Victoria Monét’s ‘Frequency of Love’: All 22 Tracks Ranked
Billboard ·
The Grammy-winning R&B star's long-awaited sophomore studio album is here. See how Billboard ranks each track on Frequency of Love .
It’s been three years since Victoria Monét danced her way into America’s hearts and the Grammy stage with her delightfully funky debut studio album Jaguar II — now, she’s ready to fully step into her next era.
Frequency of Love , Monét’s sophomore studio album, arrived Oct. 2 via Lovett Music and RCA Records, featuring collaborations with SZA, Bruno Mars, Bryson Tiller, Leon Thomas, Chlöe, Lucky Daye and her five-year-old daughter Hazel Monét. Reuniting with longtime producer D’Mile, Monét has delivered a stellar sophomore studio album; across 22 shimmering tracks that swell with sweeping strings and pulsating synths, the 37-year-old explores the ebbs and flows of love in sexual, familial, and even supernatural contexts. From echoes of house music to the guiding light of gospel, Frequency of Love doubles as a starry-eyed love letter to the breadth of Black music — with R&B remaining its unshakeable core.
Notably, Frequency of Love moves away from the brassy, horn-forward approach to ’70s-nodding R&B that dominated Monét’s Jaguar era. She signaled that sonic shift with lead single “Let Me,” which topped Adult R&B Airplay for three weeks, and “Reach Out,” which built on the Kaytranada-helmed production of 2024’s “Alright.” As expected, both songs feel much more vibrant in the Frequency’s full context — and that’s a testament to the lush world Monét and D’Mile built via their intentional sequencing.
The flirtatious, Bryson Tiller-assisted “Single” smartly flows into the come-hither pulses of “Reach Out,” and her musings of love lost in the SZA-featuring “See You In My Dreams” morph nicely into the wedding vow energy of her swooning “That’s Why I Love You” duet with Bruno Mars. Frequency of Love , despite its slightly overblown length, scoffs at the very idea of a sophomore slump; this is how you follow up a three-time Grammy-winning breakthrough record.
One of R&B’s sharpest students, Monét intentionally grounds Frequency in the context of the love-minded songs that came before it. From Brandy’s “Almost Doesn’t Count” and Dru Hill’s “In My Bed” to Joe’s “All the Things (Your Man Won’t Do)” and Bruno Lauzi’s “Ritornerai,” Frequency is in constant conversation with both history and the zeitgeist, making it a rare contemporary record that feels both instantly timeless and incredibly of-the-moment. We’re in an era that sneers at earnest displays of love, and Frequency fights that head-on with a soundscape that mines Black music — literally everything from gospel to Motown to house — to explore the multitudes of love and its merits as not just a shared experience, but also as an approach to life.
Now that she’s wrapped her stint as opener for Bruno Mars’ stadium-conquering Romantic Tour — which she joined just a month after graduating from culinary school — Monét is gearing up for her own headlining trek. The Frequency of Love Tour will commence at Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheater on Oct. 27, visiting major North American cities like New York, Toronto and Nashville, before concluding at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on Dec. 17.
Here’s how Billboard ranks every track on Frequency of Love , Victoria Monét’s sophomore studio album, from worst to best.