@TonyBeePhoto, @ShaunAndru
Brandy, left, and Monica at The Prudential Center in Newark, Nov. 21.
When Brandy and Monica released their “The Boy Is Mine” duet 27 years ago, the song’s manufactured rivalry led to something far more durable — two platinum certifications and ultimately a pop-culture mythos. For a time, the track was inaccessible on the Spotify edition of Monica’s The Boy Is Mine album, an omission that inevitably ignited whispers about behind-the-scenes tensions. Their 2020 Verzuz showdown drew a record 1.4 million viewers; in 2024, Ariana Grande was moved to borrow the title for her own platinum single.
So perhaps it was inevitable that a tour trading on that legacy would pack the Prudential Center in Newark, on Nov. 21.
They brought backup. Kelly Rowland, Muni Long and “American Idol” winner Jamal Roberts separately opened the evening, which began earlier than the announced showtime. Even so, the concert skirted perilously close to the IATSE overtime clock. Patti LaBelle materialized, improbably yet triumphantly, during Rowland’s set, summoned for a pre-“Dilemma” cameo. Ne-Yo drifted into the main program for a pair of songs.
It was a lot to fit in, even with nearly four hours of showtime. Rowland alone attempted 14 songs in 40 minutes — a feat that landed somewhere between an exuberant sprint and an overgrown medley.
Brandy and Monica, for their part, had less than two hours to navigate a 32-song set — an undertaking that required a brisk, almost archival approach. They dutifully worked through the fan-favorite canon, though nothing released in the past decade survived. There is, of course, the perennial argument that audiences aren’t paying to hear the new stuff. Yet artistic evolution, one hopes, deserves a measure of airtime alongside nostalgia. Their fan base has grown up with them; this tour, by all appearances, was less a reunion than a long-delayed catch-up. It remains puzzling that their 2012 duet, “It All Belongs to Me,” was struck from the lineup after appearing in early October shows.
@TonyBeePhoto, @ShaunAndru
Brandy performs at The Prudential Center.
The night bore the shadow of their idols. Whitney Houston loomed largest — unsurprising, given the reverence both singers have expressed toward her over the years — while Janet Jackson flickered at the margins. Their cover of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” is a setlist fixture, but its performance in Houston’s hometown lent it an added solemnity. Both artists are formidable vocalists who dabble in choreography, rather than the reverse; still, the production, with its emphasis on dancers over a live band, pushed them further into Jacksonian territory. Monica’s segment even included a nod to “Any Time, Any Place.”
The evening’s theme — unity — was broadcast upfront, in an introductory video that framed the duet partners as collaborators rather than competitors. During the first medley, they shared the stage, weaving their respective hits into one another’s. They closed the show seated side by side, one singing while the other mouthed the words with the casual intimacy of one who knows her friend’s catalog by osmosis. Monica assumed the role of MC, explaining, with an insider’s affection, that Brandy is shy.
The era that produced Brandy and Monica also yielded a scattering of mononymous teen idols who have since faded into the cultural sediment. These two, however, have grown into their legacies with an unaffected steadiness, candid about personal struggles and uninterested in preserving the lacquered perfection of their ’90s personas.
Yet what continues to resonate is the music of their girl-next-door years — the earnestness, the sweetness, the unguardedness. Hearing Monica’s “Don’t Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)” still returns me, with embarrassing clarity, to a college dorm room where a roommate once wondered, in all seriousness, if the song was about the menstrual cycle; I collapsed in laughter. We have long since lost touch. But the music, impossible to unlink from the moment, remains.
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