All Eyez on Me

All Eyez on Me is the third studio album by American recording artist Monica. Named after its same-titled lead single, it marked the singer's first record under Clive Davis' J Records roster and was first released on September 11, 2002, in Japan. The tracks on the album are a mixture of uptempo songs and ballads, and it was crafted by producers such as Dallas Austin, Bryan Michael Cox, Jermaine Dupri, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, and Soulshock & Karlin. Released to mixed reviews by music critics, the album reached number 14 on the Japanese Albums Chart. Its preceding two singles, "All Eyez on Me" and "Too Hood", achieved moderate commercial success on the charts. Expected to be released on November 12, 2002, in the United States, the album was eventually put on hold after being heavily bootlegged following its Japanese release and became widely available through Internet file-sharing services. The album was then partially re-recorded and retooled as After the Storm in 2003 with original album cut, "U Should've Known Better", released as its fourth single in 2004. Background In June 2000, in an interview with MTV News, Monica revealed that she was planning to start working on a follow-up to her 1998 album, The Boy Is Mine, throughout the summer season, with a first single to be released by October of the same year. Expressing her interest in reteaming with the core musicians she had worked with on her second album – including frequent collaborators Dallas Austin, Rodney Jerkins, David Foster, Daryl Simmons, and Jermaine Dupri – the singer expected the album to be released in the first quarter of 2001 following her involvement with Oscar Mayer's Jingle Jam Talent Search contest and the filming of her first major motion picture, Love Song (2001). The following month, personal tribulations put a temporary halt on the album's production when her former boyfriend Jarvis "Knot" Weems committed suicide. In July 2000, Monica and Weems were together at the graveside of Weems's brother, who had died in an automobile accident at age 25 in 1998, when Weems, without warning, put a gun to his head and shot himself to death. Knot left behind a daughter from a previous relationship, who Monica took into care after going into hiatus. "Jarvis' death had everything to do with me not working," she said in 2001. "I was not able [...] I was working all these hours after it happened, [but] I realized in the midst of everything, I couldn't handle it.