To accompany this article, Adam Bradley created a playlist of the songs that define R&B’s new era. THE R&B SINGER-SONGWRITER Muni Long has a voice that people say could sing the dictionary and they’d still listen. In 2007, as a teen growing up in Gifford, Fla., she put that claim to the test, recording a five-minute YouTube clip in which she sings from Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary (“aardvark, aardwolf, Aaron …”) to the tune of Fergie’s “Glamorous” (2006). That playful stunt, along with a handful of covers, caught the attention of Capitol Records. Under her given name, Priscilla Renea, she recorded her 2009 debut, “Jukebox,” an album of pop originals that earned good reviews but modest sales. By her 22nd birthday, she no longer had a record deal. Reinventing herself as a songwriter, she spent the next decade building a chameleonic career, writing the 2013 global hit “Timber” for Pitbull and Kesha, as well as songs for Miranda Lambert, Rihanna, Madonna, Sabrina Carpenter and dozens of others.
But Long never gave up on her own voice. In 2018, she released a slept-on country album. Then, a couple of years later, she found her way to R&B. “I think it was the only genre I hadn’t explored,” the artist, now 36, says. She devised a new stage name: Muni, from the Sanskrit for “sage,” a seeker of self-knowledge, filtered through a line from the rapper 2 Chainz’s 2012 song “I’m Different” — “hair long, money long.” That juxtaposition of spirituality and the streets animates the two albums that she’s released under her chosen name: “Public Display of Affection: The Album” (2022) and “Revenge” (2024). On songs like 2021’s “Hrs & Hrs” and 2023’s “Made for Me,” Long sings about love, sex, and heartache with a passion reminiscent of 1990s slow jams. “R&B hasn’t been at the forefront in over 20 years,” she says. Now’s the time to “help mold a new era.”
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