Everytime tha Beat Drop, the boom-heavy, Jermaine Dupri-produced lead single featuring Dem Franchize Boyz, longs to be a club banger - something Monica has never really succeeded at delivering. But halfway through, it's easy to forget the song belongs to Monica as the rowdy rappers overshadow her understated alto.
Things improve somewhat when the young diva stays in her lane of slow and midtempo ballads.
On Why Her? Monica wallows in sentimentality over a lightly thumping bass line: "Why her, why her? Did I get on your nerves?
Did I give you too much that you couldn't handle my love?''
Hell No (Leave Home) strokes the proverbial thug-love blues, even boasting a rapping Monica alongside a spitfire lyricist in Twista. And Getaway, a soft, piano-backed number, is possibly the closest Monica has come to mirroring her 1996 crossover smash For You I Will.
But a decade later, it seems Monica's voice has lost the grip it once held. Perhaps the makings of Monica - which include a young-celebrity lifestyle marked by immense highs (she won a Grammy in 1999 for The Boy Is Mine, a duet with Brandy) and unthinkable lows (she witnessed her ex-boyfriend's suicide in 2000) - are to blame. Maybe Monica is past her prime.
Well, she could always take a page from the hip-hop book and hire an acting coach.
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