Monie Love Opens Up About Abusive Marriage In Upcoming 'Unsung' Episode

This Sunday TV One “Unsung” will feature one of our favorite pioneering women in hip-hop — Monie Love!

Source: Courtesy / TV One

BOSSIP’s Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden chopped it up with the rapper, radio host and mom about the upcoming episode, which airs Sunday March 13 at 9 p.m. ET / 8C. When we asked the British phenom about getting the call to do “Unsung” she said she was initially taken aback.

“My first thought, are you sure you wanna do this?” Monie told BOSSIP. “And the reason I said that was I’ve never seen an ‘Unsung’ that leaves the country. I thought, ‘I’m too complicated.’ There’s just too much that comes with me. I’m born in a whole different country. You guys would have to travel there and get interviews with my whole crew. We came up with hip-hop, we were break dancers and pop lockers. I just thought it would be too much so I was surprised when they were like, ‘ No we’ve taken that into consideration and this is something we want to do.”

While the “Unsung” episode celebrates Monie for her trailblazing career as an MC and member of the Native Tongues crew, and follows her journey into motherhood and a prosperous career as a radio host, the producers didn’t glaze over the tough times she faced, and Monie told BOSSIP that it was only because she’s healed that she was able to share some of the more difficult experiences, including a toxic marriage.

“I definitely would say they caught me at a good time,” Monie Love told BOSSIP. “Had it have been a few years earlier I wouldn’t have been able to talk about the abusive marriage I was in. They caught me at a very good time because I’m in a place where I’m in a good place with it. You can’t put a time stamp on somebody’s healing. It just so happened that I have healed through all of that.”

Monie Love says she’s moved on from that part of her life and no longer communicates with her ex-husband even though they share a son together.

“I don’t speak to him at all.” Monie told BOSSIP. “I talk about my experience and my truth because it’s what I went through but I don’t speak to him at all for the simple reason that some things are more aggravation than they’re worth. He definitely was not a missed part in my life or my son’s life.”

Check out a clip from Sunday’s episode below:

Yes! We love a resilient woman!

Keep clicking for more from our Monie Love interview.

Sunday’s episode of “Unsung” also touches on Monie’s on-air conflict with Jeezy over a decade ago during a radio interview that turned heated over Nas’ controversial “Hip Hop Is Dead” album and the debate over the state of rap music at the time.

Source: Courtesy / TV One

Ironically, Monie says she and Jeezy have yet to meet since their contentious moment.

“It’s really interesting that I’ve been here [in Atlanta] since 2016 and I’ve never run into Jeezy ever,” Monie Love told BOSSIP. “Even more interesting is that he’s really close with a colleague of mine, who does mornings on the station that I’m on — Frank Ski. He comes to everything Frank Ski does — it just so happens that I’m just never there. I usually have to travel to perform somewhere, so I haven’t been able to attend those events that the station has done for Frank Ski since he’s been with us. Had I gone to some of those events I’d have seen Jeezy myself. I feel like when the time is right, when God decides you guys need to see each other, it will happen.”

“What transpired on the radio was super interesting,” Monie continued. “I think that Jeezy has evolved. When I was talking to him that many years ago I thought I was talking to today’s Jeezy. I was looking for a level of understanding in what I was saying that I believe he shows now. That’s not fair for me to expect someone to show up who isn’t scheduled to show up until ten years later. I always look at it like that. That man wasn’t ready to hear what I had to say that day.”

Much of Sunday’s “Unsung” episode celebrates Monie’s status as one of few women on the hip-hop charts in the early ’90’s. But the episode also notes her strong relationships with other female rappers including Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Yo Yo.

We asked Monie Love about the more recent resurgence of women in hip-hop and collaboration among female MC’s.

“It’s awesome and it’s about time,” Monie love told BOSSIP. “I think it had to be that period of stagnancy where a lot of women were not getting their shine. It had to be somebody who broke through that weird time, that would be Nicki. These things had to transpire in order for there to be a level of — even girls who don’t particularly care for each other I’m noticing these days are open to understanding that there is a solidarity amongst women where at the end of the day people tried to box all of us out. Not just some of us.”

Monie pointed to Nicki Minaj’s recent signs of growth where she paid respect to Lil Kim for her role in paving the way for female artists.

“Years ago she was in a different place,” Monie Love told BOSSIP. ” She’s a mother now. She’s given birth. She is part of the mother community. There are a lot of things that happen within a woman, within her psyche, with her approach to many a thing that happen later in your career than early in your career. Back in the days, I wouldn’t wear makeup for nothing; now it’s like, ‘I understand what I have to do. High definition cameras.’ It’s a different mindset. These things happen with everybody. When I read that interview it was beautiful to me, but I shouldn’t expect anything less. The one thing that I understood about Nicki Minaj is that she’s nobody’s fool. She’s intelligent so it shouldn’t surprise me that a sentence like this would come out of her mouth. That was a beautiful moment to me. I really dug it.”

Nicki Minaj isn’t the only female MC to garner recognition from Monie Love either. She told BOSSIP that she’s enjoying watching the careers of the many women who have picked up the mic and are running up the charts.

“I enjoy watching all of their progress,” Monie Love told BOSSIP. You don’t have to be about what I’m about. I’m not very sexually explicit. That’s not a portion of myself that I share in my music, but at the same point I can watch, appreciate and enjoy the progress of someone whose strength is sexually owning what they do. I love watching Nicki. I love watching Remy. I love watching BIA. It was such a fun summer when she blew — and then I did the research and understood she was the same lady that I watched on the TV show [Lifetime’s “Sisterhood of Hip Hop”] that had like five female MCs on the rise. That was cool to realize that was the same girl I watched and now she’s blown. I love watching Kash Doll on “BMF.” She is so enjoyable to watch. I love her flow. She has excellent comedic timing that I don’t know if she realizes she has. I run the whole gamut of the woman MCs that I love watching. They’re so much fun.”

In the meantime, Monie isn’t just watching from the sidelines. While her “Unsung” episode opens with a clips from the 2021 BET Hip Hop Awards performance of “Ladies First” that Monie did as part of the tribute to Queen Latifah (who received her lifetime achievement award at the event), Monie has been back in the studio recording and even released a single, “Divine,” last fall, which also features Skyzoo and Tuff.

“I’ve been recording since shooting “Marriage Boot Camp,” and I shot “Marriage Boot Camp” during the month of April,” Monie Love told BOSSIP. “As soon as I got off “Marriage Boot Camp” I went right into the studio. That was something that was put together since 2020 I was supposed to start recording and release a project summer of 2020, but that was the year the pandemic happened and pushed everything back. I released me first single in October, the second single should be sometime this spring and the album will be come out this summer.”

We can’t wait. Make sure you tune in to watch Monie Love on “Unsung” Sunday, March 13th at 9 p.m. ET / 8C on TV One.