FEATURE:
Groovelines
Brandy & Monica - The Boy Is Mine
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EVEN though…
IN THIS PHOTO: Brandy and Monica at the 1999 GRAMMY Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Callister/Getty Images
this is not tied to an anniversary, there is a reason why I wanted to spotlight Brandy and Monica’s The Boy Is Mine. One of the best collaborations ever, the U.S. artists are embarking on their The Boy Is Mine tour this month. The co-headline tour starts on 16th October in Cincinnati and ends on Jacksonville on 14th December. Because of that, it is worth investigating one of the biggest songs of the 1990s. One wondered why there were not more songs and gigs from the duo. It seems like they had a very brief partnership in the '90s. This article from The Los Angeles Times sources a Variety announcement/interview, where Brandy and Monica discussed coming back decade after all of these years:
“This really is a full-circle moment,” Brandy said in a statement to Variety. “Monica and I coming together again isn’t just about the music — it’s about honoring where we came from and how far we’ve both come. ‘The Boy Is Mine’ was a defining chapter in R&B, and to share the stage all these years later is bigger than a reunion — it’s a celebration of growth, sisterhood, and the love our fans have given us from day one.”
She added that she recognized the love “The Boy Is Mine” still received, saying that the song “means everything to me.”
Upon its release, the song spent 13 weeks at No. 1. That was 27 years ago, and though the pair have been on “different journeys” since, they’ve come back together to give “the people what they’ve been asking for.”
“God’s timing perfectly aligned us,” Brandy said.
Presale for the tour begins June 26, with general tickets going on sale June 27. The run currently includes one Los Angeles-area show Nov. 9 at the Kia Forum.
Brandy and Monica had a widely publicized fallout in 1998. Monica is said to have punched Brandy in the face just before they took the stage at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards to perform their hit single.
The duo was seen as a monumental combination of ‘90s talent, with both Brandy and Monica being lauded for their debut records. Brandy had already achieved RIAA platinum status with her self-titled album released in 1994 when she was just 15. “The Boy Is Mine” was an instant hit when it was released four years later, but the VMAs incident seemed to spawn acrimony.
Though both would remain in the music industry, Brandy would also pursue an acting career. Her nickname “Vocal Bible” took off following her role as the first African American actor to play Cinderella in a film in 1997. More recently, she starred as a rapper in the ABC drama series “Queens” in 2021.
Monica’s 1995 debut, “Miss Thang,” went platinum when she was 14, but the singer largely remained out of the spotlight following the release of “Code Red” in 2015. She teased a pivot into the country music genre in 2022 with “Open Roads,” which she says was produced entirely by 11-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile. Though she confirmed its completion in 2023, it has yet to be released.
After the kerfuffle in 1998, it wouldn’t be until 2012 that the two collaborated again on “It All Belongs to Me” and 11 years more before they worked on a remix of “The Boy Is Mine” for Ariana Grande. In 2021, Brandy and Monica appeared on “Verzuz,” a popular webcast series made by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland where two artists pit their best hits against each other.
The affair went down smoothly until about 30 minutes in, when Monica spoke of how she had come a long way from “kicking in doors” and “smacking chicks,” a (seemingly autobiographical) line from her hit song “So Gone.”
“You sure was,” Brandy replied. “I was one of the ones.”
But Monica refuted the quip, claiming, “People think I’m abusive. That’s not what happened.”
After a little back and forth, Brandy conceded, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that … I didn’t mean no shade by that.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Monica replied before moving on, as both singers seemed to have done with the announcement of the upcoming tour”.
The Boy Is Mine was not this standalone single. It was the title track from Monica’s second studio album. It was released by Arista Records on 14th July, 1998. The title track with Brandy was the biggest-selling single in the U.S. in 1998. I am going to come to some other features. I am moving to a 2023 feature from Hollywood Reporter, where Monica discussed twenty-five years of her sophomore album:
“What comes to mind when you think of The Boy Is Mine turning 25?
MONICA It’s a blessing to still be acknowledged and feel appreciated and feel loved. I’ve always said that I was a bit of an underdog, but it was a place that I never said I didn’t want to be because I didn’t see it in a negative light. I was very much a product of my environment at that time. I was still working on myself. I recorded the album at the age most people are focused on learning to drive, and I graduated high school during that time, and there was a lot happening for me and I lived out loud in front of the public. So there were a lot of different things happening both personally and professionally, so when I look at all of those things collectively, I don’t just think of the music.
How did you get involved with “The Boy Is Mine”?
MONICA I was discovered by Kevin Wells and Dallas Austin, and Dallas became a father figure in my life because at the time, my relationship with my biological father was extremely strained. It’s beautiful now, but it wasn’t that at the time. And he and I would talk about what my ultimate goals were, and he always promised to love and protect me throughout the process of me learning the industry. So the way I heard any song that you would hear me on during that time frame was through Dallas, and Dallas sat me down and he played the song for me. And my initial response was, “Well, why would we make a song like this?” Because I would never fight over a boy, not like this, and we laughed. And it was very lighthearted and said in a joking manner because I was thinking to myself, “Would I actually do that?”
And in this particular form, I’m like, “I don’t think so.” And he said, “Monica, you are a force to be reckoned with; Brandy is a force to be reckoned with; you all coming together is going to be incredible.” And with the level of trust and respect that I had for him, it was definitely a no-brainer. With the level of respect that I had for Brandy and her artistry, it was a no-brainer at that point. So I actually recorded it in L.A. It was my first time meeting Rodney Jerkins and Fred Jerkins and LaShawn Daniels. They were all such a major part of it all, and she and I just started working on the vocals there.
You and Brandy won a Grammy for “The Boy Is Mine” — where did you put your Grammy?
MONICA I gifted my mother my Grammy for Mother’s Day the following Mother’s Day. Because there is no me without her — the moral compass that I have, the voice. My mother also sings, but she only sings at church sometimes after my papa preaches. She’s not the type that wants to sing in the public’s eye, she always just sings for the glory of God. But I get all of these important things from her, all of the teachings that people respect about me from her. I felt like the greatest way to honor her was to say, “Listen, I wouldn’t be here without you.” We had it encased and given to her, and she always loved it because it lights up and she could click it on when people came over. It was a focal point”.
I am going to come to a really interesting feature from Stereogum next. However, VICE examined The Boy Is Mine in 2018 on its twentieth anniversary. They stated how the song is about choosing friendship over drama. Not too many songs of the 1990s focused on that. The chemistry between Brandy and Monica on the song is clear and enduring:
“It was a pleasant surprise to learn about “The Boy Is Mine” in the first place—how could a rivalry be real if the singers chose to work together? Originally written as a solo track by Brandy and Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins in the fall of 1997, the two decided the song would work better as a duet and were inspired by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s “The Girl Is Mine.” Brandy asked her label to approach Monica as a gesture of goodwill to combat rumors of a rivalry. With her label’s permission, Monica jumped on board and the single was released in the spring of 1998, quickly dominating the airwaves and climbing to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
That success, unfortunately, didn’t translate to love for each other in real life. Although tabloids blew their rivalry out of proportion, years later, the singers admitted there was tension between them. In a 2012 radio interview, Monica said, “We were young. We could barely stay in the room with each other. By no means was it jealousy or envy. She and I are polar opposites, and instead of embracing that, we used our differences as reasons not to be amongst each other.”
Still, the way pop culture infiltrates our minds is such that we interpret things the way we want them to be, and not the way they are. And so, Brandy and Monica may have been “polar opposites,” but for me, a young Black girl subconsciously yearning for heroines to call my own, I clung to their mutual presence. It didn’t matter what was real or imagined—what mattered was that they existed on a record together, and were made stronger for it. It was a quick, satisfying hit of representation.
What I loved most was the song’s music video, directed by the talented and prolific Joseph Kahn. Dark, mysterious, and more visually sophisticated than I anticipated, “The Boy Is Mine” was a quietly radical declaration of female solidarity.
There is something beautiful, too, about the way the music video unfurls: first confusion, then confrontation, and in its final moments, solidarity. Brandy and Monica relax in their apartments, changing the channel to their favorite television programs (an episode of The Jerry Springer Show for Brandy, a black and white movie for Monica), but each girl’s remote controls the television of the other. Brandy can’t watch her show without disrupting Monica’s viewing and vice versa. As symbolism, it proves both women are in this situation (the action of the music video and the content of the song) together, whether they like it or not.
Later, they realize their beau (actor Mekhi Phifer) is two-timing them. As he visits Brandy, she partially opens the door with a smile on her face, only to open the door wider and reveal that Monica is there, too. It’s a cute and knowing moment. Why are we fighting over this man? What good has he given us?
Women are pressured to conform to contrasting ideas: We’re supposed to be the “gentler” sex, yet we’re taught to hate ourselves and each other, creating a toxic competitive atmosphere where one woman’s livelihood is a threat to another’s. In this manufactured climate of scarcity, Black women are left battling for more because we were never given our proper share in the first place. In “The Boy Is Mine,” I learned a valuable lesson about what it means to be a friend and what it means to find comfort in the friendship of other women—even women I did not know or possibly saw as my competition. Now, I know that the most significant solidarity is that between women who want each other to succeed”.
In 2022, Stereogum spent time showing some love for The Boy Is Mine. I remember when it came out in 1998. I still listen to the track today and it fills me with nostalgia. This song that has lasted for twenty-seven years and still sounds so fresh and strong. I do wonder whether any live videos will be released from the upcoming The Boy Is Mine tour from Brandy and Monica:
“Originally, “The Boy Is Mine,” the first single from Never Say Never, was going to be a solo song for Brandy. You can hear that in the track. “The Boy Is Mine” doesn’t exactly offer two differing perspectives. It’s two different women singing the same thing, more or less, to each other. Brandy was one of five credited writers on “The Boy Is Mine.” She worked with Rodney Jerkins, his brother Fred Jerkins III, and fellow professionals LaShawn Daniels and Japhe Tejeda. But when she heard her solo version of the song, Brandy thought something was missing. She knew that “The Boy Is Mine” needed Monica.
Monica Denise Arnold grew up in the Atlanta neighborhood of College Park, and her family was not a show-business family. (When Monica was born, the #1 single in America was Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.”) Polow Da Don, a producer whose work will eventually appear in this column, is one of her cousins, but Monica’s parents both worked at the airport — her father as a mechanic, her mother as a customer service rep. Monica grew up singing in churches with her mother, and she won talent shows around Atlanta as a kid. When she was 10, Monica became the youngest singer in a touring gospel choir. When she was 12, Dallas Austin, producer of hits like TLC’s “Creep,” heard Monica singing a Whitney Houston song a talent show and signed her to his Arista imprint Rowdy.
Monica was 14 years old when she released her 1995 debut album Miss Thang. Like Brandy, Monica was entirely comfortable singing over rap beats. Unlike Brandy, Monica had serious levels of gospel grit in her voice even at a young age. She sounded tougher than Brandy, more seasoned. She didn’t sound anything like a little kid. The sound of Miss Thang is rich and assured, and it’s wild that a 14-year-old singer was able to sound that much like what Mary J. Blige was doing at the time. Monica blew up even quicker than Brandy did. Her debut single “Don’t Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days)” reached #2. (It’s an 8.) Two more singles from Miss Thang went top-10, and the album went triple platinum.
Much like Brandy, Monica followed her debut album with a big soundtrack hit. For her contribution to the 1997 motion picture Space Jam, Monica went full adult-contempo, singing the Diane Warren-written ballad “For You I Will,” which reached #4. (It’s a 5.) Compared to what Monica was doing on Miss Thang, “For You I Will” was severely lacking in swagger, but it showed that Monica could do more than what she’d done on her debut. She wasn’t a TV star like Brandy, but Monica had a bright future. When Brandy put in the call for Monica to appear on “The Boy Is Mine,” the timing was great. Monica, like Brandy, was gearing up to release her second LP.
“The Boy Is Mine” wasn’t written about a real-life scenario, but it did riff on the public perception that Brandy and Monica were rivals. In the Bronson book, Monica says that this was intentional: “We took the song and brought humor to a situation that people had tried to make so serious. We thought it would be really funny to show us feuding in the video and then come together at the end because we wanted people to let go of the idea of us not liking each other — but of course, they haven’t.” We sure haven’t. Decades later, the idea of Brandy and Monica not liking each other remains a big topic of conversation in both singers’ careers.
Brandy and Monica tried recording “The Boy Is Mine” together, in the same room, but it didn’t work. Their voices clashed, and some of the people who worked on the song have said that they didn’t like being in the same room together. So they tried something else. Brandy recorded her part in California with Rodney Jerkins, and Dallas Austin recorded Monica’s parts in Atlanta, tweaking the arrangement in the process and earning himself a co-producer credit. (The other two credited producers are Rodney Jerkins and Brandy.) The song went through multiple mixes until everyone was satisfied that nobody upstaged anyone else. In the Bronson book, Austin says, “I had to make Monica Monica on it. I didn’t want it to turn into something where Monica’s full character wasn’t on it. It had to have their attitudes on it and not just be them singing a song.” It took multiple mixes before they came up with a version of “The Boy Is Mine” before all parties agreed that neither singer upstaged the other.
To its great credit, “The Boy Is Mine” does showcase the attitudes of both singers. The producers might’ve had to put the song together piecemeal, but there’s a real chemistry at work on it. The contrast between the two voices is subtle, but it’s there. Brandy is softer, and Monica is harder. The argument on the track is pretty much an “is not”/”is too” thing, and it never reaches a resolution, but that probably makes it more fun. It’s structured almost like a rap battle, with both Brandy and Monica getting chances to flex on each other. Brandy: “There’s no way that you could mistake him for your man, are you insane?” Monica: “You see, I know that you may be just a little bit jealous of me.” On the chorus, the two of them sing the same thing at each other. The line “I’m sorry that you seem to be confused” is a truly great piece of faux-nice shit-talk”.
I am enduing with this article from Billboard. Brandy and Monica appeared on the cover of Essence to discuss the tour. I think there has been a lot of misconception about the lyrical content of The Boy Is Mine. I hope that the new tour dates from Brandy and Monica not only ignite interest in the 1998 single. We also need to discuss the album it came from. A wonderful work from Monica. I do also hope that she and Brandy record together again. It would be nice to hear a new chapter from them:
“I think that even though the lyrical content and some of what started to play out created more division than it did togetherness, we’ve taken control of that, and we’re making what the legacy of this song would be totally different for the next generation. And that’s what I’m most proud of, when I look at what is happening now with ‘The Boy Is Mine,'” Monica tells the publication.
While their timeless duet about fighting over a boy spent 13 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned both women a Grammy for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal, the success of the record couldn’t always sweeten the unsavory parts of Brandy and Monica’s relationship. The two allegedly got into an altercation during rehearsal for their performance at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, which caused a years-long rift. When they went head-to-head for a Verzuz battle in 2020, they openly discussed their feud, and Brandy revealed in a later interview on Ebro In The Morning that she had apologized to Monica behind the scenes.
IN THIS PHOTO: Brandy and Monica during an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, 25th June, 2025/PHOTO CREDIT: Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images
When Ariana Grande reimagined “The Boy Is Mine” on her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine — and tapped Brandy and Monica for the official remix that scored a Grammy nod for best pop duo/group performance — Monica adds, “it was that subtle reminder for us of how special that moment was,” adds Monica. “And what I love so much about it was that we were young, living in the moment and creating. We were creating without critics. We were creating without anything outside of ourselves. And that was the part that I think made it so great and made it so timeless.”
“I see it as so much bigger than just a hit record. At the time, it was two young women coming together, bringing our voices and our stories into one moment — and the world connected with it in a way we couldn’t have imagined. To see how that song connected with people all over the world — and still does — is such a blessing,” says Brandy. “For me, it represented sisterhood and the power of collaboration. Now, all these years later, it feels like a landmark in R&B history, but also a reminder of how far we’ve come as women and as artists. It’s humbling to know that a song can stand the test of time like that, and it inspires me to keep creating music that resonates across generations.”
In a couple of weeks, Brandy and Monica will bring “The Boy Is Mine” to U.S. arenas for The Boy Is Mine Tour, which kicks off on Oct. 16 at Cincinnati’s Heritage Bank Center in Cincinnati and goes through major cities including Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York before wrapping up on Dec. 7 at Houston’s Toyota Center.
Brandy also tells Essence that making the setlist was “definitely one of the hardest parts, because so many songs hold a special place in our hearts and in the fans’ hearts. We thought about what records shaped the culture, what moments people connect with most, and how to create a flow that takes the audience on a journey. Of course, the classics are there, but we also wanted surprises — songs people might not expect to hear live, and even some new touches, to make the music feel fresh again. I might even throw in some unreleased music!”.
I will wrap up now. It has been great revisiting one of my favourite songs of the 1990s. Brandy and Monica are about to head on tour. Fans who experienced their The Boy Is Mine duet in 1998 will be there. New fans too. It is a co-headline tour, so both artists get a chance to showcase their material, though that demand to hear Brandy and Monica sing is going to be very strong. No wonder. A massive single in 1998, twenty-seven years later, The Boy Is Mine has lost…
NONE of its power.