The Late Bloomer
After writing songs for Ariana Grande, Fifth Harmony and more, Victoria Monét’s moment has arrived
In 2019, Victoria Monét finally had enough with being a secret weapon. She’d become one of the music industry’s key songwriters, lending her pen to artists including Fifth Harmony and Coco Jones. But it was after the success of longtime collaborator Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” an album that spawned a pair of No. 1 singles with her name in the writing credits, that she was ready to step out.
Four years later, she’s done so in supreme fashion, earning seven 2024 Grammy nominations, including record of the year and best new artist.
“I feel like I was sometimes only relevant to people according to my proximity to another artist, and that can be disheartening when you see so much more for yourself,” explains the artist. “I wanted to be doing what I love happily and be able to sustain it and change the narrative in people’s minds that I am beneath where I should be. But it’s definitely nice to level that out and be right where I’m supposed to be.”
That would be at the forefront of R&B, a mountain she’s steadily climbed for well over a decade. With the release of her debut full-length album, “Jaguar II,” in August, Monét was suddenly catapulted into solo stardom on the back of the coolly confident single “On My Mama,” a rattling head-nodder that became her first single as a headliner to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream R&b/hip-hop Airplay chart, with quotables for days (i.e., “I’m so deep in my bag like a grandma with a peppermint”). It only helps that Monét, whose dance roots go back to her days studying under Jabawockeez, is a hats-wearing multihyphenate — kind of like Janet Jackson, she says, who she idolized growing up.
Monét’s menu of talents was on display on her first headlining tour, which yielded a series of viral performance clips, and teed her up to receive the Variety Hitmakers Triple Threat award earlier this month. Amid all the accolades, the fever pitch culminated with the Grammy noms.
“It seemed like the end of my underdog story and era,” she says. “Everything I’ve been working towards just came to such an affirming point, and I was really in shock for the week.”
Monét had been nominated before, for her respective work with Grande and Chloe x Halle, but never for her own music.
When the categories were announced in October, she tied Phoebe Bridgers for the second-most nods (after SZA’S nine) with nominations for “Jaguar II” and various songs across the album.
It came with a bonus: Her 2-year-old daughter, Hazel, who is featured on “Hollywood” alongside Earth, Wind & Fire, became the youngest Grammy nominee in history when the song was announced in the traditional R&B performance category.
“We thought about all of those things, and then when it happened, it was like oh my God, it worked!’”
Monét isn’t exactly sure what to credit for her sudden ascent — was it the singing, dancing, songwriting or all of the above? — but it’s clearly rooted in the music. “Jaguar II” puts a fresh spin on classic ’70s R&B signifiers, from the gliding funk groove of “Smoke” featuring Lucky Daye to the shag carpet brass on “How Does It Make You Feel.”
She initially envisioned “Jaguar” as a trilogy, with each project standing as a distinct piece of a singular vision. The first installment arrived in 2020. “I was falling more and more in love with the ’70s music I grew up on and mixing these influences with how I feel today, and the open dialogue between women that didn’t maybe previously exist due to the narrative people pin on women,” she says. “Just being very authentic in how we actually speak and looking at masculinity and how men and hip-hop speak, and showing the world that women can be like that too and show an array of vulnerability and also a bit of masculinity in the divine feminine.”
It’s a theme that can be traced through her discography, dating back to her first solo project, “Nightmares & Lullabies: Act 1,” in 2014 and subsequent EP releases. But she’d been refining her artistic vision since a young age. She was born in Georgia and raised in Sacramento, where she sang in a church choir and cut her teeth as a dancer in its praise dance troupe. Songwriting piqued her interest as a teen, and after sending a random message to famed producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins on Myspace, she found herself auditioning for his girl group Purple Reign when she was 20.
Monét made the cut and moved to Los Angeles. The group signed to Motown Records, only to disband shortly after. It was here where she turned her attention to songwriting as a priority, landing a credit on Diddy-dirty Money’s 2010 album “Last Train to Paris” and getting a demo in front of Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman, who signed her the same day he heard it. But she never let her dreams of becoming a solo artist in her own right slip away, supplementing writing credits with guest turns on tracks from Machine Gun Kelly, Nas and T.I.
“There was a long time in music where I was introduced to many people as a songwriter first, so people were under the assumption that I was only a songwriter, and in my heart, it felt like it downplayed what I really love to do,” she recalls. “And so I felt that
There was a long time in music where I was introduced to many people as a songwriter first, so people were under the assumption that I was only a songwriter, and in my heart it felt like it downplayed what I really love to do.” — Victoria Monét
I was in the shadows with where my heart lay. [Now] I’ve been able to accomplish what people both saw me as and change other people’s minds of what it was assumed that I was.”
That would be a triple threat, one who can not only write and sing her own songs but perform them with skilled, precise choreography. It was on display during a recent appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” and her “Jaguar” tour.
Still, Monét sees this as only the beginning, even though she’s traveled a long road to get here. Amid her rise, she’s trying to strike a balance between her growing workload and motherhood. “It’s definitely getting harder, but I have the privilege of having a job that I can bring her to,” she says. “She’s in the mirror all the time doing ‘Baby Shark’ choreography. She knows my show top to bottom, doing my choreography — it’s insane. Maybe she shouldn’t come anymore because it’s not 2-year-old friendly, so I need to make a Kidz Bop version of the album or something.” She throws in a laugh. “Maybe that’s actually the next direction. Hit up Dr. Seuss one time!”
But first: a deluxe edition of “Jaguar II.” She scrapped the idea for the third installment given the second’s meteoric impact, with the goal of earning more fans along the way. “I’m hoping that people who do find me now are along for the ride for the long run, or stay around until I do a Vegas residency when I’m 70 or something,” she says. “I’m just excited for the journey. I feel like it’s definitely uphill right now.