She has written for stars from Grande to Nas and TI since she was discovered on MySpace. Now, with songs about oral sex and glute-focused workouts, Monét is going it alone
For a long time, singer, songwriter and producer Victoria Monét put other people’s needs before her own. Since 2012, the LA-based 26-year-old has been a songwriter for hire, a sideline that peaked recently with the success of Thank U, Next and the Grammy-nominated 7 Rings, both global hits for her long-term collaborator Ariana Grande. Even when she was releasing her own
music, she would obsess over external opinions. “I’d be considerate of what my peers would like, and what my family would consider acceptable,” she says.
All of that people-pleasing has gone out of the window, however, with the pillow-soft throwback R&B of her song Ass Like That. It’s the first taste of a superb forthcoming “project” that also includes a luxuriant ode to oral sex augmented by squeaking bed springs and ecstatic moans. “I think it’s a combination of me getting older, and me being more aware of who I am and what I want to say,” she says of her new found emancipation, that also saw her come out as bisexual last year. “It’s about having more disregard of the disapproval of others.”