The Boy Is Mine

In early sessions for her second album, Never Say Never, Brandy came up with the concept for "The Boy Is Mine" while watching an episode of The Jerry Springer Show themed around love triangles. She wrote the song with Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, his brother Fred Jerkins III, Japhe Tejeda, and LaShawn Daniels, and initially recorded it as a solo track. After hearing that stripped-down version, Brandy and Jerkins agreed the composition would work better as a duet, so Atlantic Records approached fellow teen singer Monica at Brandy's request. Monica's management worried the collaboration might worsen rumors of a feud between the two singers, but Clive Davis approved the project and she joined.

Before the joint session, Jerkins rebuilt the instrumental in his parents' New Jersey basement, using an Akai MPC60 for the bass and drum patterns and a keyboard set to a harp tone for the opening motif, and raised the track's tempo. He and LaShawn Daniels produced the song, while Dallas Austin later earned a producer credit for re-recording Monica's vocals after she chose to temper her performance separately. Jerkins later admitted the two singers "didn't get along" and remixed the track seven times with Dexter Simmons to keep things balanced.

Released in 1998 as the lead single from both women's second albums, the duet spent 13 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold 2.6 million copies in the US, becoming the year's best-selling song there. It also topped charts in Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1999.