Monica

A four-Time nominee, she won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "The Boy Is Mine" at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards.

Her other accolades include a Billboard Music Video Award, a BET Award, and a Soul Train Music Award.

Monica Denise Arnold was born in College Park, Georgia, the only daughter of Marilyn Best, a Delta Air Lines customer service representative and former church singer, and M.C. "Billy" Arnold Jr, who was a mechanic for an Atlanta freight company.

Arnold's mother is of African American descent and her father is African American with Indian and Irish ancestry.

Monica Denise Arnold (formerly Brown; born October 24, 1980) is an American singer, rapper and actress.

Born and raised in College Park, Georgia, she began performing as a child and became part of a traveling gospel choir at the age of ten.

She has a younger brother, Montez (born in 1983), and a half brother, Jermond Grant, on her father's side.

Monica is also a cousin of record producer Polow da Don, and is related to rapper Ludacris through her mother's second marriage to Reverend Edward Best, a Methodist minister.

At the age of 2, Monica followed in her mother's footsteps with regular performances at the Jones Hill Chapel United Methodist Church in Marilyn's hometown Newnan, Georgia.

While growing up in the modest circumstances of a single-parent home after her parents' 1984 separation and 1987 divorce, Monica continued training herself in singing and became a frequent talent-show contestant, winning over 20 local singing competitions throughout her early teenage years.

When she was 10 years old, she became the youngest member of "Charles Thompson and the Majestics", a traveling 12-person gospel choir.

She attended North Clayton High School with rapper 2 Chainz.

In 1991, at the age of eleven, Monica was discovered by music producer Dallas Austin at the Center Stage auditorium in Atlanta, performing Whitney Houston 1986's "Greatest Love of All".

Amazed by her voice, Dallas offered her a record deal with his Arista Records-distributed label Rowdy Records and consulted rapper Queen Latifah to work as Monica's first manager.

Monica signed with record producer Dallas Austin through his label Rowdy Records in 1993, and gained prominence following the release of her debut studio album, Miss Thang (1995).

Shortly afterwards Dallas and then staff producers Tim & Bob entered the studio with Monica to start writing and producing her debut Miss Thang, which was eventually released in July 1995 and reached number thirty-six on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number seven on the Top R&B Albums chart.

To date the album has sold 1.5 million copies in the United States.

Monica's popularity translated into an acting career, with television roles in Living Single (1996), Felicity (2001), and American Dreams (2003), and film roles including Boys and Girls (2000), Love Song (2000), and Pastor Brown (2009).

After a label change to Clive Davis' Arista Records, Monica's mainstream success was boosted, when "For You I Will", from the Space Jam soundtrack (1996) became her next top ten pop hit.

The song was written by Diane Warren.

The following year she was asked to team up with singer Brandy and producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins to record "The Boy Is Mine", the first single from both of their second albums.

Monica has also made guest appearances on several television shows such as Living Single (1996), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1997, 1999) and the Cartoon Network special Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak (2000).

She graduated from high school in 1997 at age 16, having skipped ahead scholastically by studying year-round with a private tutor.

Her follow up releases were met with further commercial success; her second, The Boy Is Mine (1998) remains her best-selling album and spawned three singles that peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100: "The Boy Is Mine" (with Brandy), "The First Night", "Angel of Mine".

Released in May 1998, surrounding highly publicized rumors about a real-life catfight between both singers, the duet became both the biggest hit of the summer and the biggest hit of 1998 in general in America, spending thirteen weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

In January 2000 it was certified triple platinum by the RIAA for three million shipped units.

The album produced three top ten singles, including debut single "Don't Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)" and "Before You Walk Out of My Life", which made Monica the youngest artist ever to have two consecutive chart-topping hits on the U.S. Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart.

Miss Thang subsequently earned Monica an American Music Award nomination in the Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist category.

It earned the pair a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal" and garnered multi-platinum sales (to date, it remains as one of the top twenty most successful American singles in history based on Billboard chart success). Jermaine Dupri, David Foster and Austin consulted on the album The Boy Is Mine, which was released later that year and it eventually became Monica's biggest-selling album; selling over 2,016,000 copies. In June 2000, the album was certified triple platinum by the RIAA for three million shipped units. It yielded another two U.S. number-one hits with "The First Night" and "Angel of Mine", a cover of Eternal's 1997 single, as well as a remake of Richard Marx' "Right Here Waiting". Rolling Stone proclaimed it "closer to soul's source... harking back past hip-hop songbirds like Mary J. Blige and adult-contemporary sirens like Toni Braxton", while AllMusic called the album an "irresistible sounding [and] immaculately crafted musical backdrop [...] as good as mainstream urban R&B gets in 1998."

In 2000, Monica made her film debut as Camille Livingston, a young woman torn between the life her parents have planned for her and the world she experiences after meeting a musician from the wrong side of the tracks, in Love Song, the third drama produced by MTV Films.

Love Song was released on December 1, 2000, and debuted the song "What My Heart Says" along with promotion for the singer's third studio album All Eyez on Me (2002).

She then parted ways with Arista and Rowdy Records in favor of Clive Davis' J Records to release third album, All Eyez on Me (2002).

Released only in Japan, the album was met with critical and commercial failure, leading to a re-issue, which became Monica's fourth album and first to peak atop the US Billboard 200, After the Storm (2003).

Executive produced and largely written by rapper Missy Elliott, it was supported by the lead single "So Gone", which peaked at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100.

Her fifth and sixth albums, The Makings of Me (2006) and Still Standing (2010) also peaked atop the Billboard 200; the latter received two Grammy Award nominations.

In 2008, she served as an advisor for the NBC competition series The Voice.

The recording of her 2008 single, "Still Standing" (featuring Ludacris) along with her personal life resulted in her receiving a reality television series, Monica: Still Standing on BET.

Monica has sold more than five million albums in the United States.

In 2010, Billboard listed Monica at number 24 on its list of the Top 50 R&B and Hip Hop Artists of the past 25 years.

Her seventh, New Life (2012) reached number four on the chart despite trailing critical response, and failed to spawn any charting singles; her eighth, Code Red (2015) saw a continued decline in reception and marked her final release with RCA.