Although the album was tentatively titled I'm Back and Monica at one time or another, it was eventually named after the album's lead single, " All Eyez on Me." Release and reception "I didn't have one concept in mind: I just thought about the situations and that they might be worth sharing." 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".
Though she "had never thought about writing much" by then, her producers encouraged the singer to intensify her work on the album and to write and contribute own lyrics and ideas to the songs. Throughout the process, Monica primarily focused on working with her usual stable of producers, which also included Austin, production team Soulshock & Karlin, Bryan Michael Cox, and Rodney Jerkins and his Darkchild crew. Davis replaced producer Dallas Austin, while longtime contributor Jermaine Dupri served as the album's executive producer. Over the course of the sessions, Clive Davis – who had taken the singer with him from his former label, Arista Records, to his latest venture, J Records – emerged as Monica's new mentor. I'm hoping to be an inspiration to a lot of young women." Monica eventually decided to return to the recording studio to prepare the release of her third album in fall 2001. It was very difficult to juggle all of those things and then try to be a family for his kids at the same time. 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. In the first quarter of 2001, her single " Just Another Girl", taken from the soundtrack of the 2001 motion picture Down to Earth, was released. I'm not ashamed to say that I decided to step back and get the help I needed to really come from within." "I was not able I was working all these hours after it happened, I realized in the midst of everything, I couldn't handle it. "Jarvis' death had everything to do with me not working," she said in 2001. Knot left behind a daughter from a previous relationship, who Monica took into care after going into hiatus. In July 2000, Monica and Weems were together at the graveside of Weems's brother, who had died in an automobile accident at age 25 in 1998, when Weems, without warning, put a gun to his head and shot himself to death. The following month, personal tribulations put a temporary halt on the album's production when her former boyfriend Jarvis "Knot" Weems committed suicide.
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). 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. The album was then partially re-recorded and retooled as After the Storm in 2003 with original album cut, " U Should've Known Better", released as its fourth single in 2004. Expected to be released on November 12, 2002, in the United States, the album was eventually put on hold after it had experienced heavy bootlegging following its Japanese release and became widely available through Internet file-sharing services. Its preceding two singles, " All Eyez on Me" and " Too Hood", achieved moderate commercial success on the charts however. Released to mixed reviews by music critics, the album reached number 14 on the Japanese Albums Chart. The tracks on the album are a mixture of uptempo songs and ballads, which are inspired by the genres of contemporary R&B and soul it also features elements of hip hop, dance-pop and gospel music, crafted by musicians such as Dallas Austin, Bryan Michael Cox, Jermaine Dupri, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, and Soulshock & Karlin. Named after its same-titled lead single, it marked the singer's first record under Clive Davis' J Records roster and was first released on October 21, 2002, in Japan.
All Eyez on Me is the third studio album by American recording artist Monica.