Brandy, 41, is getting ready to drop her first new album in eight years — B7 will be released on Friday, July 24 — so she sat down with Zane Lowe on Apple Music to run through her At Home With playlist. However, while doing so, she also reminisced about her massive Grammy-winning hit, “The Boy Is Mine”, and how the 1998 track led to a rumored rivalry with her collaborator on the song, Monica, 39.
Even though both R&B divas denied and downplayed their supposed beef throughout the 90s, the rumors never went away. There was even a report of an alleged fist fight (yes, a fist fight) during rehearsals for Brandy and Monica’s performance at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. But still, Brandy looks back on the track with fond memories.
“Oh my God, that’s the biggest song of my entire career, I think. What an amazing record,” Brandy said after Zane asked her about the success of the track. “I think when I first heard the record with Rodney Jerkins, I couldn’t believe to hear the instruments that he used in that song. I was blown away by it. I knew that just with the topic of the song, it needed Monica on it. I thought that she just brought such an amazing flavor, an amazing swag to the song and every time I hear it, it sounds fresh and new to this day.”
So what about the rumored feud that was initiated by the now timeless track? According to Brandy, it wasn’t all it seemed to be. “And I think, especially when you say Monica and myself, I mean, that song was about a boy and it was about us competing over a boy. And so naturally people are going to put us against each other even more because of the topic of the song and what we’re speaking about. So we played into the competitiveness of it,” she explained.
Monica said something similar while appearing on The Real in September 2016. While on the talk show, she said, “I think that some of it’s been blown out of proportion to a degree”. And that was after Brandy fueled rumors of a rivalry when she refused to participate in a social media challenge built around one of Monica’s songs.
But regardless of how bad things got between Brandy and Monica, Brandy revealed that the song led to some other great things as well. “And I want to say this. After that duet, I remember Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey then doing a duet. I always say that it was because of ‘The Boy Is Mine’ my two favorite artists got together to do a duet. I always feel like me and Monica had something to do with that,” she told Zane Lowe.
So not only did Brandy and Monica give us one of the best rivalries of the 90s (exaggerated or not), they also inspired Whitney and Mariah to give us “When You Believe”? Well then, I think we ought to take a moment and bow down to both Brandy and Monica for all their awesomeness. In our opinions, Brandy has always been an incredibly underrated cultural icon in music, and this just further proves our point.