying it and purchasing it as well as kids. So it's like they were kids, but they were not singing music that was made for kids. They were just singing straight up R&B. Yeah, even listening to them, now, I have to actively remind myself that they're like 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. Like, they sound older. Yeah.

It was produced by Bab, executive produced by Puffy, so that's one thing. But there was literally not a single lyric that was changed for age of appropriateness. It could have really been a 30-year-old man singing all of that stuff. And it would have, you know, come across the same. And even with Brandy, her stuff was more child-friendly, maybe, but it still was not kitty. None of it was kidding. They weren't, and they weren't marketed as child stars either. You know, yeah, yeah, they would play the younger stuff, but this wasn't a scream tour era. Like, they were, they were very much in the pocket with adults. Yeah. So does the boy's mind work

because of what Brandy and Monica share, or does it work because of the difference between them? Like, is this song about a sneaky kind of harmony or is it about outright conflict? I genuinely think it's about both. I think it works in part because there was like this assumed tension between them and that comes across in the video and in the song. And I think it also works because they were peers. It kind of reminds me it was almost like a precursor to when Mariah and Whitney finally did the Prince of Egypt theme later.

People would always just assume that Whitney and Mariah didn't want to work together and they weren't going to sing together. And it's not even that they're similar vocalists. they are just both of a certain caliber. And that's what I will say about Monica and Brandy. They're not just the fact that there weren't other artists kind of like their age, but even when you rank them against artists

that have come after them, who debuted older than them, they still both are of a very kind of rarefied vocal caliber now, right? Right, right. So I think it was also that. Like, even though they weren't the same kind of singers, they were both very talented singers with a lot of emotion and a lot of depth and, um, again, a lot of maturity and kind of a holdover from like 80 soul singers in an era where we were kind of losing that and going more towards vocal production.

And I think that also kind of made them interesting to put together in that way. Yeah. Do you personally prefer Brandy to Monica or the reverse? Like, is it necessary to take a side? I'm not going to say I have a side, but even though I'm, listen, I'm a fan of both women. I think they're both dynamic. Sure. I always connected to Monica's music more closely than I did to Brandy's.

And I was having this conversation with some friends. So I was in college when both of them came out. And, you know, Brandy stuff, I thought Brandy stuff was cute. I liked Baby. I liked I want to be down. Sure. I want to be down remixes still in my favorite remixes to date. Absolutely.

But Monica's first album, I will still put that on and kill it. I just, I love her choices. I love her tone. I love her style. And again, maybe it's because Monica sounded really grown and I was a little bit older. But I think that Monica has had better, or at least during her height, I think she had better songs chosen for her maybe than Brandy did. Brandy sometimes to me didn't feel, she didn't feel comfortable in her stardom all the time to me. Yeah.

Which is a whole other thing I think she started to deal with. But I think that's what I sensed from her, and it kept me from connecting to Brandy in a certain way, but I felt like I could connect. Like, I felt like I could see Monica on the street and know her. Yeah. Listening to the first Monica record, before you walk out of my life is my favorite song.

Yeah, that's the one that gets me every time still. Yeah. Reading your article, I am fascinated by the Whitney Houston aspect of this feud. I think it's become about Whitney. It wasn't about Whitney. Yes. But I think now for Brandy, so Brandy, how can I say this and not sound really, let me be tactful. Everybody obviously took Whitney Houston's death and the loss of Whitney very hard.

Yeah. Brandy has taken it extremely hard. And I think that's in part because, you know, she was a showbiz kid. She was a child actor. She had a momager. And she's very much been, if you think about, like, you don't see Brandy with a lot of people, right? Like, over years, you haven't really seen. seen a lot of pictures of Brandy like she's in the club or she's with a girls. She's,

it's very like, she's like, is Ray J over here? It's my daughter over here. It's my mama over here. This is what we're doing. And I think for that reason, in part, her attachment to Whitney is, is so strong. Whereas Monica, like, she's out here. She's been with everybody in Atlanta. You know, like she's with everybody in R&B. It's whatever. So I think that Monica and Brandy connected to Whitney on very different levels. And they both represent. sides of Whitney to me. Like, Whitney had this very shiny, polished pop exterior for the first part of her career and then was like, bump that.

I'm going to give you all Whitney from Newark. And that's the Monica side of, that's the Monica part that Whitney relates to, right? Yeah. And I think that Brandy kind of feels like maybe there's a finite amount of Whitney ownership to go around. It's very strange to me. I don't completely understand it because they could both. very much have had their own special relationships with,

it might also have something to do with the fact that Ray J was dating Whitney. I don't know. It's a very, it's been odd to me, but I do feel like the beef between them, which has been very much, in my opinion, one-sided for the last several years, has been more about Whitney than anything else, which is odd.

Yeah, what I was gonna ask you is like, does it predate Whitney's death, you know, Or just suddenly something about her death. Like, you're right that, like, Brandy is acting like there is a specific quantity of Whitney Houston, like, stardust. And she has a larger percentage of it now. It's just a very bizarre way to quantify something like this. Yeah, it is. And especially because Whitney was very generous to other singers, period.

Her peers and singers underneath her. So it's a very odd to me to not. like an Aretha where Aeth is going to send somebody a fax and correct them about something they said in a funeral about her relationship. You know, so it's like, so it's just a very odd stance to me for someone to take. I can't speak to anyone's grief. But yeah, I don't remember it being a thing before Whitney's death, but also I knew Whitney was close with Monica. And I think that actually is the other thing. I think Whitney was actually, I think Whitney actually had a deeper personal.

relationship with Monica. Whereas her relationship with Brandy was professional. And maybe there was some personal there, because again, dating her brother, but, or whatever you wanted to find what they were doing. But Monica didn't share the story about how

Whitney literally went to Atlanta, found her, stayed with her to make sure she was good after her boyfriend had committed suicider from her. Monica didn't share this story until after Whitney died. And that seemed to trigger Brandy.

Right. And I really don't think Monica was thinking about Brandy at all. Right. When she shared that story. Yeah. Yeah. And when they did their, it all belongs to me, a reunion, which I think was shortly after Whitney's death. They actually said initially that her death made them realize that they needed to not beef with each other.

But then somehow it became about Whitney. It's really bizarre. It's really bizarre. It is bizarre. Given that there's no boy that Brandy and Monica were fighting for in real life, how ridiculous is it to hear

the boy is mine as if they're fighting over Whitney Houston? It feels like it's about Whitney now. It does like it's about Whitney now. And, you know, that really is the most fascinating thing. And I think the reason that this Monica versus Brandy thing has even endured so long

is that nobody can really point to what the origins of it are. You know, and I think that's actually allowed it to kind of keep going. It's a self-perpetuating thing, you know? Sure. If Brandy and Monica loved each other and were best friends and had always been best friends, is The Boy Is Mine as big a hit? And would we remember it as fondly as we do?

Or does this song need them to permanently be at odds with each other? You know, if Monica and Brandy had loved each other, I actually think The Boy is Mine, even though it's one of the, if not the best-selling female duet ever, it actually would have had longer legs because they didn't perform together. They didn't tour. They didn't tour.

Imagine a Brandi and Monica tour. Imagine, you know, there was one performance of the boy as my life with the two of them, ever. You know, imagine what that could have been. I think it actually could have been even bigger. Absolutely.

No, you're right. Absolutely. Monica said at one point that they pitted her against Brandi from the beginning. They didn't compare Brandy to a or Monica to Alea. For some reason, there was this specific media fixation on Brandy versus Monica,

even before the boy is my like, does that track for you? Or does every female singer get compared to every other female? It does. And what I'll say with that is that for one, and I had to think back on this, but for one, I think what some listeners have to remember, because it is easy to forget almost 30 years later, is that we used to have a lot of R&B artists. Like, there used to be a lot of women on the chart.

There used to be a lot of women on the chart. And a lot of them crossed over. Like, there were a lot, right? And there was room and there was different styles and all of that. Right. What I think happened is that when Alia first came out, she was so closely identified with Art Kelly that it almost didn't leave room for them to put her in the same conversation in a real way with Monica and Brandy.

It just didn't fit. You never saw her without R. She was like a little R protege, but whatever, which is now, you know, a totally different. thing to consider. I think when, if I'm not mistaken, Alia was the first to come out of the three of them. And I think part of what happened was when Alia first debuted, she was so closely identified with R. Kelly.

You never saw her without R. Kelly. And she didn't do a lot of press. She didn't seem that accessible her personality, which now, of course, from a 2021 lens is a whole different conversation. But I think that might have been part of the reason why she did not get included in conversations with Brandy and Monica as often. Because for example, even though Monica was a Dallas Austin protege, you didn't really see her identify with Dallas.

You know, these were two young women who just seemed like they were young women, whereas with Aaliyah, she felt a little older, she skewed a little older, she read a little older because she was doing our Kelly material. Yeah. Because it makes me think about Nikki Minaj and Cardi B, right? The instant Cardi appears, like they have to fight. And maybe that's because, as you say, like, there's just the play. There's this highlander mentality now, which is very weird.

I mean, and, you know, part of that is about how the business has changed. As much as urban music has grown over the past 20 years, R&B has gotten smaller. And we're just seeing it grow again. And we went through almost a whole decade where the only black female rapper on the pop charts was Nikki, which is kind of crazy. And so now we're kind of seeing a level set, right? Thankfully. And I don't know if it was like the rise of the stand armies or what, but I don't know where this whole like, you know, we only have room for Rihanna and then Beyonce and then Nikki.

And that's it. That's the triumvir and that's what's going to be. I never understood where that came from, ever. But I can see where the press were comparing them. And then definitely after the boy is mine. Like I read an article that someone who is now I consider a friend, as a journalist peer did. And I was like, if you were to read this back to yourself,

I was like, you're going to be horrified if you read this back to yourself right now. Because even it was like, you know, Monica's the rata-dye chick and Brandy's like, she's boring, but she's cute. And I was like, you're really going to actually be mortified if you read it right now. So, yes, the press definitely,

the media definitely, like, didn't help at all. But the reality is, and I think we saw this in the verses, they are very different women. Like, even as adults, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brandy was very, like, Brandy's acting shocked that Monica is cussing is like,

my daughter's over there. Your daughter is 18 years old. What are you talking about right now? I was like, what? She can handle it. She's all right. And Rachel is her uncle. I'm quite certain that she's heard this language before.

So, you know, it's just little differences between them still. But you can, I can see that definitely, as teenagers, I can see where that would actually be a very easy rift to create. Absolutely. With or without outside help. Right. Talking about social media, like now one of them makes a straight comment on Instagram and it blows up and it gets

blogged and aggregated. Are fans watching this feud play out in real time or are fans creating this feud? Fans are making this. Yes, fans are creating it at this point. Fans are 100% responsible for the messiness that has endured for at least the last. I'll give them like a good five, six years. Okay. The problem is Brandy feeds into it.

And Monica not quite so much. Like, if she's asked directly, she might make like a little remark that might be slightly shady, but it's mostly kind of like I'm above it. I'm not dealing with it. But Brandy will get in it and like comment and post and change lyrics for a performance. And, you know, and then like Sonia, her mom will jump in. It's really extra. So I think that's part of the problem is, has been like, The fans have been looking for things where nothing's there,

but Brandy has reacted, which then creates something for real. Like, when Monica's so gone challenge was trending, a fan asked her if she was gonna do it, which was messy, but Brandy's response was more messy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, she's kind of like, yeah, and she's been quieter since the, you know, she hasn't really been tripping since verses, and I'm not sure what conversation, but that apparently had been the first time, the women hit

even spoken to each other since like whenever they did it all belongs to me what was that like 2012 yeah 2012 was on that so maybe whatever conversation they had was really able to put everything to rest i do think that monica is probably like why are we still having this conversation like why whereas i think i think that brandy maybe at some points has liked it a little bit because it keeps things going you know but um it's been quiet between them since them but yeah i I think that was the problem for a while, was that Brandy would see what the fans were saying and take it personally, not really keeping in mind,

Monica's not directly involved. Right. What did you think of the verses? Was it what you thought it would be? What were your impressions? It was great for nostalgia. Absolutely. It was very interesting to see people's takeaways

because my impression was, I wasn't surprised at like the, the tension you could read between them. But it was funny to me how many people were like, Brandy's out of pocket versus Monica's out of pocket. Or Brandy's being shady versus Monica's being shady. Because we were reading a lot of body cues and comments, like, very differently. I think depending on what your perspective already was between the two of them.

And what I realized watching that, that maybe I hadn't been quite as aware of before, was what I said earlier, that Brandy is really socially. awkward. You can tell she's not around people like that. She don't kick it like that. Like, she's very awkward. But I also think that Brandy is afraid to really let down the kind of clean, good girl image, even though she's a grown woman, right? Like, a lot of her career, if you even think back, like when she turned up pregnant and she lied about being married, and then, you know, there was a whole reality show. As much, Much as she, her family's been in a public, it is very, um, kind of guarded and scripted

and carefully planned. And I also get it. Like, she's been the subject of such intense scrutiny from her daughter to the car accident, you know, all this other stuff. I'd probably be a little guarded and shy as well. But yeah, watching that, I kind of realized, like, first of all, I don't think these women are ever going to be like good girlfriends. I don't think they're ever going to be like, girl, what's you doing? Yeah, yeah. Let's go to them all. Come through the house. They're just way, they're just way too different. They're just way too different. But that's okay also.

Sure, right? And I think that's part of what we as listeners and R&B fans and Monica and Brandy fans have to get to is like, it's okay if they can just be civil. Like, we don't need an actual resolve from them. We don't need them to sign a treaty. We don't need them to do like a joint public statement. You know, we don't need the Monica and Brandy Accord. Like, we don't need that.

It's fine. They can decide that they're going to be civil. And when they see each other, they see each other, and it's cool. And that be it. And I think that's perfectly fine. I did enjoy Brandy's poetry. You know, that was a nice. Oh, my God.

It was so, it was so Moisha. It was so Moisha. Yes. Pulling out the notebook. The notebook, yeah. And even like her quoting her various rap mentions. And it was, like I said, a lot of it was just like very awkward. Like I said, it was really awkward.

Yeah, like the big part, the two pop part. And then there was a really kind of funny thing between the two of them where it was like, you know, when I was in the studio recording this and I was only 11 and when I was in the studio doing this and I was only like eight, you know, like that kind of battle back and forth was very interesting with them. But I enjoyed it for nostalgia's sake. I'm glad that it happens because I've been. Obviously, that was from the moment of versus, people were like, we need a brandy and Monica versus.

And both of them were resistant to it. And my understanding is that it took a kind of a lot of coaxing to get around. Took a year almost. Yeah. But I also think it was a good thing for both of their careers. Right. The very next day, because, you know, people mention them a lot. And nostalgia, they know the hits.

This was, though, one of the times when I was heavily team Monica because. there is a group of, Brandy has a larger kind of fan army than Monica does. You know, they call it a vocal Bible and all this other stuff. And like I said, the narrative gets lost that Monica wasn't just doing like mainstream R&B. She had hits. She had chart hits. And I think I said before, I think she had better selections of music at times than Brandy did for what her voice can do. So I was very happy for people to be reminded that.

that Monica had for you, I will. You know what I mean? That Monica had on the first night that Monica had, even just the joints from Ms. Thang. Like, that album still goes today. It's perfect. You know, like this and like that, before you walk out my life, like all of those.

So I was very teen Monica for that. And all of their singles and albums were in the Spotify and Apple Music Top 10. I think both of them the next day. So it was good for the culture. It was good for R&B. It was good for them. It was good for them.

Yeah. But to kind of bring the whole thing full circle going back to your top question, it almost makes me wonder what their careers could have been like each of them if they did not. I feel like both of them had the boy as mind hanging over them their entire careers. Yeah. No. Yeah. Which I think is unfortunate.

And it makes me wonder if it would have changed anything had it not been. Because it also dates them in a really specific way. It's like people don't really want to let them move past that moment. And that was at the beginning of each of their sophomore projects. So, oh, and I will add, I forgot this part. It also did not help things that Monica named her album, The Boy is Monk. That's when I think of me. It's pretty aggressive.

I actually do need to revive. That's when it became a real thing. But that wasn't Monica's idea. That was Clive's idea. You know, so it's also, like, kind of attributed to the right person, which is also another connection, Monica, Whitney had. They were both Clive Davis protégates. But yeah, that was Clive Davis' idea.

That wasn't. Mine cut it and walk in and say, I'm a name. My album, The Boy is mine. But I remember even then pre-Internet, it was a lot of, like, ooh. You know, there was definitely chatter. Like, yeah, I don't really know about it. It's an aggressive move. Thanks so much, Naima.

This has been fantastic. Thank you, too, Rob. I enjoyed it. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Naima Cochran. Thanks, as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Isaac Lee. And thanks to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here are Brandy and Monica with The Boy is Mine. See you next week.