New Live review - Monica

”Gotta pack up my yesterdays,” Monica sighs on the Mary J.-style phone-call intro to New Life. But by the sound of it, the singer hasn’t closed her suitcases yet. Her seventh album is a thoroughly last-millennium set of self-help ballads about starting over (”Take a Chance”) and finding strength in tears (”Cry”), set to the kind of cheesy slow-jam beats that were hot back during Monica’s previous life as a ’90s teen phenom. C+

Best Tracks:
Sassy brush-off It All Belongs to Me
String-filled Cry