VICTORIA MONET RELEASES ‘JAGUAR II’, DISHES ON HER NEW TOUR, MOTHERHOOD & MORE!
Victoria Monet is on top!
On her latest album, Jaguar II, Victoria is fearless, she delivers a solid body of work that follows her ‘Jaguar I’ release in 2020. For her new album, Victoria has already dropped 3 hard-hitting singles accompanied with jaw-dropping visuals that blends her smooth R&B sound with Y2k aesthetics. Fans have been asking and Victoria listened! The singer/songwriter is now on her ‘Jaguar II’ Tour that has already started here in the U.S. and ends in London on Nov 12th. In her latest music video, ‘On my mama‘, Victoria pays homage to iconic figures such as Destiny Childs and Ciara and even features a cameo Charlie Boy who is sampled on the track, the music video has already racked up 5+ Million views and features choreography by the one and only Sean Bankhead. We celebrate our Rebel Beauty Issue #24 with Victoria, the brown-skin beauty whose song-writing skills have won us over track by track.
FEATURE INTERVIEW:
You started your music career in a girl band in your hometown Sacramento, California before moving to LA years ago. How did you transition from the group to focusing on songwriting?
I actually was songwriting before I was in the group. I started my songwriting journey in Sacramento CA as a teenager, and I was writing my own music, and when I made it into the girl group I was really excited to be there. After a few months of working with the girl group, I begged Rodney Jerkins to let me stay later with the writers and write something. So he gave me one of his beats and I ended up writing to it and I kept going from there with more collaborations and I was learning a lot from LaShawn Daniels about vocal production and songwriting. And it became even more of a passion to not only write for myself but to write for other people.
How did that experience lay the foundation for the artist you are today?
I credit a lot of my really intricate harmonies and layering styles to watching LaShawn Daniels’s vocal produce and being vocal produced by him. I also feel like being in a girl group allowed me to learn harmonies along with people skills, cause you have to get along with other women in a tight space, and after being around them all the time and learning how to collaborate with different producers and express what it is that you want to hear and learn and do what your vision is, so I feel like that experience was kind of like a training camp in my eyes to what the music industry would be like in the future. And also collaborate with many different artists – I’m always learning, I’m learning to this day and I always want to be a student of the captain and keep learning something new every time I approach the studio or a stage or anywhere I go.
Everyone who loves your music knows your passion for the gym. You even made a song about it with “Ass Like That” on “Jaguar” in 2020. Have you always been a gym rat and what advice do you have for anyone who struggles with having a love for fitness?
I have not always been a gym rat – that became a passion of mine later in life. I always found fitness through doing things that I love, like dancing. I did run track for a year in high school but I don’t really count that because I was terrible. But I feel like the gym, when I started getting into my physical fitness, it released really nice endorphins and it gave me a sense of accomplishment that I can physically see. And it’s not something that can happen overnight so it just was something that was really amazing to commit to that was also self-fulfilling.
And I think as a songwriter sometimes you think a lot about how to help other people and accomplish other people’s visions, and the gym is one place that’s actually specifically for you and your body and your health and your mental. So I just fell in love with it. My advice for anybody who’s struggling with physical fitness is really just to find something that makes you happy doing it. If you don’t feel happy going to the gym and lifting weights, per se, there are lots of different options like hiking or Zumba classes or pilates or dance is another great one that’s really fun.
Maybe you can have a dance night with friends on Wednesday nights, go to a salsa class. There are lots of ways to get up and get physical, it doesn’t always have to be thought of as like a bodybuilding session. There are plenty of ways to build your physical physique without any weights, even body weights with resistance bands in a hotel room. As long as you have your body, you can do something physical, so get to it anywhere that you can.
You were pregnant with your daughter Hazel during one of the most difficult times in our country. What was your pregnancy journey like during the pandemic and how have you adjusted to balancing motherhood while your career is going to a new level?
I feel like my pregnancy journey was, well, first of all, I think the pandemic was one reason why I was pregnant – there wasn’t much else to do. But I feel like my pregnancy journey within the pandemic was kind of like a fairytale. It kind of gave me a false sense of what pregnancy was like because the world kind of had a certain pause. That was maybe a pro of pregnancy, where I didn’t have to commit to so many things that were far away from home and maybe I would have if it wasn’t the pandemic.
But the cons about it were that it felt kind of isolating. When you go to the doctor, they didn’t allow anybody else in the room, so a lot of my doctor’s appointments I had to have a mask on and I was alone, so a lot of the first heartbeat, hearing my baby’s heartbeat for the first time, seeing the ultrasound – all those things happened by myself, which definitely was kind of sad. And then giving birth, like going into labor with a mask on, definitely isn’t ideal. It adds another layer of scary because of the health risks that are everywhere. But I think it did allow for a lot of bonding time, just me and my baby, and just having a sacred safe space within our home.
When I think of Victoria Monet the color brown automatically comes to mind. From your makeup, hair & clothes we see some version of this hue. Is brown your favorite color and did you intentionally mean to make it a part of your aesthetic?
Yes, brown is my favorite color. I didn’t realize it until I was older, but every time I wore brown I felt more at home. I think part of it is because my mom used to decorate in earth tones at the house, everything was pretty neutral. And then some of her clothing was brown, so for example one time I took a romper out of her closet and wore it to high school graduation and it was brown. So sometimes when I look at my old pictures when I’m wearing the color brown, I’m like “Oh yeah,” it’s always been there.
But I also felt like as a Black woman in the music industry who felt underrepresented and hidden behind, I kind of felt like the Wizard of Oz, a little bit behind this mask. People could hear my thoughts and my voice but they weren’t coming directly from me, they would be coming from other people. So when I wear brown I’m always representing Black people, Black women. I was almost wearing our skin color as a badge of honor and so it will always be special to me when I wear brown. And my closet still is mostly earth tones and brown. So it will always be a part of Victoria Monet.
Your critically acclaimed album “Jaguar” dropped in 2020 and woke the r & b crowd up! There are so many amazing songs filled with love and seduction, a fire collab with Khalid on “Experience” which in my opinion, easily drew a new appreciation for your music. Walk us through the process of creating “Jaguar” and talk about what song is your favorite from this album.
Jaguar I, I think was four years ago when I started that project. It was right after “thank u, next” and “7 rings” went number one, and I finally felt like I could focus on myself because I had reached a certain goal as a songwriter, and my manager helped organize a bunch of studio sessions with people who I really love and admire, which I had never done before. I had never taken the time out to just focus on myself for two weeks or three weeks straight. So the result of that was the foundation of Jaguar I.
I have so many favorite songs and some ideas that are still on the computers are untouched since they will forever be a part of my experience making Jaguar I. So many great memories and moments in the studio that felt like home, it felt like I was having a sleepover with all of my favorite musicians. And I don’t know if I can pick a favorite, I feel like my favorite changes all the time depending on my mood, and I think you can tell which mood depends on the song, based on the song titles. But I would just say that making Jaguar changed my life.
Fast forward to 2023, and you’re releasing your new album “Jaguar II” which features 11 songs. We’ve already gotten a taste of what to expect with the single “Smoke” featuring Lucky Daye, “Party Girls” featuring Buju Banton” and now “On My Mama” which is accompanied by easily the best music video released this year. You pay homage to Southern black music throughout the video and the choreography by Sean Bankhead is so creative and fun! Talk about what it was like creating all of these music videos this year and which one was the most challenging to push out.
I definitely have a passion for making visuals. I think my whole team being really hands-on and a team full of mostly women, we have this really special group chat where we go back and forth on ideas, and they can be everything from funny to outlandish and way out of budget, so my team has a good way of bringing me back down to reality. We try to execute to the best of our ability what my original vision is within reason, cause sometimes I’m in outer space with it.
But I have fun making each and every music video, I really like to be involved heavily from the treatment to the editing process to choreography to camera angles, like everything I wanna be a part of at all. So it’s really important for me to collaborate with directors who are open to that and have no ego, as far as me coming into their world and kind of taking it into a middle ground of where I see things and where their vision is too. So it has to be a collaborative process. I could see myself directing my own music videos eventually, I would love to do that when I’m able to learn more about each piece of equipment and develop my skills, and my language, to communicate with the crew.
But I really do admire directors and visions and editors and LDs and everybody who’s on set. So I could definitely see myself diving more into that world later on. To answer your question, I guess maybe “On My Mama” was the most difficult to get – well, between “Party Girls” and “On My Mama” because “Party Girls” we traveled to Jamaica to do, so we traveled a lot of crew and dancers to out of the country and I think we were going against deadlines as well. The same thing with “On My Mama” We were against a deadline as well because the song was already out. So we wanted to make sure we got the video out not too far after the song came out, but I think it came out at the perfect time. But the dancers, the cast in the “On My Mama” music video were a bunch of dancers that don’t usually do music videos, and if they do they’re for like really really really famous people.
So I had to make a group chat on Instagram and shoot my shot and asked them if they would do the honor of joining the music video, and everyone who I’d dreamed ended up being a part of that cast so I’m super grateful for that. I was really proud to have them all in one video, which is really insane. And then working with everybody we got to work with was really special, so I would say between “On My Mama” and “Party Girls,” especially since they’re so dance-heavy. They were really intricate projects to put together.
You’ve been an opening act on a world tour before but never your own. Your tour sold out in minutes leaving your fans begging you to add more dates. As you prepare for your 25-date tour, what can we expect to see and what are you most excited about headlining your very own tour?
Expect to see 4K titties on tour. Just kidding. On tour, I really wanna give people the best version of Victoria on stage, better than I’ve ever been before. I’m hoping people have the time of their life at the show. I just recently went to a Beyoncé concert. I also went to Janet and I’ve also gone to a Jill Scott concert recently, and what I left with after every one of these shows was just something I would never forget, a night that would live with me forever and I left feeling so inspired and in admiration of each of them.
So I’m hoping I can give just an inch of that to people who come to my shows. I want them to leave their problems at the door, come in and enjoy, just be fully immersed in the Jaguar world, and maybe bring up some of the good memories they have about the pandemic, and then some of the healing things that they’ve experienced after through music, because I think Jaguar for some people was the soundtrack to both those moments, so just hoping to give people the time of their life for an hour and some change.
You’ll be having a meet & greet with concert attendees who have purchased that package. We really don’t see artists doing that as much so what made you decide to add that to your tour?
I feel like seeing the fans is one of my favorite things to do. It’s really nice to see people face-to-face who have been supporting you, because online even though you know that they’re there, they’re through your little device on your phone and you can kind of turn it off or exit the app, and then in a way, it was just kind of like a matrix.
So I love to see people in person and hug them and feel their energy and give them mine and thank them for supporting and listening and just that feeling that I would get if I ever met someone that I’m a huge fan of, I just want to give to other people. It’s gonna be a nice exchange from both of us because I wanna feel that too.
You have a song on “Jaguar II” called Hollywood that features Earth Wind and Fire. How was being in the studio with them? What made you choose to have them on your album and what can we expect from the song?
Earth Wind and Fire was one of the biggest inspirations for Jaguar I. Two, sonically I love the way that they use horns and strings and their merge of genres from soul to funk to disco. They’ve got a little bit of everything, a little rock. So when I think about myself as an artist and the genres that I like to merge or the artists that I like to merge to make a subgenre, which is my music, I credit it to artists like Earth Wind and Fire so it was a really full circle moment to have and be a part of the project, knowing that they were the foundation and the creation of it.
And to put my daughter on it as well felt very surreal because my grandma passed away in 2009, the year I moved to LA to pursue music, and in some ways, I feel like Hazel might be my grandma, like reincarnated, and she was one of the reasons why I feel the same about Earth Wind and Fire and listening to Motown and soul music and some of the inspirations for Jaguar. So it’s super important for me to have my inspiration for music and my inspiration for life in one song.
Your baby girl Hazel has publishing rights on your new album “Jaguar II” and we catch a glimpse of her in the “On My Mama” video. What made you decide to do this for her and can we expect to see more of Hazel in any future videos or songs?
I feel like she’s really enjoying music, and I think I’m pretty open with my life and she’s just a part of it that I wanna continue to be open with as long as she allows it. If she’s going To continue to do it is up to her, but I think at this age she doesn’t have the choice quite yet. So I think for now we’re good, and then when she’s able to tell me “Mommy I don’t wanna do this” or “I do wanna do this,” then we’ll go in the direction she wants to go.
But I feel like I may be compensating for the lack of footage I have of myself as a little girl. And just trying to capture every moment of her and have her be a part of everything Mommy’s doing. And not that my mom didn’t do that, but we didn’t document it I guess. Maybe we didn’t have access to it. So being that I do, I’m kind of giving it all to Hazel, and I’m just hoping that later on when she grows up and realizes who Earth Wind, and Fire are and their songs and she loves it, she appreciates it.
When you’re not recording or creating music, what does a relaxing self-care day look like for Victoria Monet? Are you binge-watching your favorite show or doing something fun with your family? Let us know what is your guilty pleasure!
I really love the spa. I don’t get to go as often as I would like to, but I really really enjoy massages, taking it slow. I also love, like I’m kind of a product junkie. So I love ordering things and using new facial products or skincare stuff and gadgets and I also love bathroom stuff, like long showers, long scalp, massages, and bubble baths.
All the girly stuff you can think of, I’m doing it on a day off. Or possibly just hanging out with Hazel, laughing, tickling her, and having family time. But I probably would say most of my activities are, if I’m off, I’m in my house. Yeah, I’m kind of like a hermit.
Let’s talk beauty what is your beauty philosophy?
I think lately my beauty philosophy has been water. Starting with the water I drink, I really believe water is a huge part of life, so much of our bodies is water so we have to watch how we use it, how we speak to it and around it and about it. So drinking water, filtering the water that I shower with, the water that I brush my teeth with, on the sink I have filters on everything.
And then soaking in water, going to look at water, I feel like when you see the beach you’re at peace, so being by bodies of water is just all so important. So I feel like water is beauty, it makes you feel more beautiful when you’re around it, drinking it, consuming it. And then all of the things. But also I think beauty is something that is within you, not on you. So your personality, your values, your aura, your frequency, the way you speak to other people, all of it can make you beautiful.
What does being a rebellious R&B queen mean to you? How do you showcase your beauty looks?
Oh, I didn’t know I was a rebellious R&B queen! But, thank you! And I feel like I’m just being myself? I feel like I’m not really rebelling against anything, I’m actually attracting and manifesting and attracting the things towards me. And maybe by doing that, I’m repelling anything else that I don’t want, but my focus is more on attracting the things that I do want, and I do that by just being my authentic self and affirming and saying the things that I want, writing them down.
In my beauty looks I like to be very consistent and do things in my brown color way. Sometimes add a bold smokey eye, kind of similar to a jaguar, but most of the time I’m in my own world doing what it is that Victoria wants to do, the Taurus way, Pisces moon way.
What is one beauty product you can’t live without?
One beauty product I can’t live without is… one?? Do I have to name one? Well… if I have to name one I guess I would choose water. Or water filter. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, and please. Oil. I love oil. Skin needs to stay hydrated and plump, so I love this product called bio-oil, it was my saving grace during the pregnancy too. I rub it everywhere, even when I get out of the shower the first thing I do is lather with oil, even while I’m still wet, not all the way dry. My skin just soaks up all the moisture. So, water and oil.
What is your beauty ritual on tour?
I’m about to find out! I brought all my products. I told the dance artists that are coming with me that we’re gonna make it a real beauty ritual type of tour. I bought this cap on Amazon that has lasers in it, not lasers, LED lights, that are supposed to stimulate hair growth. I’ve got gua sha LED lights. I’ve got little microdermabrasion suction things, gua sha, tools that you can put in the freezer to make them colder, I’ve got all kinds of beauty stuff.
Dr. Lancer skincare, watermelon dewdrops, glow, the micro needling thing that you roll across your face, it’s like so many things. So I think it’s really important for us to maintain self-care on tour cause we’re going to be giving so much every night that we’re gonna need to refill our cups. So I’m planning on doing all the girly things with all the women on tour on our off days and oiling each other’s scalps and all that good stuff.
Being a mama, any post-baby beauty tips you want to share?
Post-baby beauty tips… I would say continue using the bio-oil if you care to. I would say make a short manicure your best friend, even though long nails are really gorgeous I’ve found it a little bit more difficult to do functional things, especially poopy diapers, with long luxurious nails. So find cute shorter manicures, it doesn’t have to be forever but it also makes it easier for the baby not to get scratched. I would also say rest when you can.
I know people say rest when the baby rests, but that’s usually when you’re doing other important things, so just when you do rest make sure you’re taking your magnesium and you’re getting a really good rest. I would also say don’t forget yourself, the same things you do for your baby you try to do for yourself. So those baths, those belly rubs, those scalp massages, those facial things, wrapping yourself in the blanket, all of those. Just make sure you’re doing that for yourself too.
One drugstore beauty item every girl should have in her bag…
If I have to choose one I’d probably say makeup wipes. I think they’re just as important as putting makeup on, is to get it off completely, especially before you go to bed. So make sure you have that in your bag. It also comes in handy even if you don’t have makeup on that day and you just wanna wash the day off a little bit. Keep the makeup wipes around.
The rest of your year is booked and busy so what does 2024 have in store for you? What’s a small or big goal you would like to achieve?
In 2024… I’ll have a three-year-old, which is crazy. I really want to win Grammys next year. I think that’s my biggest goal. Another big goal is to do a world tour. Another one is to do Coachella. Another one is to perform at award shows. Cover of Billboard. Number 1. Hot 100. Make a new album. Tour again. And really, happiness. I think a big goal is happiness. Oh, and I want to write a children’s book, release a children’s book, and make a Christmas album. And yeah, be happy. The end.
TEAM CREDITS:
Feature Editor: Prince Chenoa (@princechenoastudio)
Feature Editor: Taylor Winter Wilson (@taylorwinter)
Feature Editor: Perrin Johnson (@editsbyperry)
Photographer: Amber Asaly (@amberasaly)
Photographer: Jacob Webster (@jpwphoto)
Photographer: Chanel JM (@chanel.jm)
Photographer: Jack Bridgland (@jack_bridgland_studio)
Photographer: Alfredo Flores (@alfredoflores)
Hair Stylist: Davontae Washington (@iamdavontae)
Makeup Artist: Grace Pae (@grace_pae)
Stylist: Morgan Pinney (@morgann)
Cover Art Design: Carlos Graciano (@sadpapi666)
