Did transitioning to songwriting feel like Plan B, or did it feel right?
MUNI LONG It was off to the races. I was doing five sessions a day, writing two songs in every session. I did it to eat, No. 1. And No. 2, it was constantly the carrot on the end of the stick: “If you get a Top 10, that will help you in your artist career. If you get a No. 1 … If you get two No. 1s.”
The Grammy Awards 2023
The 65th annual ceremony will be held on Feb. 5 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, after two years of delays and complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
I kept reaching the milestones and the finish line kept moving. I was making lots of money, had a lot of success, and I was still just very unhappy. So I decided to pause. I sat down for like eight months, trying to decide what I wanted out of this. That’s when Muni Long was born.
Dream, did you start with visions of stardom?
THE-DREAM It’s such a contrast, for me, being from Atlanta, Ga., because everything was about the band — and it always was. The HBCUs, the Florida [A&M University] Marching 100, Grambling, Jackson. We studied those VCR tapes. And in third grade, I started playing trumpet. Everything was the culture of being in the band and being a part of something, knowing all these things have to come together to make a piece of music. That designed what my flight was.
How did you make it a career?
THE-DREAM Being a kid in the ’90s, everything was about hustling the music game to get out — no different than going to play basketball or football. If there’s a dope dealer over here who’s trying to put out a rap record, you go over and write the hook. At that time, like stars colliding in space, there was L.A. Reid starting LaFace, So So Def, Dallas Austin writing these incredible songs. These are people that we know! “You seen Dallas in that new Ferrari? You know how he got it?” “Nah …” “He wrote these records!” Once we knew, voilà.
Muni, did those people pave the way for how your career unfolded?
MUNI LONG I grew up on my grandparents’ farm and I would be in the room watching “106 and Park,” never realizing that one day I would know these people and be brushing shoulders with them. It took a minute for me to feel like I was supposed to be there and not like I was intruding. Until maybe about five or six years ago.
