Music Album: New Life by Monica

Monica returns with her brand new album appropriately titled New Life, a follow-up to 2010's Still Standing. She is definitely singing about her new life because she married LA Lakers player, Shannon Brown and moved to Los Angeles with her two sons to become what the media would call a working hollywood mom. New Life sees Monica sing about different topics that touch on love and life, and all the other situations that fall in between. As she reflects in the Mary J Blige assisted Intro and also the albums Outro, she is packing up her yesterdays, moving on and is not looking back on the past.

This album is the typical r&b sound that we have grown to associate with Monica, where we see her take her voices to places where we have always known she could take it. Highlights of this album include the painful Until It's Gone and the very honest and sincere Amazing - which could be viewed as an ode to her husband.. Other high points of this album include In 3D, Catch Me and It All Belongs to Me - which sees her team back up with Brandy, her duet partner of 14 years ago and the first single, Anything (Featuring Rick Ross).

Though this is a pretty enjoyable album, the truth is that it follows the same musical, creative and vocal direction as Still Standing and I know it may be Monica's way of staying true to herself but I feel like she could have done something really different with her sound, she worked with Rico Love on this album who could have created a cutting edge sound like he has done with Melanie Fiona and Kelly Rowland. In short terms, I think she played it safe with this new music but I am really happy for her new life