Kehlani and Victoria Monét have been connected through music longer than most people realized. The confirmation didn’t come until 2023, but the timeline was sitting in the discography the whole time.

In April 2018, Kehlani addressed her sexuality publicly on Twitter. “I’m queer. Not bi, not straight. I’m attracted to women, men, REALLY attracted to queer men, non-binary people, intersex people, trans people. lil poly pansexual,” she wrote. Six months later, she announced she was pregnant, referring to the father, Javaughn Young-White, as her “best friend” and an “amazing partner” whom she trusted with her body.

What was happening behind the scenes that summer told a different story. On November 9, 2018, Victoria posted what became her public coming out. “I want everyone to know that I’m single (since people wanna pretend I’m not) and make imaginary rules for me. I secretly and respectfully went through a difficult break up this summer but enough is enough. I also like girls. Thank U, Next. Bye.” In a February 2020 interview with Gay Times, she explained what was behind it. “I literally fell in love with a girl,” she said. “And I had a boyfriend at the time, and then we broke up. But this woman ended up getting pregnant because she had a boyfriend in a polyamorous relationship.” Her ex was still publicly claiming they were together after the split, and that pushed her to post the tweet.

Kehlani, for her part, was navigating her own transition. She gave birth in early 2019, and her mixtape While We Wait arrived January 10 of that year with “Nights Like This” as the lead single. The song, written from the perspective of someone who was left for a man by a woman she loved, finds her questioning her former lover’s choice and what it cost her. “Thought you was mine, but you decided to be with him though / Took my feelings and just threw ’em out the window.” Fans connected it to Victoria almost immediately, given everything that had played out publicly just months before.

Later that year, Kehlani went public with YG in September 2019, and within a month the relationship was already under strain. Footage surfaced in October of YG making out with a woman outside Poppy nightclub in Los Angeles, shown in a video where he lifts the doors of a red Lamborghini and kisses a woman standing on the curb. His team responded with a statement: “He was drunk and got carried away. He is very regretful for putting himself in that situation and hurting Kehlani. He has no romantic connection to the girl, just a drunken moment carried away.” Kehlani let the music speak for her, releasing “You Kno Wassup” on November 13, 2019, and following it with “Valentine’s Day (Shameful)” on February 17, 2020, which confirmed the relationship was over. When she sat down with The Breakfast Club that May, she explained that she and YG had agreed to an open relationship with honesty as the only condition, and that condition wasn’t honored. “It was a lot of lies and a lot of covering up,” she said. “It was deep and it was intricate and it was weaving of something that turned into something else.”

The clearest piece of evidence connecting Kehlani and Victoria came that same month. On May 8, 2020, Kehlani released It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, and in a Twitter Q&A around the album she confirmed “Hate the Club” was written about a woman she would pull up on at a Shabba-themed party in Los Angeles, a recurring event she knew the woman would always be at. The lyrics placed it directly: “It’s a Saturday, Shabba in LA, Yeah, that’s your shit / On the second floor, with your pants down low, Hanging off your hips.” A few lines later, the subject becomes harder to miss. “Order another round and round and round / Drunk when I call you Monet / Beggin’ you to walk me out.” Then: “You’re a Taurus, let me feed you.” Victoria Monét’s last name is Monét. She is a Taurus. Fans also surfaced posts connecting Victoria to Shabba-themed events, pointing to them as further confirmation.

Victoria responded with her own music that August. Her EP Jaguar arrived August 7, 2020, closing with “Touch Me,” which she described in a press release as deeply personal. “As artists, it’s special when we let the music document the details of real experiences and that’s what ‘Touch Me’ does,” she said. “I think it’s beautiful for so many reasons and I hope people can find their own reasons with every listen.” Two months later, on October 8, the remix dropped with Kehlani featured, and when Victoria announced it on Twitter she tagged Kehlani directly. “It feels so nice to finally have music WITH you and not just about you,” she wrote.

That tweet confirmed what fans had been piecing together for two years, and in 2023, Victoria made it official. Appearing on Emily Ratajkowski‘s podcast High Low, she said the original “Touch Me” was written about Kehlani and spoke to where things stood between them. “We’re friends,” she said. “I kind of am like that with all of my past relationships. I really don’t like the idea of like, now someone’s dead to me, unless they did me wrong.”

The music has kept coming since. Fans have connected “When He’s Not There” from Kehlani’s 2024 While We Wait 2 mixtape to Victoria, and “Folded,” released in December 2025, has drawn the same speculation. Neither has confirmed those connections publicly.

What has been confirmed is that from 2018 to 2020, two of R&B’s most closely watched artists were processing the same relationship through separate projects without ever naming each other directly. The “Touch Me” remix was the first time they shared a record. Victoria’s tweet when it dropped said everything the music already had.