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Victoria Monet VibeZ

Victoria Monét wrote hits for other people for a decade before anyone let her have her own. Twenty-five tracks of the most satisfying delayed arrival in recent R&B.

The songwriter who finally took the microphone

Victoria Monét McCants, from Sacramento, spent years as one of the most reliable writers in pop — most visibly as Ariana Grande's long-term collaborator, with credits across "thank u, next," "7 rings," "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" and much of Grande's best material. She also wrote for Fifth Harmony, Nas and Chris Brown.

Her own releases came out steadily and quietly through the 2010s, and the industry treated her as a writer who sang rather than a singer. That changed with Jaguar (2020) and then decisively with Jaguar II (2023), which won three Grammys including Best New Artist — an award for someone with fifteen years in the business, which says more about the industry than about her.

The music is deliberately live-sounding: funk basslines, real horns, and an emphasis on groove that owes more to the 1970s than to anything on contemporary R&B radio.

What to listen for

"On My Mama" is the biggest and the best — built on a Chalie Boy sample, with a horn arrangement and a vocal that is closer to a strut than a performance. "Smoke" with Lucky Daye is the sultriest thing here.

"Experience" with Khalid and SG Lewis is the disco record, and "Jaguar" and "Ass Like That" show the humour that runs through her writing — the latter is a song about the gym, and it is funnier than it needs to be.

The interludes — "Big Boss," "We Might Even Be Falling In Love" — matter to how her albums work; she uses them as breath rather than filler.

The features map her standing: Buju Banton, T.I., Summer Walker on the "Girls Need Love" remix, and Leon Thomas on "Breaking Point."

Go deeper

Jaguar II (2023) is the album, and it is short, warm and superbly played. Her daughter Hazel appears on it and became, at eighteen months, one of the youngest Grammy nominees ever — a detail that is either charming or absurd, and probably both.

Go and re-listen to Ariana Grande's Sweetener and thank u, next knowing Monét co-wrote them. The phrasing is unmistakable once you know to listen for it.

For the funk-forward lane she works in: Lucky Daye, Anderson .Paak and Silk Sonic are the contemporaries, and Chaka Khan and Rufus the model.

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