Victoria Monét keeps surpassing expectations.
Jumping from unknown songwriter to Grammy-award winning artist, Monét quickly established herself as an R&B powerhouse.
Monét rose to prominence through working with Ariana Grande before breaking out with Jaguar II, a debut dripping with passion and songs about romantic relationships with little left to the imagination.
Her follow-up work, Frequency of Love, cements Monét as a mainstay in a genre built on the timeless quality of strings and beats servicing the shared highs and lows of love.
Monét’s songs swell with emotions as her dreams crisscross with relationships. She can’t help but depict the overwhelming intersection between love’s deepest pains and balms.
In doing so, Monét reimagines what an R&B record can contain, while also dwelling on the harsh effects from love gone wrong.
Monét presents a share of admirable reflections on the values of commitment and trust in romance.
“Come Back to You” shines a light on how she says, “Don’t you know that I will/Always come back to you.” And Monét’s vulnerable enough to admit, “I don’t like to fight with my emotions,” showing she’s willing to work through difficulty to find common ground.
“You Mean the World to Me” is a rare, earnest plea for the good parts of a relationship otherwise built on physical attraction. Monét sings, “You mean the world to me/That’s why I try to save the world …You are the reason/I wake every morning.”
On “That’s Why I Love You” Monét sings with Bruno Mars about how there’s hope with love built on “safety.” It will lead to late nights where “No one here but us two/I’ll be loving you, you, you.”
“For You” continues the trend as Monét shares, “I make a promise of security/Now and for eternity/No one could replace this love for you.”
But for all that talk about safety, Monét quickly reveals what’s most important to her in a relationship and how she’s only focused on one thing. Album opener, “All I Need” sets the tone of Monét’s focus as she professes that “You’re all I need to get by.”
The first line of “Almost” contains an explicit reference to sex before launching into lewd descriptions of sex involving the f-word and references to body parts where there’s “no stoppin allowed.”
On “Head to Toe” Monét uses a “plot twist” to undercut her all-consuming claim, “I want you need you to be [in love with me].” Her only aim is to get her man to “kiss me head to toe.”
“See You In My Dreams” enlists R&B star, SZA to dwell on why Monét can’t seem to forget a forgotten man. The duo sings, “I’m afraid to let you play me” because they have to “Cut my loss, as they say.” Their lack of trust ultimately ends in a cycle of overfixation on the unhealthiness in this relationship.
“Juicy” continues the theme as Monét unleashes what she’s “been fantasizing” about with her partner and their nights of sexual encounters.
Fresh out of a failed relationship, on “Single” Monét claims it’s time to get busy meeting new men because, “Don’t need permission from nobody (I got nobody who’s watching me).”
Monét’s dreams are quickly broken on “You Hurt Me Too” as she encounters pain in her new relationship. She reluctantly admits, “We see they still out there doing the same d— thing,” breaking the hearts of girls.”
“Say Dat” uses the phrase, “Say what you’ve been wanting to say” as permission for Monét and her lover to engage in everything they’ve allowed to float under the surface of their relationship, often to their detriment.
A handful of songs contain profane language such as the n-word, s—, the f-word, and other one-off uses of profanity.
Frequency of Love quickly turns sexual and vulgar in several songs as tame tales of romance devolve into intense and, for younger listeners, inappropriate displays of love.
Frequency of Love carries an expansive scope prone to murkiness as Monét’s relationships die off, decay and eventually start again. As she cycles through lovers, she’s more than capable of crafting soulful meditations on what went right or wrong.
But her reflections rarely lead to anything lasting or beneficial.
Monét craves melodrama and matches her lyrics to her desire for security through her relationships. At times, she finds it. Yet these moments prove fleeting as she slips into the mischievous side of relationships focused more on demanding sex than honoring love.
Jackson Greer is a High School English Teacher in the suburbs of Texas. He lives in Coppell, Texas with his wife, Clara. They love debating whether or not to get another cat and reading poetry together. Also, he is a former employee of Focus on the Family’s Parenting Department.
