"Back in New York City, while I was working on the Monica story, Through the Fire, Monica called and left a voice mail. It was what I needed to get me through my last late night of edits on the story: Hi, Laura, this is Monica. We talked about everything but the one thing I do every single day is put in Kirk Franklin's Hero and listen to Imagine Me. God just put it on my heart to share, because it'll be a real pick-me-up for anybody that has demons they’re facing. This song gets me through so many of my days. I promise you, it’s a blessing. I know when people read the story they’ll get their own perception—some may be good, some may be bad. I pray that it will be more good than bad. But if you find any way to fit that in your story, it would make me very happy because regardless of how they take anything else, for anybody that’s been through the kind of stuff that I have, it's one of the little things that you need to keep your day moving.

When we first met, the end of July at Great Jones Spa in Manhattan's East Village, I told Monica Arnold, 25, that several tracks on her new album, The Makings Of Me, had been helping me face my own demons and get through many of my days. The Atlanta native said that a lot of women had been telling her the same thing. With Monica's signature sass and gorgeous riffs, "Why Her," “Hell No,” “Sideline Ho,” and “Gotta Move On” are about the stuff that makes your heart hurt. Stuff too many women can relate to like being down for someone through rough times, giving your all and getting left, and wondering what you could have done differently. The material on Monica's fourth album is based on her own experience, and she says the disc is like a diary.

As we got manicures and pedicures, we spent hours discussing relationships, motherhood, and why, although she has gone seven times platinum over her eleven-year career, she's never blown up, graced major-magazine covers, or won awards—besides, of course, that 1998 Grammy alongside Brandy for “The Boy is Mine.” As Monica said on my voice mail, we talked about everything, but mostly, we talked about love.

Vibe.com: My heels are so rough. It's not cute at all!

Monica: We're going to fix that today because when your soul mate comes, baby, your feet gotta be right. Your heart, mind, soul, though—that's the main thing. You seem to have found your soul mate in your fiancee, Rodney.

You met him in 2000, the same summer that your boyfriend Knot killed himself.
Monica: Rodney met me at the worst of me, and now he has the best of me. I was able to learn to trust again. I was able to learn to love again. Now I'm just excited about vacuuming and cleaning up before he gets home. I love baking key lime and strawberry cakes.

You're a traditional Southern woman.
Monica: Extremely traditional. I love to submit when it's necessary. I let him be the head of the household. No new-generation woman speeches from me.

Since you dated rough rappers like C-Murder and Young Buck, people tend to think of you as a good girl who has a thing for bad guys…
Monica: I don’t mind taking a risk on love. If I’d dated who was popular or who appeared to fit what people thought I may have been, I wouldn't be happy. I've learned something from each person that I loved. My first love was Corey [C-Murder]. It was a perfect first experience. He would bring me all the money and say, "Figure out the bills. Work everything out. You can handle it." I learned how to run my own company. I learned the role that I wanted to play for the person that I would marry. The second time that I fell in love was the rawest, because Knot is now deceased. It's a part of me that will never ever leave. But it allowed me to love Rodney in the purest way possible, because I've lost somebody I loved.

It must have been so difficult for you to lose Knot the way that you did [suicide], especially being in the public eye.

Monica: I don't ever want people to feel like I'm playing the victim. Sometimes in our industry, people look for things to publicize, to make a big traumatic issue. I don't want people saying, "Oh, poor thing, she's been through so much." Yeah, but so have another half-a-billion people in the world.

So did that make you question whether or not you should share your story?
Monica: A lot of times as artists we’re fighting to keep our privacy, but everything that I've ever been through, so has somebody else, so what's the shame in it? Just because you see me on TV, I don't hurt? That's not the case.

Speaking of privacy and publicity, were you worried about telling the folks at J Records that you were pregnant last year?
Monica: When you look in my eyes, don't you see that I don't leave room for questions? I told them I'm pregnant, he's due in May. Thank you. I didn't leave room for anything but congratulations, because that's exactly what I wanted. .

Your realness has both helped your career and hindered it. But you've remained in the game for twelve years while some of your peers have blown up and then fallen off around you.
Monica: Some things just go unrecognized. Patti LaBelle told me a long time ago, “You don't want a fast up, 'cause you don't want a fast down.” She said, “You don't want to have one album sell 10 million, be a one-hit wonder, and never do it again.”

Do you have any regrets?
Monica: Don't even believe in the word.

You seem like you're really settled with yourself now.
Monica: Yeah, but look at what I went through to get to that. My God, I guess I earned some inner peace by now."

[Vibe]