Monica‘s highly anticipated, Code Red, dropped today and has already drummed up quite the buzz. While the New York Times‘ Jon Caramanica declares that the Grammy-Award winning singer’s eighth studio album is “tepid” and “noncomittal,” niche sites like YouKnowIGotSoul.com praise the project for preserving R&B perfectly.

Critics aside, Twitter has spoken and the fans are all praising this project as her best in recent years.

Monica gave me everything I needed on #CodeRed! R&B! It’s definitely better than her last effort. ‘New Life’ gave me gas.

— ᴅᴏʟʟᴀʀ (@callmedollar) December 18, 2015

.@MonicaBrown just snatched our wigs with #CodeRed!😩 Fresh yet preserves the classic R&B sound🙌pic.twitter.com/Pukb9vFtMX — RatedRnB.com (@RatedRnB) December 18, 2015

Monica tells me, in a candid one-on-one during Baltimore stop of her Code Red Experience Tour, that

“Code Red is an album where I kind of bridge the gap between that old school R&B that we know and love and kind of what [fans] are accustomed to now, because I enjoy both.”

We go on to discuss looking to the past to pay homage to soul singers who paved the way, what she thinks about Tyrese challenging R&B singers to producer albums with no rappers, what it was like to have Queen Latifah as her manager at the beginning of her career and so much more! She also told RatedRnB.com the inspiration behind three of the tracks from the project. Here’s what she had to say: On “All Men Lie”: “All Men Lie” is hilarious. I think funny ‘cause I don’t believe that all men lie. I just believe that the majority and the majority wouldn’t have sounded as good in the song…I think what’s dope about “All Men Lie” is that it was written and kind of created by a man [Timbaland]. So that says a lot for a man to sit down and pen down such a bold statement like that… On “Ocean of Tears”: When I think about that record, it’s strictly based on emotion and how you feel when you’re connected to someone that’s just not treating you the way you should be treated. On “Deep”: This record is really chill, laid back and straight to the point speaking on how deep the love is between me and my husband. So the record is really, really one of my favorites on the album. Be sure to watch our interview above, and head over to iTunes to buy Code Red today!