Muni Long on Saving R&B With Her New Album 'Revenge'
An exclusive interview with the Grammy-award winner on navigating relationships, creating her album and the ups and downs of her 17 year music career.
Muni Long has declared her new project the R&B album of the year, and she may be right. The Grammy-award winner received Best R&B Performance for “Hrs and Hrs“ last year and her single “Made for Me” quickly became a classic, being sung bar-for-bar at middle school proms and across TikTok between besties. With a pen trained for over 17 years, the singer-songwriter is true to this, not new to this.
Her return to the airwaves is through her new album Revenge, a 14-track project meant to be a diary entry she shares with the world, advising women to stay in touch with their higher selves despite all odds.
Below, we sit down with Muni Long to discuss developing her album while pregnant, navigating relationships and saving old-school R&B.
Tell us about this album being a diary for you.
This album is the first time that I actually put my real feelings and real experiences on wax. Before now, I would always imagine or put myself in other people’s shoes or hear one of my friend’s stories and write about it from there. But this is the first time I was like, “I’m going to use this as therapy and talk about what I’m actually going through.”
Do you actually keep a diary?
I do. I have several journals actually, but I only ever use my diary to manifest things. So, even if I’m having a down moment, the entry will turn into me speaking positively about it to try to change it or have it exit my frequency. I might start out by saying “I’m really sad today,” but then it’ll just turn around.
How did this project come to fruition?
I was pregnant at the time. Once I hit seven months my stomach was so freaking big, I couldn’t go anywhere because people were recognizing me. So, I had just been sitting in my room for months doing nothing but then I started getting the itch. We put a studio in the house so that I could write and make music. I made “30s” and then a couple days later I did “Made For Me,” and “Reverse.” I had them all by November 2023.
The album is called Revenge and initially you’d think this album is about getting your lick back, but you take a mature approach fueled by love and self-respect. Tell us about this approach of letting karma play out.
When you really get in touch with your higher self, it becomes more important to stay in contact with that version than cussing somebody out or fighting. We can disagree. We can have differences of opinion. We don’t have to argue. If something didn’t go your way, there are a million other amazing things out there that you can go get into. Just leave that alone. So, once I really understood that, it became easy to just say “I see what you just did but you know what? You have that. Congratulations. I’m out.”
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You have one song called “30s” where you echo the fears that many of us have of not being able to find someone to share life with. How do you stick to your standards and keep hope that you will find that person as a high achieving, ambitious woman?
The biggest thing for me with the song “30s” is, I realized recently, even in a committed relationship, you could be single as hell. As a successful, ambitious, tenacious woman, it’s hard to find someone who isn’t going to be jealous or who isn’t going to want to put a muzzle on you and direct your success. Just focus on you and be you. Let the person who matches your swag find you. Because when you’re looking for it, you’re going to attract people who are not whole people. They just want to give you what you’re looking for. I just focus on being who I am and being amazing.
“Reverse Interlude” brings us into a new tone for the rest of the album. It features a lot of onomatopoeia for driving a car. What is your relationship to cars?
First of all, I love cars. I love old schools. I grew up in South Florida where we’ve got something called a “donk,” which is really just an old-school Chevy Caprice with wheels on it and a paint job. If you’ve ever heard of Daytona Bike Week, basically it’s just a whole bunch of people who get together on the street and show off their cars. So, I grew up loving big trucks, pick up trucks and four wheelers. I don’t really care too much for foreign cars, but I love old-schools. My dream car was a Mustang growing up.
Let’s talk about ride or dies. In your song “Bessie” you allude to the power of genuine female friendships. What does that support system look like for you?
The older I get, the more real friendships that I have. It’s hard to be the only girl amongst all these men in the industry, it’s always just me. So, I do appreciate having the one or two people in my life where we don’t really even have to talk. I’m not really much of a talker, so my friend and I, we can talk without talking if that makes sense. Once you become friends with somebody for long enough. you could just look at each other and bust out laughing.
On “Type Questions,” you show the girls how to do a background check on the person they’re interested in. Are there any answers to those questions that immediately tell you it’s time to end it?
The song actually started out as a freestyle. I did it on the Sway in the Morning show, and I really wanted to use 50 Cents’ “21 Questions,” but by the time we got 50’s attention the album already needed to be turned in. So, I just ended up doing the acoustic version that you hear on the album, which has a little chorus that we added to it.
To answer your question, I like to observe. What I have learned in my experience, in my maturity, is that you need to let them show you who they are. You cannot try to fabricate or have this idea of who a person is. Ask the question and see how they respond. It might be nerve racking, but it’s easy to do that in the beginning because you guys don’t have any expectations. If you wait for the time you start feeling comfortable enough to ask, you already like them.
So, you’re more likely to twist the answer to fit your perception of them.
Exactly. That’s why you have to ask them in the very beginning, the first couple times you talk. Just ask! What’s the worst that could happen? You find out the truth.
What does saving R&B look like for you?
Saving R&B, to me, means creating a space for more R&B music to drive and have a seat at the table. More and more people are falling in love with R&B again, which is amazing. This means that the budgets are getting bigger and the demand could lead to offers from for TV, film and live performances. In the early ’00s, you could not turn on the radio or TV without hearing some R&B music. Now, you have to dig and search for it. I appreciate being an example of what a real song sounds like, not just the same word over and over again. There’s no shade to those artists but we’ve had enough of that, can we get some real words? Somebody call Babyface, please.
This release is something you’ve been waiting on for 17 years. What keeps you patient and focused on the end goal – creating a career that has a long-lasting legacy?
I wasn’t patient. I was very impatient at times but once you really get into the work, you don’t have time to be impatient. If you are feeling impatient, you ain’t doing enough. You need to sit down and think about some goals that are bigger, and start working towards them. Once you actually get into the work, baby, you don’t have time to do anything but eat, sleep, rinse and repeat.
Is there anything else we should know about the project?
I do believe that I’ve made the R&B album of the year. The definition of R&B has definitely shifted, but I believe that this album might help bring it back to that feeling it’s very nostalgic in some places. I hope people are able to use it and apply it to their life. Maybe they’ll inspire other artists to do more chord progressions and write about deeper things.
