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R&B singer Monica says she owes fans a “formal apology” after first revealing plans for her ninth studio album over two years ago and subsequently changing its name to Trenches.
“It started off as Chapter 38, and now I’m 40, so that lets you know how long the album’s been taking. But real life kept happening,” she tells ABC Audio about the album’s delay. “I tell people all the time, my family comes first. My family comes before anything, and if you think back to after I gave birth, the second time I took four years off.”
The mother of three says she continued working on Trenches throughout last May until the passing of her “favorite uncle,” Larry.
“But real life kept happening. Once I lost my uncle, I really was not interested in doing anything for quite some time other than just being there for my mom, for my aunts and uncles,” Monica shares. “We’re a close-knit family. We come from the country. We put God and family first before any and everything, and by the time I would deal with one blow then another one would come and another one would come.”
She then reveals, “But in spite of all of it, I found a way to finish the album. It is finished. We are mixing and mastering and getting all the clearances done.”
Monica says she enjoyed “[b]eing able to work with producers that I’ve admired over the years, but we never had an opportunity to sit down and actually create.”
She adds, “It was one of the pros of me not just putting the album out two years ago when I initially started to. I ended up working with Pharrell [Williams] and Chad [Hugo]. I went back in with Missy Elliot.”
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