Muni Long - “Slow Grind”

Muni Long is back with her new song “Slow Grind”, a nod to the classic slow jams of the 1990s and 2000s. At 36, Long came of age in the 1990s and 2000s, a classic period in the R&B genre. She has cited Mariah Carey as one of her main musical inspirations, and even recently performed an interesting tribute to her at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards. Just like Carey, Muni Long is a prolifiic songwriter with a keen ear for catchy hooks and choruses. After years spent writing hits for the likes of Rihanna and Carey, she rebranded herself as Muni Long in the 2020s and has had sporadic viral success with her smash hits “Hrs and Hrs”, and the Grammy-winning “Made For Me”.

Muni’s strange career has been marked by very low album sales for her 2022 & 2024 albums but huge success for her aforementioned two hit singles. As a result of the latter, she’s seen as a “main R&B girl” in the genre and it makes sense since she’s one of a few female R&B singers to have mainstream success in recent years. While her contemporaries should be the likes of Fantasia, Jazmine Sullivan, and Jhene Aiko, because she rebranded successfully so late in her career, her real contemporaries are Kehlani, H.E.R., and Coco Jones.

Her latest single “Slow Grind” is a standalone song that is not currently associated with any EP or LP. Its catchy chorus and wonderful use of an electric guitar reminds me of a song that could have been on TLC’s CrazySexyCool from way back in 1994! It’s that good of a song while still retaining it’s modern production flourishes. Seemingly immune from ageism fears, Muni Long seems to double down on being a grown-ass woman in her 30s who is making music that her fellow millennials would have listened to as kids back in the day. This song is destined to go viral on TikTok. Here’s to continued success for this talented singer-songwriter!