The tracks on the album are a mixture of uptempo songs and ballads, and it was crafted by producers such as Dallas Austin, Bryan Michael Cox, Jermaine Dupri, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, and Soulshock & Karlin.

In June 2000, in an interview with MTV News, Monica revealed that she was planning to start working on a follow-up to her 1998 album, The Boy Is Mine, throughout the summer season, with a first single to be released by October of the same year.

[1] Expressing her interest in reteaming with the core musicians she had worked with on her second album – including frequent collaborators Dallas Austin, Rodney Jerkins, David Foster, Daryl Simmons, and Jermaine Dupri – the singer expected the album to be released in the first quarter of 2001 following her involvement with Oscar Mayer's Jingle Jam Talent Search contest and the filming of her first major motion picture, Love Song (2001).

[1] The following month, personal tribulations put a temporary halt on the album's production when her former boyfriend Jarvis "Knot" Weems committed suicide.

[3] An uptempo R&B track dealing with relationship issues, Monica noted that the song did not "pertain to the stage in my life I'm in, so I'm really waiting and looking for material that will take you to some of the depths in my soul.

[4] Throughout the process, Monica primarily focused on working with her usual stable of producers, which also included Austin, production duo Soulshock & Karlin, Bryan Michael Cox, and Rodney Jerkins and his Darkchild crew.

In the end Monica came up with nine songs for her third album, which she declared as "quite serious" because of its more-adult subject-matter and moreover called it her " 'coming of age' record" with the view to "establish the kind of fans who will be with me for the next ten years and more".

Michael Endelman wrote in his early review for The Boston Globe that "like recent releases from Christina Aguilera and Brandy, the new album from Monica finds the 21-year-old R&B singer trying to escape her teen-pop past.

Hired hands [...] earn their paychecks with a fistful of potential hits [...] but Monica has neither the vocal presence nor the charisma to convince us that someone else couldn't do an equally good job with the same bland, assembly-line material.

The first and only promotional single, "Too Hood", featuring Jermaine Dupri, received a limited vinyl release only since J Records denied to produce a music video for the song.