Monie Love

Monie Love
Birth name	Simone Gooden
Born	(1970-07-02) 2 July 1970 (age 54)[1] Battersea, London, England
Genres	Progressive rap[2]
Occupations	Rapper actress
Years active	1987–present
Labels	Warner Bros. Cooltempo/Chrysalis/EMI Tuff Groove
Website	twitter.com/DaRealMonieLove

Simone Johnson^[1] (born Simone Gooden)^[3] (born 2 July 1970),^[1] better known by her stage name Monie Love, is an English rapper, actress, and radio personality known for her singles during the late 1980s and the 1990s. Love is a radio personality for urban adult contemporary station KISS 104.1 WALR-FM in Atlanta. Love is a pioneer female emcee, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, the first British female hip hop artist to hold that distinction.^[4]

Career

Music

Love's debut studio album, Down to Earth, was released on 6 November 1990. It spawned the singles "Monie in the Middle" (a track dealing with a woman's right to determine what she wants out of a relationship) and "It's a Shame (My Sister)" (which sampled the (Detroit) Spinners' "It's a Shame", written for the band by the US musician Stevie Wonder). It also featured house-music vocalist and then-labelmate Ultra Naté. The album reached No. 26 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.^[5] Love also appears on the song titled "United" from Inner City's third album, Praise, and raps a response verse from the woman's perspective on a 1989 remix of the Fine Young Cannibals hit, "She Drives Me Crazy".^[6]

Love was featured on the LA Reid & Babyface remix of Whitney Houston's R&B hit "My Name Is Not Susan" in 1991, and appeared in the music video alongside Houston. Love's 1992 single "Full-Term Love", from the Class Act movie soundtrack, reached No. 7 on the Hot Hip-Hop Singles chart.^[7] Love collaborated with Marley Marl on her second album, In a Word or 2 (1993), which featured the Prince-produced single "Born To B.R.E.E.D." (which reached No. 1 on the Hot Dance Music chart and No. 7 on the Hot Rap Singles chart), as well as a re-release of "Full-Term Love".^[7] The same year, Prince asked her to write lyrics for a few songs on a side-project, Carmen Electra's eponymous album, Carmen Electra. Love's last release as lead artist was the single "Slice of da Pie" in 2000. In 2013, she was featured on the track "Sometimes" by Ras Kass, from his album Barmageddon, and in 2021, she released a single called “Divine”, featuring Skyzoo and a friend of theirs called Tuff.

US Radio

From 2004 until the week of 11 December 2006, Love was the morning drive host on Philadelphia's WPHI-FM 100.3. The Philadelphia Daily News confirmed on 22 December that Love left WPHI-FM on amicable terms after contract negotiations stalled.^[8] Love's departure from WPHI followed soon after her December 2006 interview with Young Jeezy, where the two argued over whether hip hop is dead.^[9] Love is also an official MySpace.com DJ, according to her Myspace page. She has a radio show on XM Satellite Radio called Ladies First Radio with Monie Love. It airs Thursdays 6 PM ET and Sundays 8 PM ET. In 2015, Love became a DJ on Philadelphia's Boom 107.9, hosting a morning show from 6 am to 10 am. In 2016, Love co-hosted with Ed Lover on the Ed Lover Morning Show for "Boom 92" KROI in Houston, Texas. In 2018, Monie Love did the workday and lunch break from 10am-3pm on 106.7 WTLC in Indianapolis, Indiana.^[10] In May 2019, she began hosting afternoons at "KISS 104.1" WALR in Atlanta.^[11]

Personal life

Born in England to a jazz musician father, Love has two brothers, Richard and David Gooden (known as Dave Angel), and a sister named Rosanna Sharian Gooden (who is a singer known as Baz).^[3][12][13] Love moved to America, settling in New York City in March 1988. She has four children.^[14][15] She has been married twice and is a single parent.^[16] She is of Jamaican descent.

Discography

Main article: Monie Love discography

Studio albums

• Down to Earth (1990)
• In a Word or 2 (1993)

References

1. Room, Adrian (10 January 2014). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed. McFarland. p. 296. ISBN 9780786457632 – via Google Books.
2. Johnson, Kevin C. (23 December 2011). "Q&A: Local artists pay tribute to Native Tongues rap acts". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 16 July 2021.
3. "Mixmag [DAVE ANGEL]". 28 April 2008. Archived from the original on 28 April 2008. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
4. "Monie Love". Grammy.com. 23 November 2020. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
5. Henderson, Alex. "Down To Earth Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
6. "FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS - "She Drives Me Crazy" (Monie Love Remix) [1988]". YouTube. 30 January 2021. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
7. Henderson, Alex. "In A Word Or 2 Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 18 November 2006.
8. Conrad, Laurie T. (22 December 2006). "Tattle: No mo' Monie". Philadelphia Daily News. Retrieved 25 December 2006.^{[dead link]}
9. Bolden, Janee (22 December 2006). "Monie Love Gets None, Officially Off The Air in Philly". SOHH.com. Archived from the original on 1 January 2007. Retrieved 29 May 2007.
10. Beasley, Lauren (2 January 2018). "Monie Love Joins WTLC!". wtlcfm.com.
11. Ho, Rodney. "Hip-hop legend Monie Love takes over Kiss 104.1 afternoon slot". Ajc.com. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
12. "Baz - Universal Music France". universalmusic.fr (in French). Retrieved 9 September 2022.
13. CDGO. "Slice Of Da Pie - Monie Love". CDGO. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
14. "Ladies First: Monie Love Discusses Being A Mother In Hip-Hop (Audio)". Ambrosiaforheads.com. 12 May 2019.
15. "Hip Hop Moms". Essence.com. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
16. Osorio, Kim (13 August 2014). "Monie Love Still in the Middle...Of Motherhood". Madamenoire.com. Retrieved 13 August 2014.

External links

• AllMusic.com Biography – Monie Love
• Monie Love's myspace.com page
• Monie Love Discography on Discogs
• A site focusing on the early days of Hip Hop development in the UK
• Monie Love Hip-Hop 40th Anniversary
• The Greatest Female Rappers of All Time