LOS ANGELES — This past spring, while deep in rehearsals for a European stadium tour with Bruno Mars, Victoria Monét would get up early every morning to chop, blend and sauté as a prep cook at Verse L.A. in Toluca Lake.

The gig at Verse, a supper club owned by the prolific mixing engineer Manny Marroquin, satisfied the externship requirement for Monét's graduation in May from Pasadena's Institute of Culinary Education; cooking school itself was a way for the 37-year-old singer and songwriter to get back in touch with her creativity, as she describes it, after the lengthy promotional hustle that followed her new artist win at the Grammy Awards in 2024.

"It was like I got this big spotlight and then my job just became capitalizing on that spotlight," Monét says, taking pains to clarify that she's not complaining about taking home one of the music industry's most coveted prizes. "But going to this or that event because I have to be in the front row and take photos — I kind of started to question what it is I'm doing." Learning to make aguachile and chocolate soufflé, she adds, "took me back to that place where I was creating something that I wasn't earning from." She laughs. "I actually had to pay to do it."

Monét's sense of rejuvenation is easy to feel across "Frequency of Love," a sprawling and vibrant new album released Friday on which this seasoned multitasker showcases the breadth of her talent. The long-gestating follow-up to her very long-gestating debut LP, 2023's "Jaguar II," the 22-track set encompasses dusty throwback R&B, acoustic folk-soul and throbbing dance music; there's even a lushly decorated rendition of "Somebody," the midcentury standard penned by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks, which Monét discovered as a kid thanks to HBO's "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge," with Halle Berry in the title role.

"She was like the Black Marilyn Monroe that I'd never heard about before that movie," Monét says of Dandridge. "I was her for two Halloweens."

What holds the album together is Monét's assured singing and her flirty yet philosophical lyrical tone. Working with producers Camper, D'Mile and Kaytranada — and welcoming guest appearances by the likes of Mars, SZA and Leon Thomas — Monét tells a rich story about a woman searching for fulfillment.

"Victoria has layers on what she can do," says Lucky Daye, who joins her for a yearning duet, "Maybe," with a bit of Patti LaBelle-and-Michael McDonald energy. "Her voice is not just a voice that sings — she uses it as an instrument."

Monét's goal on "Frequency of Love" was a portrait of romance that reflects real life. "You read that album title and you might think it's all love songs," she says. "But I feel like you can't really talk about love without talking about the risk of heartbreak and maybe some experiences you've had being daring enough to love."

It's a sunny August afternoon at Monét's home in the Valley, where she lives with her 5-year-old daughter, Hazel, who puts in a cameo on "Frequency of Love" as she did at age 2 on "Jaguar II." (At that time, Hazel became the youngest Grammy nominee in history when Monét's song "Hollywood" picked up a nod for traditional R&B performance.) The singer's been back in L.A. from Europe for a few weeks and is busily prepping for her album rollout. Yet culinary school remains fresh in her mind: As we talk in her plant-filled living room about balancing cooking classes and studio sessions — "I hired a chef at home while I was in school," she admits with a laugh — she leaps up from a sofa and dashes upstairs to grab the menu she designed for her final project.

"We had to turn the school into a restaurant, so I called mine Vaura," she says. "I took the word 'aura' and added a 'v.' "

Says Marroquin, who's won Grammys for his collaborations with Kendrick Lamar and Rosalía and who mixed "Frequency of Love" as Monét was putting in hours at Verse: "I never met an artist — and I've worked with a ton of them over the years — who was so passionate about the culinary arts."

Indeed, Monét says her album was indelibly shaped by her time at the culinary institute. Her initial idea for the LP was an immersion into yacht rock, which she got into after investigating the musicians that Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones employed for "Thriller" — namely, Steve Lukather and the Porcaro brothers of Toto.

"'Africa'?" she says of Toto's gleaming early-'80s megahit. "I know it's controversial now, but, boy, it's a great song — sounds so good." She even sought out McDonald, another yacht rock OG, for a collab that didn't end up making the LP, which expanded beyond her original premise as her listening broadened along with her cooking.

"We'd have Pasta Day, and I was listening to Italian music," she says. "Or we'd make Jamaican food and listen to Jamaican music. It was a reminder that I'm still discovering what it is that matters to me musically. I don't know that I'll ever be a one-lane person," she adds. "Could be good — could be a curse."

Monét, who grew up dancing as a kid in Sacramento, moved to L.A. around 2008 to join a girl group assembled by producer Rodney Jerkins. The group, called Purple Reign, never took off, nor did the solo tracks she began releasing after Purple Reign split up. Yet she eventually found success writing songs for her friend Ariana Grande — chart-topping hits like "Thank U, Next" and "7 Rings" that set up Monét for a breakthrough as a performer with "Jaguar II."

She still shakes her head at the memory of being named best new artist. "There was a moment backstage where Stevie Wonder came up and was like, 'I love your music,' " she recalls. "Then someone else called us over — it was Celine Dion. We take a picture, and now Celine Dion starts singing. I'm like, What is my life?"

In October 2024, her record company, RCA, dropped a deluxe edition of "Jaguar II" that she looks back on now with frustration. "In my head, 'Jaguar's' ending exclamation point was a Grammy," Monét says. "We should have left it there. But labels, they be labeling." Around this time she cut her song "Reach Out" — a silky club jam with echoes of '90s-era Janet Jackson — but felt it was too special to waste on a deluxe; she held onto it until this year, when she released the song as an advance single from "Frequency of Love" (complete with a gorgeous music video shot at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla).

Other highlights from the album include the darkly glamorous "You Hurt Me Too," which Monét says she wrote in the style of a James Bond theme; "Juicy," a funky holdover from her yacht rock period; and "Come Back to You," which samples the Isley Brothers' trippy "Voyage to Atlantis." Ask Monét about her experiences recording these songs and the conversation will find its way back to cooking — to the engineer she and her crew nicknamed Soufflé, for instance, or to the cookies she started bringing to the studio once she began a baking unit at school.

"I had chocolate chip, I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I had a Fruity Pebble white-chocolate-chip cookie," she says proudly. On tour with Mars, she even took over a kitchen at London's Wembley Stadium and made a batch for the pop superstar and his band.

This month Monét is set to launch a tour of her own behind "Frequency of Love" that will keep her on the road through the end of the year. And what of her plans, if any, now that she's accredited in the kitchen?

"Who knows?" she replies, smiling. She has a video series on Instagram she calls Saucy Sundéts; maybe that becomes a brand that she takes into grocery stores some day. "I'll tell you this," she says. "I have so much empathy for restaurants now — that feeling they get if you come in towards closing: 'How many?' "

"I understand how much they have to do just to make one plate of your favorite dish."

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