Muni Lengthy is successful.
Her identify is discovering a house on TikTok, and as of late, the Billboard Scorching 100 as her breakout single “Hrs and Hrs” cracks the highest 20 on its ascent up the charts. By now, the artist previously often called Priscilla Renea’s new moniker would possibly even be extra inescapable than her pen sport, which alone is answerable for a decade of transcendent pop hits.
No matter what you could have or haven’t heard of Muni, listeners are scrambling to foretell her next-big-thing standing, with TikTok even inserting her on “rising artist” lists due to her inescapable smash. Muni, whose resume proves she’s simply as a lot the previous and current as she is the longer term, has no desire for what you name her.
“I’m at a spot the place I simply need to win,” she tells SPIN earlier this month, amid the regular rise of her breakout single. “There’s no ego concerned. I simply need to win. I’ve been ready very patiently for a very long time. And now that it’s right here, name me no matter. Simply let me in.”
Muni Lengthy is in.
After spending the final 10-plus years writing hits for everybody from Ariana Grande to Rihanna, and creating licensed membership classics in tracks like Ke$ha and Pitbull’s “Timber,” the 33-year-old is lastly experiencing what it’s prefer to be on the front-end of that success. “Hrs and Hrs”—like most of her songs written inside a dream or at her kitchen sink–is the anthem of this yr’s Valentine’s season. The track’s rise started to take form when the LGBTQ TikTok neighborhood used the observe to again some sentimental movies on the high of the yr, and now the infants are even singing it, Muni jokes on the telephone.
“I’ll be a little bit child in a Pamper[s diaper] that may’t even freakin’ speak, with ‘Hrs and Hrs’ and ‘Time Machine,’ each of them,” Muni says of her youngest followers. “They will’t even speak. I suppose that’s why I’m interested by that. What’s it about my music that’s making the infants sing to, like, is it just like the frequency of it?”
These are the kinds of questions the Florida-born author has requested herself for the reason that track, a range off her newest EP, Public Shows of Affection, was launched on her indie label Supergiant Data. She explains that new surprises have come every day since her EP’s launch in November, from Halle Berry tweeting the lyrics to Halle Bailey singing the track.
“I’m nonetheless attempting to wrap my head round how TikTok interprets to radio, like studying the charts and attempting to grasp what is definitely taking place,” she says. “It’s new. What I’m doing, and what’s taking place with my music, and my label, and simply every little thing that I’ve performed, is totally historic. It doesn’t occur.”
Whereas Muni is properly conscious of the bizarre nature of her rise to solo success and has huge goals of sooner or later doing one thing even rarer by changing into an EGOT winner, she stresses that she hasn’t let the well-earned success affect her presence on-line.
Final month, her track blocked The Weeknd’s newest album Daybreak FM from monopolizing the highest of the Apple charts. In response, she half-jokingly invited the Toronto artist to hop on a remix so he might maintain each charting place himself. “I believe if he did get on it, it might be superb,” she says of a Weeknd collab. “I believe he would simply slide proper in right here and be tremendous artistic. He is aware of what he’s doing. He’s a tremendous author. I’m certain I might love to listen to his interpretation.”
Contemplating a collaboration with certainly one of music’s greatest stars could have appeared far-fetched for Muni and her followers only a few months again, but it surely isn’t completely out of the query for her anymore. Her years spent behind-the-scenes writing songs or singing the dictionary on YouTube have been important in her present successes, she says, and at the moment are guiding her towards such objectives changing into a actuality.
Proper now, Muni now is aware of the facility of retaining songs to herself and plans to deal with her unbiased solo music in the interim. She’s confirmed folks mistaken earlier than, and whereas her subsequent profession steps could really feel much more formidable than the final, it’s time to award her these flowers (and flowers).
“You are able to do no matter you need,” she says. “You simply gotta be tenacious, and never let anybody inform you something totally different. Like there’s all of the shit that they mentioned being a Black lady, being 32 years previous, being unbiased. I did it. It’s taking place.”
