“The very first thing you hear when you play the album is a soundbowl, and it’s in the frequency of love. Literally. It’s 528 Hertz,” says R&B diva and singer-songwriter Victoria Monét. “We kind of set the mood there, and then it goes into picking up the story where I feel like maybe the world left off with me, which was probably on the Grammy red carpet where my daughter was a meme and her dad was right next to me with family photos. We were already separated at the time, but [I was] discovering and being OK with the fact that Hazel is really all the love I needed. I needed to express that and the frequency of love, tuning into that frequency, reminding myself why I’m doing this.”

Monet is sitting with an intimate gathering of super-fans at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records on the eve of her long-anticipated sophomore album, previewing the double-disc, 22-track opus Frequency of Love, which features collaborations with SZA, Bruno Mars, Bryson Tiller, Chloe, Lucky Daye, Leon Thomas, and her 5-year-old daughter, Hazel Monét. Hazel, who inspired tracks like the mood-setting “Come Back to You,” which Vicotria says is about “the sacrifice I have to make in order to provide,” is actually in attendance, along with Victoria’s mother, L’Tanya Chestang Cubit, the woman who inspired Victoria’s Jaguar II breakthrough hit “On My Mama.” Suffice to say, there’s a lot of love in the room.

At one point during Licorice Pizza’s Frequency of Love listening session, Hazel even joins Victoria for the playback of “You Mean the World to Me,” the track featuring Hazel with Thomas. It’s an adorable mother/daughter moment as Victoria tells her, “Let’s start with saying, Hazel, I’m so proud of you. You did such a beautiful job on this song. To hear you sing really melts my heart, and so I’m so happy to have you on this album. Thank you for your understanding when Mommy couldn’t be home to make this album. … You really do mean the world to me.”

Much has happened since Victoria — who was already a success behind the scenes as a pop songwriter (her multiple Ariana Grande credits alone include “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings”) — became a solo star with Jaguar II. She won three Grammys, most notably Best New Artist, beating out the likes of Gracie Abrams, Jelly Roll, Noah Kahan, and the War & Treaty. (Addressing any complaints that she shouldn’t have been nominated in that category because of her previous industry experience, she chuckles, “I’m so thankful for my award… and I’m not giving it back!”) Hazel also received a Best Traditional R&B Performance nomination for a Jaguar II Earth, Wind & Fire collab featuring her vocals, “Hollywood,” which made her, at age 2, the world’s youngest Grammy nominee. And judging by the critical acclaim that Frequency of Love has garnered so far, Hazel might be on track to become the Grammys’ youngest two-time nominee.

“Yes, she was born into greatness. I always say I’m really here for that type of nepotism and trying to push her forward,” a proud Victoria laughs.

However, while Victoria’s professional life has been thriving since 2023, in her personal life, she split up with Hazel’s father, John Gaines, who she’d been with three and a half years, just a few months after Jaguar II’s release — forcing her to juggle co-parenting with her newfound superstardom. “Now, I’m not a single mom, but I’m a mom that’s single. And I have to be, of my household, the provider. So, I have to express myself that way and let my daughter know I’ll always return,” she explains. “Even in the interim of Jaguar II and Frequency of Love, I wrote a children’s book [Everywhere You Are] that kind of shares that same sentiment, where I’m letting her know that we’re still connected no matter if I’m at work or separated. And I often try to bring her to my work experiences.”

While only three years have passed since Jaguar II, Victoria acknowledges that in this fickle business, there was an expectation that she would rush out a follow-up. “I think any time you experience success, the thing you do right after will include pressure. And sometimes it’s self-inflicted,” she muses. “But I don’t view success as a linear thing that just keeps repeating itself no matter what. It does take a lot of hard work and culmination of all of the energy, the self-healing, the workload, but also a little bit of timing and luck. … So, I did have to unlearn some of those pressures. And some of that takes time to do, which I think is human, and that’s OK.

“I can’t type in a prompt and create masterpieces. I have to have lived experiences. I have to edit things. I have to try and tweak things. I have to be honest. I have to re-cultivate,” Victoria continues. “There’s so many things that have to take place in order to make something that you’re proud of. So, the three years, I hope, were worth the wait — which is kind of one reason why I think I was even more OK with putting out a 22-song album!”

During her dimly lit Licorice Pizza listening party, Victoria repeatedly urges her fans to go home and listen to Frequency of Love from front to back, giving a preview of that seamless at-home experience by playing its first three tracks uninterrupted: the soundbowl-chiming “All I Need,” “Come Back to You,” and the gorgeous “Care for Somebody (Interlude)” an old Hollywood Dorothy Dandridge cover that one could easily imagine Victoria performing with the Los Angels Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Victoria understandably labored over the album’s song order, to create the right vibe.

“Oh, I was back, back, forth and forth, like I was Aaliyah! There was so much thought into the process of sequencing. It’s an important part of how I feel a listen should happen,” she tells the attending fans. “For the first listen, I want you to understand what the story is, and also contextualize each song with what it’s enveloped in between. So, there’s a lot of consideration that goes into it. But also, then I’m OK with you putting all these songs on a playlist and rearranging it. This is your album now. … And I hope that you find yourselves within the album. The moments where you don’t have the words, I hope this album is there for you, and as you grow as a person or experience different things, that different songs will resonate even more with you at those times.”

Victoria, now 37, has grown so much, personally and professionally, to get to this moment, and as someone who didn’t become a household name until she was in her thirties, she says “the timing was perfect” for this phase of her career. That is why gratitude is such an overarching theme of her new album.

“There is no mistake when God had his hand on the timing. I thought I wanted it at 20, 21, 22, 23 — all of these moments where maybe I wouldn’t have been ready or handled it this way, or the music just wasn’t right yet,” she says. “I’m so thankful that I had to climb uphill to get there. It made me appreciate it even more.”