Muni Long, the Grammy-nominated R&B artist made her name in the music industry as a songwriter. It took a career pivot for her to write a hit song for herself.
over a track by Fergie brought her a first brush with viral fame. That exposure opened up a deal with Capitol Records, and a debut album with a single which cracked the Top 40. But it still wasn't as successful as hoped, and it didn't lead immediately to a career as a performer.in 2018."It wasn't – I was 18. I was trying to live up to the expectations of these major-label executives, and I was afraid to speak up for myself.
"If there was another way for me to get here, I probably would've never done that in the first place," she said."Although I don't regret my journey.""I was under the impression that the more hits you have, the more No. 1s you have, the sooner you'll be able to be an artist," she said."That's what I was told, but really that was just like the carrot at the end of the stick to get me to keep doing it.
Even the alias Muni Long combines the old and new. She took inspiration from a historical figure she encountered in her reading –"muni" is the term for an ancient Indian sage – and a hit rap song. It's not lost on Muni Long that"Hrs & Hrs" beat the odds – that it"blew up in the fourth quarter [of the year] from a 33-year-old independent Black woman in R&B." She said she's faced plenty of doubts about her age, her skin color and body type, her stylistic choices. But as Muni Long, she learned simply not to divulge all her plans.
She noted that she was only 34 years old, and that she has"many, many years of creation" left in her. She spoke with pride of having reclaimed her own career by reverse engineering it from an end goal.
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