All About Laughs
Singer Monica is a star from a music golden era. The Atlanta icon has the distinction of being part of a group of talented starlets poised to walk in the footsteps of such titans as Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige. While her success is certainly nothing to downplay, Monica recently admitted that her success was stifled due to her unwillingness to compromise herself like some of her contemporaries did.
Monica has played out much of her private life pretty publicly in recent years thanks to her involvement in reality television. She was one of the first urban acts to foray into the genre with her BET series Still Standing. In the years since she’s appeared on a number of shows most recently T.I & Tiny: Family & Friend Hustle.
She recently separated from husband Shannon Brown after almost a decade together. While she’s remained mum on the reason for their break-up, she has talked about how difficult it has been to move on and start a new life, even admitting to living in a hotel for some time before committing to a new home.
“After divorce, it’s one day at a time,” she said in an interview. “You don’t know what you’re going to feel day by day. You have to wake up and just flat out see what that’s gone be, see how you gone feel. And a big part of it is also, for me, respect is key. I try to always keep the respect intact. We’re a good ways outside of it. We split in 2018, that’s when I decided to leave, and the divorce was final October 24, 2019. So, it’s been sometime now.”
Monica keeps it pretty real at all times, which is why its no surprise that she recently opened up about her career and the perception that she could have been a much bigger star. “Listen, I would have been a much bigger star, a much wealthier woman, had I put on for you,” Monica explained in an interview. “That was a choice, a decision that I made. A lot of the stuff that you haven’t seen me do, is not because it wasn’t offered. It was because I made the choice not to. I got all the calls, but I knew what people were sacrificing to do what they were doing. I didn’t want to sacrifice that.”
